Going on BBC breakfast on Monday a.m to talk about male midwife who thinks women have too many epidurals... your thoughts please

Youtube?

I missed it!!!

I missed it!!! Bums,did anyone record it, will it be on youtube/iplayer???

Did you call him a numpty? If not, missed opportunity.

Well done Carrie. You were outnumbered but got your point across very well.

Very tactful with the 'bizzare' comments Carrie. Bloody ridiculous would have covered them too i think

Nice pink top btw

I saw you too Carrie!!

[excited emoticon]

well done carrie.

watching...!

I see you Carrie...

Good comments, well done. In the face of such muppets too.

Ooooo, its on now!!

Carrie - having read his presentation, if pain really is for "marking the occasion", please ask him when his next birthday is and where he'll be celebrating it, so I can pop round to kick him in the balls

OK - how to phrase this...

I did hypnobirthing for the birth of DS. The first thing that I was told is that generations of women have been kept in fear of labour by being told how horrendously painful it is, how hard it is, how the pain is what you must expect. When the body is in a state of fear, it enters "fight or flight" mode and reduces activities that are not seen as essential to survival - this includes giving birth. So, by being fearful, you are working against your body's natural ability to labour effectively. This made sense to me - and a bit of hypnosis helped to reduce my fear of labour pretty effectively.

In the end I was induced at 42 weeks - slow progression - eventual very fast delivery in the observation suite of the Labour Ward (due to slow progression), unattended until the very last couple of minutes. It HURT! But I wasn't scared and I let it happen, didn't try to stop any of it and didn't have anyone interfering with how it was happening. So possibly it hurt less than if I had been more "managed".

I was warned off an epidural because I was induced and therefore it was more likely to involve ventouse/forceps - this I could believe.

I think he has some screwed up ideas - by all means increase the use of hypnobirthing, hydrotherapy etc. but for the love of God, STOP telling women it HAS TO HURT! It just adds to the whole fear load and is TOTALLY counterproductive. Could you please mention that? Ta.

My initial reaction to this article was that he is being very condescending, and I do object to him having such opinions, not because of his gender, but because he hasn't had a baby. He is not qualified to be making the sorts of statements he is making because he hasn't had a contraction, or given birth. It is important. I do not believe that someone can really understand what it is like to give birth without actually doing it. I have had three thankfully straightforward labours and quick deliveries and the most important thing I know about having babies is that after a certain point, you do not choose your birth, you can try, but nature decides. Some people are more fortunate than others. I've been lucky, but I absolutely know that if my labours lasted any longer than they did, or if there were complications of any sort, I would not, or should not have hesitated in requesting and accepting any pain relief available. The pain is unimaginable, and regardless of his experience as a midwife, Dr Denis Walsh can not imagine that level of pain. It does not feel natural or beautiful or wonderful. It is bloody awful.

However, he is obviously correct that epiduals are becoming more common, and in my experience of two hospital births and one homebirth, I can see why. The ethos is totally different in a hospital. You are checked and monitored far more, and intervention is the norm, whereas at home you are just encouraged to get on with it.

I think his point that enduring the pain of childbirth being linked to a womans ability to bond with or care for her baby is bollocks, and deeply condescending. However, I do agree that both experiences are primal, the birth of a baby and the caring for a baby are absolutely fundamental to our humanity, regardless of how painful they are. I kind of know what he means. That primal, animalistic act of giving birth is wonderful, amazing, shocking, as is the all encompassing love you feel for the resulting baby.

Part of me agrees what with endorphins etc but I agree with others it is only possible with the right support and care and at the moment the majority of us just don't get it. My best labour (and drug free) I had a lovely midwife who stayed with me the whole time. I think I couldn't have done it without her. My worst I was stressed and so was the one mw who was an only on antenatal ward that just happened to have quite a few labouring women on it.

As it happens, when I was PG I wanted to avoid an epidural (partly due to terror of needles and uneasiness about my spine anyway; have scoliosis, partly due to reading too much feminist fiction about the empoweringness of natural birth (and not enough feminist writing about the reality of unattended births and how many women and babies die from 'routine' complications in birth) and all that). Towards the end of labour I did ask for one, was told it was too late, continued with gas and air and did not, in fact, have any intervention apart from catheter in the last few minute and a voice saying 'Baby might be in distress, we're going to need to operate' which made me go 'No you fucking won;t' and push like mad.
However, no matter how experienced and knowledgabe this bloke may be, there is something fundamentally off-putting about a man extolling the benefits of painful birth. Just like there would be something fundamentally offputting about a female medic singing the praises of circumcising baby boys.

I've always considered that a bollocks statistic - i.e. an epidural makes you more likely to have forceps / ventouse. Consider this - perhaps you were heading down that route anyway because of a complicated delivery, and it became apparent that after 26 hours of f**king back to back labour where you wanted to die, that an epidural was the right and humane thing to do. Yes I needed assisted delivery and I had an epidural - but I would have needed assisted delivery even without an epidural. I guarantee it.

With my second labour frankly I'd experienced worse period pain. It was a walk in the park. I needed no pain relief at all....but my first labour was something else.

And I am still mad with the muppet midwives who didn't call the lovely, lifesaving, fantastic, demi-god doctor sooner, who as he descended from heaven said something to the effect of "Christ ladies, this woman has suffered enough - call the anaaesthetist"

I guess you could say I feel strongly about this subject

Feel free to hurt him badly, Carrie.

Then he too can discover the empowerment that pain brings

Tosser

He's a man. He can shut the fuck up about childbirth. Even if he is a qualified midwife. It's not him who is ever going to experience this, so his viewpoint is bullshit.
TBH I would be nearly as contemptuous of a woman who said, pain relief in labour is immoral because she hadn't had any - every birth is different, every fanjo is different for that matter - but a man telling women that pain (of a type he is never going to experience) is good for them and they should embrace it needs a good kick in the cock.

My feeling was that he is confused when he says labour pains have a purpose. They have a reason, which is the evolutionary compromise between big brains and the kind of pelvis that allows us to walk upright.

Whether it has a purpose is a philosophical question with no clinical meaning.

Also, as an atheist, I assume that I can safely ignore his idea that pain is spiritually enriching.

I don't think I would be allowed to write what I really think about this man's opinion on MN as I am coming over all Malcolm Tucker...
but I would like to shove a stethoscope up his beeping beep

Two things really stick out:

Emerging evidence [shows] that normal labour and birth primes the bonding areas of a mother's brain better than caesarean or pain-free birth"

? Pain prepares women for the demands of motherhood

So, let me get this right... you're thirty six hours into labour, experiencing a medieval level of pain, and someone will now feel justified in saying to you: 'I can take this pain away, but it will make you a shit mother.'

Or, in another happy situation: 'Your baby is stuck, heart rating dropping, we think a c-section, but frankly it means that you won't bond with your baby as well as a natural birth.'

I know the second is an extreme case, but it is a thin end of the wedge.

What a Beep

I read it and was surprised by the slant the Observer had put on it, it read like something in the DM. I know of Denis Walsh and he was somewhat misrepresented IMHO, although some of the 'quotes' in the article were a bit dodgy to say the least. Eg a 'successful' spontaneous vaginal birth probably does help with bonding but to suggest pain helps with ''preparing a mother for the responsibility of nurturing a newborn baby.'' WTF??

I understood his point to be that with better antenatal support and better care in labour, less women would feel that they needed epidurals, and that the pain of labour IS different to say, a broken leg for example, in that it is normal, and temporary, and part of a healthy process. I think the article did him a disservice really