Chief midwife tells women that they should endure the pain of natural childbirth

[MissM]

Here.

It's too early in the morning to get my blood pressure up, but my response was off. Have you ever felt like you were going to split in two? No, because you're a man, and you've never bloody given birth!

Tosser.

custardo: "good for you if you can do it naturally - have a medal, go eat cake with gaia - who gives a shit. whoop de do."

You see, that's unpleasant and judgey.

You make assumptions that people who prefer to do without pain relief are asking for adulation and praise and buy into some sort of spiritual new-agey philosophy. Some do have this spiritual dimension, but not all. I'm a card carrying rationalist and atheist and I still see a value in my choice, for me.

It doesn't have to be disparaged in that way.

well thats how i feel and i am entitled to feel that way based upon my experiences on MN. YOU tiktok may think differently about the subject at hand. but that is my opinion and i'm sticking to it.

You are entitled to whatever feelings you have, custardo...just don't tell me (or anyone else) that what they feel is a need for adulation and praise and communion with some imaginery deity. You could also try to avoid sneering at the people who actually do feel they're communing with the imaginery deity!

It's easier to debate the issue that way, you see.

Don't almost all mothers end up feeling defensive about our birth choices (and even our medically imposed interventions)? The way things work at the moment, we feel we have to justify why we want a homebirth, why we ended up with a caesarean, why we needed an epidural...

One of the many annoying things Walsh does in that paper is forget that it's actually mothers who have led the movement for less intervention. Mothers have fought for homebirths and birth centres.

Just as mothers fought for the legal right to choose or reject epidurals and other forms of pain relief.

I got a bit carried away with the bold there. But it is astonishingly annoying to find that women's efforts to improve birth services are again and again diminished in this way.

to [pretend that there isn't a hierarchy of these things and that there isn't a form of one upmanship - is startlingly blinkered.

perhaps you should leave the gaia worshipers to their own thoughts on the matter.

Great posts by umf.

Well i took the time to have a look at his presentation and think that the observer journalist really has missed his calling and should be working for the national enquirer !I can see nothing that says women shouldnt have pain relief or that he believes it is a rite of passage or that he believes women need to feel pain to be able to bond with their baby.Denis Campbell is clearly a twat ,the male midwife and professor is clearly trying to look at ways of improving care for women in labour .

I think there are 3 sources for Denis Walsh's comments:

1. The online powerpoint presentation

2. The academic-style article (which someone helpfully posted above)

3. An interview with the Observer

Actually 4, cos he's also done at least one radio interview on the furore.

custardo -
who really feels they are better than you for having 'natural' birth? Really? And why are people who wanted natural births 'gaia worshipping hippies'?
I wanted a birth without epidural for various reasons. None of which related to enjoying pain, worshipping any sort of deity, or wanting to be superior to other women. I got the birth I wanted. You got the birth YOU wanted. Wahay. End of story. I'm no better than you and you are no better than me. (at giving birth - diplomacy wise I'm definitely better than you)

As a postscript - I wish more women had births like mine - quick, manageable, quick to recover from, relatively easy. Sometimes that's impossible. And sometimes the woman's own choices and temperament mean that she doesn't want a birth like mine. Why would I want to impose my views on the 'best' way to labour on other women?

I think the fact that often people like to highlight the fact they had no pain relief makes it an issue tbh. Take the text my sister got from her friend's dp yesterday, "baby x born x lb x... x did really well no pain relief."

Well as Custardo says, "whoop de whoop" I mean, come on so what? I did well too, just because i had pain relief does not negate the fact I nourished a baby in my body for nine months, pushed it out at the end, and more importantly now do the best I can for my children and am a damn good mum (most of the time )

And TikTok: "And that's a good thing for everyone ??? And more people should feel that way????"

Did I actually say more people should feel that way? What is exactly wrong in seeing birth as a means to an end and little more? Why should I pretend to be more excited about it than I am? YOU are implying that I should be yet you seem so keen to not make assumptions and appear judgey yourself.

