Your First Grandchild: Useful, touching and hilarious guide for first-time grandparents. Paul Greenwood

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СКАЧАТЬ One grandmother-to-be admitted that she secretly read up on contemporary childcare because she knew she was going to stay with her daughter for the first two weeks after the birth and she didn’t want to show how much she didn’t know or had forgotten.

      

      Others say that they didn’t read any childcare books then and they’re not going to start now. They maintain that a woman ‘knows these things by instinct’ and insist that ‘young mums read far too many of these books nowadays’. While I do not entirely agree with them, there is no doubt that Mother Nature does often step in when needed.

      When I was young I drank and smoked, not to excess, but more than I should have. As soon as I was pregnant I was unable to do either. Even the idea of a drink made me feel sick, and a smoky atmosphere was unbearable. As for coffee, I had to cross the street to avoid the smell from a coffee shop or cafe, far less drink any. No one really discussed pregnancy then (I’m talking about the early sixties) let alone gave you advice about it. I remember playing Alison in John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger and when it came to her line, ‘You see, I’m pregnant … ’ there was an audible gasp from the audience. No one said that word then except doctors. It was all euphemisms: ‘She’s in the family way.’ ‘She’s expecting a happy event,’ or in vulgar parlance, ‘She’s got a bun in the oven.’ There were no proper antenatal classes, and you were still expected to draw as little attention to your condition as possible. I was recording a television series at the time, and I had to keep rushing out to be secretly sick in the ladies’ room. I pretended I had an upset stomach, as I was afraid that if I made my condition known too early, they’d give my part to someone else (which they probably would have done).

      I would love to have had the knowledge that young women have today. Not all of them follow the guidelines, but most do and have healthier, happier babies as a result. It is wonderful to realize just how woman-centred pregnancy and birth care has become, thanks greatly to the work of The National Childbirth Trust in Britain, but also to women themselves. Many in my generation do indeed look back in anger to the way we were treated when doctors ‘knew best’ and we did as we were told.

      

      Women were often forced out of control of their own bodies, and giving birth was too often medicalized to such a degree that to make any individual request was considered being ‘difficult’. Pethidine was frequently administered without our asking for it, with a resulting loss of mental alertness in the mother, and the potential problem of its affecting the baby. Although I’m sure this was done in an attempt to relieve any suffering, it was not always ascertained – and certainly not in my case – that any real suffering had begun. This description, from Mother and Baby, June 1965, suggests just how clinical birthing had become. Pregnant women were told:

       At the beginning of the second stage you will be taken to the labour room … This is a small, bare room with a high bed in it where your baby will be born in aseptic conditions. The doctor and midwife will don masks just as for a surgical operation … The obstetric bed is steel-based and provides good support for you in the pushing stage. You will be placed on your back, thighs wide apart and your legs up in the air, supported by two leather stirrups. This is called the lithotomy position and is used to enable whoever is delivering you to control the descent of your baby’s head through the birth canal. You will, of course, be draped in sterile towels and you will find the position quite suitable for the hard work you have to do.

      Tests and Scans

      Most expectant mothers do not need to be encouraged to have all the tests and scans that may be necessary. In fact, it’s sometimes older people who think there may be too many of these, and that they might cause too much stress. Most, however, find them as reassuring as the parents do. A friend of mine who is just about to become a grandmother phoned me recently thrilled to bits because she had just been to her daughter’s scan with her. ‘I was really touched that she wanted me to go with her,’ she said. ‘Isn’t it wonderful, and doesn’t it make you realize how little information there was available to us when we had our babies. Parents are so lucky these days.’

      

      One of the great bi-products of working on this book is that I get unexpected phone calls from grandparents, potential grandparents and parents themselves who offer interesting facts and stories, and ask me about some comparable circumstances.

      

      Sometimes grandparents-to-be say that to them a scan looks like a map of the dark side of the moon and they can recognize nothing even vaguely resembling a baby. Don’t be afraid to ask for it to be explained to you, and then you can share the thrill.

      

      Another friend of mine, whose daughter had to have a late scan, said, ‘We didn’t particularly want to know the sex of the child but on the picture it was quite obvious that it was a boy. Impossible to ignore that little thing waving about in the breeze.’

      

      Parents may or may not choose to have scans and tests – the decision must be theirs – but those who do can find these procedures reassuring. So much of the pregnancy experience used to be a guessing game, with pregnant women too often at the mercy of old wives’ horror stories.

       A Little Knowledge is a Dangerous Thing!

       ‘My father was a GP with a busy practice in Glasgow. I was living in London and pregnant with my first child. My husband wasn’t particularly interested in any of my symptoms and I was far away from close female friends. Also, I idolized my father and I valued his medical opinion highly. So every day, at least once, I used to phone him.

       I knew he really loved me so it never occurred to me that I could be being a bit of a pest when I used to phone him in the middle of his consulting hours with the latest symptom. What did so-and-so mean? Should I eat such-and-such? Why was I feeling this, that and the other? During the whole nine months he would patiently explain every tiniest detail to me. My phone bill rocketed and so, I’m sure, did his, as if he was unavailable I would leave messages for him to phone me back. Eventually, on the day before my daughter was born, I went to the loo and found I had a show of a jelly-like substance. (This turned out to be the stopper of the womb and meant that birth was pretty imminent.) Immediately, I went into overdrive and phoned Glasgow: “Dad, what does it mean, this jelly?” There was a long pause. Then my father’s voice said dryly, “Well, dear, I expect it means you’re going to have a Jelly Baby.” Even a saint’s patience can run out!’

      Names

      Try to be magnanimous when the parents-to-be tell you their latest great idea for a name. Remember you can get used to anything. But it’s probably all right to point out any potentially teaseworthy names: for instance, if their surname is Button and they propose to call a daughter Pearl. I have known a girl called Dawn Pink and a boy called Rock Salmon. In both cases, I think it was the mother or father’s idea of a witticism. Not very fair on the kids, though. Schoolchildren can turn even potentially harmless names into something deadly, so it pays to be careful, even with initials – M T Head is not such a good idea. One of the reasons my parents called me Claire was because they considered it a name that could not be shortened or easily corrupted into a nickname. They reckoned without the school wit who dubbed me ‘Chocolate éclair’.

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