Sounding a little like a cross between one of Mao’s ideas and a book by the Dali Lama, this is, in fact, a procedure that we were introduced to at our first antennal class (or ‘parentcraft’ as they are apparently now called). It’s actually quite releaving to hear about moves award from the medicalisation of women and child birth towards a more natural approach, given my concerns about the factory like atmosphere of the hospital when we went for the scans. Of course, it’s easy to me to say releaving, I am, as in increasingly being pointed out to me, not the person that has to get something ‘this size’ through an opening ‘this size’, however I think Sionedwyn was quite comforted by the fact that both the midwife and many of the people there didn’t seem overly keen on the whole ‘strap ’em to the gurney’ approach as portraied by the Daily Mail and some sociology textbooks.
I remain quite calm about the whole thing (although I refer to you to the previous comment about not being the one doing the actual giving birth), although there are times when I accept this could be misinterpreted as a lack of interest (simply not true) or an excess of ignorance (another accusation I strenusly denied on the way home, although possibly with less sucess than I had hoped). I swing back and forward between ‘that’s ages’ and ‘oh my God that’s hardly any time at all’ when we discuss how far we have left to go, and I suspect being back in a ‘try to get that done before the end of the day’ environment is slightly distorting my judgement of time. Still, I remain committed to reading several more books before the end of Novemeber, at least some of which will be about childbirth.