Birth is not the be all and end all for everyone,and I stick by ,y point that I saw it as a means to getting my babies out of my body, nothing more. Post-epidural, neither were too bad an experience

I have had 3 children and one epidural.

birth 1- in hostpital, lots of medical staff and pin pricks in baby's head while I was in labour very scary and painful. I opted fairly close to the end of labour for an epidural. Also had an episiotomy and threat of forceps unless I delivered in 10mins.

birth 2- in hospital again, baby arrived very quickly, no pain killers and I tore quite badly.

birth 3- At home in pool 2 fantastic midwives talked me through so well that I didn't tear at all, no pain killers. Definately my best birth. The first birth that I experienced an urge to push!

I do think Dr walsh has a point, in hindsight I would have had a better birth without an epidural, I feel it slowed down labour and made me removed from what was going on with my body.

Well, there was tumble weed blowing across the corridor of the beautiful MWL-unit when I was pushed into there because there were no beds available in the Delivery Suite. Seems that birthing pool, ensuite facilities and gas and air weren't enough to tempt ANY mums that day.

Yes, I would have loved the full range of options, but I didn't want to get started in one place and then have to move if I couldn't cope tbh, which seems to be all that the messed up English medical hierarchy can come up with. Why does it have to be Midwife-led vs Consultant-led - couldn't they all be on the same side, for instance, the woman's?

Is there some mystical force which stops anaesthetists (sp) entering a midwife-led unit which I don't know about?

To my mind, there should be much less ideology around some of this.

Oh, and is there an evidence base for the Professor's assertion that mothers who don't feel precisely as much pain as he thinks is right in childbirth find it harder to bond and nurture their child? I couldn't spot any in the Observer article.

And who do we write to try and get this guy stopped from inflicting his personal views - that directly contradict NICE clinical guidance - on mums-to-be?

Bolter - TBH I think it's a very silly thing to be proud of. Personally I stayed home as long as possible because I felt more comfortable there. By the time I got to hospital I was 8cm and the pain ramped up a gear - but I knew it wouldn't be long so I coped with G&A. If I had been in hospital longer I may well have opted for epi because it was there and I would have hated being in hospital during the first stage. (Lay on reclining chair naked with legs spread flicking through tv channels for most of it after lurching in and out of bath - also naked lol)
My birth was as I wanted and I'd never tell another woman she should do it like I did. Many people are scared to be at home and want the comfort of hospital asap, in which case, obviously, they are more likely to choose an epi. All choices are valid. And let's face it - even with an epi it still hurts for a lot of it, it's still incredibly hard work and you still have to recover. It's all something to be proud of. Jesus I wish people didn't get all 'ner ner ner' about how they gave birth, hardly sisterly

TheBolter: I heard something of the campaigner in your post when you described your own feelings about childbirth as if you thought these were some sort of ideal but I was mistaken, sorry, as I see you have clarified.

I think having a baby without pain relief is a different sort of birth. It does not make the woman superior or more worthy of praise or congratulations, but I think it is fair enough for women to feel they have met a challenge to go with a particular choice and to want to celebrate that - it is perfectly possible to do this without denigrating other people's choices or outcomes.

The response 'well, whoop de whoop' at the news someone has given birth without an epidural is sneering, judgemental and belittling.

On another point: the links between bonding and pain are theoretical and I don't think there has been any research into them in practice.

I have had a birth at hospital with epidural and pethidine, at home with no pain relief and at hospital with G&A.

I don't regret having pain relief as I thought I needed it but I do feel the drugs in my system did leave me feeling discinected from the birth and it did affect my bonding in the first 24 hours. This did not mean I didn't bond but I do remember the subsequent homeburth as a better experience and not substantially more painful (until I was stitched!).

so why shouldn't an experienced practioner share his opinions on this - unecessary intervention can be difficult to avoid. In my experience it was generally easier to accept medical intervention than to question it and only after I had notched up my first birth did I have the confidence to question anything.

