How Not to Be a Perfect Mother. Libby Purves

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      So, to the birth itself: every birth is slightly different. All I can usefully say is: beware of Legends, and beware of Irrelevant Campaigns.

       Legends

       ‘A woman always knows when she is in labour.’

      Oh no, she doesn’t. Hospitals get women arriving two minutes from birth, still wondering vaguely if anything is amiss; and countless others turning up a fortnight early with indigestion and nerves. Keep an open mind about it, and don’t be too easily fooled by the spectacular Braxton-Hicks contractions which sweep over you while you’re watching Big Brother.

       ‘Your waters will break, embarrassingly, in thesupermarket, with no warning at all.’

      Well, they may. Possibly. It is still not worth going around for weeks on a knife’s edge of uncertainty, avoiding supermarkets. I drove down for some Sunday papers just before Rose was born, and suddenly found myself sitting on a sodden car-seat. Panicking, I drove carefully home again, feeling false labour pains rack me every two minutes, and shrieked for my husband, for an emergency babysitter for my elder child, for pethidine or a Caesarean or a community midwife or anybody at all. Paul leaped into the driving-seat, paused, and began to laugh immoderately. ‘My waters have gone as well,’ he gasped. Before any domestic violence could set in, he explained: someone had left the car window open in the rain overnight; the water had soaked deep into the foam upholstery; the seat was now dry to the touch, but immediately became soaked when someone sat heavily down on it. Strained laughter all round.

       ‘When you are ready or overdue, you can induce the baby naturally by massaging your nipples.’

      It produces some useful hormone, they say. But only if you do it for several hours. There are few things a hugely pregnant woman feels less like doing than massaging her nipples all day. Take my word for it.

       ‘A bumpy car ride will bring a baby on.’

      It would have to be very bumpy indeed, if 20 miles round the Lincolnshire back-lanes in a reconditioned Russian army motorcycle sidecar failed to have any effect on my sister-in-law in the 41st week …

      ‘When the moment comes, you will feel anoverwhelming urge to push.’

      I would never have dared to dismiss this great universal belief until I had my second baby without feeling the remotest wish to push anything at all. Since then, I have met other women and got them to admit it, too. We all pushed our babies out quite efficiently, waiting for contractions and just doing it; but felt no urge, just a sullen boredom with the whole process, and a desire to get it over with. Nobody should be bullied or stereotyped by everybody else’s biology.

       ‘You will be overwhelmed by love and wonderment at the sight of the baby, newborn and laid on your stomach.’

      Well, you may be; once out of two births, I was; the other time I was being sick and fancied a cup of tea more than a slimy baby. This is no tragedy; my husband held both of our newborns straight away, while I got myself together, and there were no ill-effects on any of us. Which leads to the most dangerous legend of all …

       ‘For a mother to hold and suckle her child immediately is essential to the “bonding” of mother and child. If a mother is stopped from doing this, she may suffer postnatal depression and her relationship with the child will not develop.’

      This is an awful thing to say to a mother who may end up under general anaesthetic, or ill herself, or with a desperately sick baby in an incubator. What is she supposed to do? Bond with the tea-trolley instead? Human beings have brains and hearts as well as bodies; it is time the ‘bonding’ lobby admitted this.

      It is an even worse thing to say to a mother who has no medical crisis, but simply doesn’t want to hold her baby instantly, after her hours of exhausting labour and months of exhausting pregnancy. Why the hell should she? When my happy, healthy, untroubled baby daughter, now the apple of my eye, was first born I took one look and said, ‘My God, it looks like a bloody shark’ (which she did: underslung jaw and peculiar squashed nose). I let my husband do the cooing. After 20 minutes I fed her, quite successfully; then she went to sleep and I was wheeled off to a side ward. The nurses came in agitatedly, to say that my ward was too cold for a newborn, and they couldn’t find a heater; could they possibly leave the baby in the warm nursery until morning? Would it upset me? I said no; and Rose’s first night, fast asleep, was not spent beside my bed. With the first baby, he and I had lain staring at one another for six hours, wide awake, and that was very nice too, in its way; but as for ‘bonding’, it made no difference whatsoever. Of course it is unfortunate to take a new baby right off to an incubator or a nursery for hours; but it is just as unfortunate to expect a tired, cross, sleepy woman to put on a big act of instant love for her baby when she doesn’t feel like it. Love comes more slowly than that, to many women; you can depress a mother horribly by making her feel like an unmaternal monster for not cooing and staring into the cot all the time.