Thanks Tiktok for clarifying about the link between pain/nurturing just being an untested hypothesis. I do think a Professor of midwifery has a responsibility to teach things that are actually factual rather than merely his (potentially offensive to a lot of hardworking mums) musings.

Sorry Tiktok, I generally think you are a font of sensible wisdom on these matters, but I don't see how you can say in one sentence that having no pain relief is not superior, but then say it should be celebrated as meeting the challenges. That, whether you mean it or not, does imply that those who had pain relief didn't meet the challenges. Yet its such an individual thing. I had an epidural on my first, and nothing on my second. My second labout just didn't hurt as much, its not that I 'met the challenge' better.

I agree totally that one to one support with a familiar midwife would help women labour without epidurals and that this is a good thing, but no one knows what individual pain people are feeling, and ultimately they should be the judge of it.

"Jesus I wish people didn't get all 'ner ner ner' about how they gave birth, hardly sisterly"

That's maybe true - but by the same token its hardly sisterly to not allow someone to be proud of themselves. Its a hard call.

Monkey - I think everyone should be proud of themselves - not noone. I don't think people should be proud of not having pain relief per se, I think it's a bit silly. I think they should be proud of having given birth, however they did it. It takes amazing strength and courage to give birth in any way, shape or form.

Helen31, the link between bonding and pain is clearly marked as 'emerging research' in the prof's paper and referenced...the paper referenced gives a speculative association only. He's not teaching this.

peppamum - you're misreading my post, I think. Some women aim to give birth without pain relief for whatever reason (in my own case it was to avoid the risks of an epidural going wrong, together with a desire not to have my lower body numbed which for me was a horrible prospect - prob a personal thing - along with a desire to be in control myself and not medicalised). This is a challenge. It is increasingly difficult to meet this challenge, as the prof describes, in a maternity service which doesn't listen much to mothers and where care is fragmented and where birth is greatly feared.

When that challenge is met, despite the obstacles and barriers, why can it not be celebrated?

If someone does not set themselves that challenge, but (maybe) sets themselves a different one, lets say, to have a vaginal birth instead of a repeat section, or to breastfeed without bottles, then they can have that celebrated as well, can't they?

None of these examples - birth without pain relief, VBAC, bf without bottles - is a matter of purely personal choice. There are elements of chance and luck of the draw in all of them. But they do all the same sit in a cultural context that makes achieving them more difficult than it should be.

Can you see this has nothing to do with denigrating mothers who don't have same aims, and why sneering at the aims (with an ironic 'whoop de doo!') is so unpleasant?

I do feel I missed out slightly, by having an epidural and highly medicalised birth after a complicated pregancy. But really, it is just not that big a deal. I felt and feel lucky to have a live baby at the end of it. Sure, other mothers boast about no pain relief. But what stings me with my extremely tiny baby, born after a preterm induction, is the way they boast about their babies' sizes. "Well I gave birth to a 9 pounder without any intervention" or seem to think that a tiny baby meant an easier time "it must have been so much easier to push out her little head"

Unlike TheBolter, I can't actually respond that at least I "I nourished a baby in my body for nine months, pushed it out at the end etc." Because I did not achieve that, despite doing my best. But you are right to be proud that you did. And a woman who manages to give birth without pain relief has a right to be proud of succeeding in that.

You just can't compare your experience directly with anyone else's. And you can't objectively assess how much pain anyone else is in. That is partly why Walsh gets stick for being a man. He has not personally faced being in this extremely vulnerable position and never will.

True, upwind. No one can assess someone else's pain, and it's insulting to try, beyond the barest generalities - such as it is prob more painful to give birth to an OP baby, or to have an induction which ramps up the contractions to the max, or to have forceps and no anaesthetic.

But it is certainly possible to assess maternity environments, and the context in which women give birth.