Sexist Come Birthing

Sorry, it's another feminist one. Just coincidence that it's two in a row.

Dr Denis Walsh, one of the country's most senior midwives, has published a paper saying that fewer women ought to have epidurals. Here's the piece about it in the Observer. I am not a doctor or a midwife, and I have never given birth (although I am somewhat more likely to do so than Doctor Walsh), and so I will not comment on what he writes about risk factors such as lengthening the labour process, the positioning of the baby's head, increased need for interventions etc. No doubt he is right about those. Indeed the risks are well-known and several of my friends have chosen not to have pain relief during their labour because of those risks. I entirely support them in that choice. But note: "chosen". "Choice".

No, what I want to take up with Dr Walsh is the following:

"A large number of women want to avoid pain. Some just don't fancy the pain. More women should be prepared to withstand pain... Pain in labour is a purposeful, useful thing, which has quite a number of benefits, such as preparing a mother for the responsibility of nurturing a newborn baby.

"Over recent decades there has been a loss of 'rites of passage' meaning to childbirth, so that pain and stress are viewed negatively." Patients should be told that labour pain is a timeless component of the "rites of passage" transition to motherhood... Pain prepares women for the demands of motherhood.

This is guff. The reason childbirth huts so much has got nothing to do with rites of passage and priming women for motherhood. Labour pain is biological, it's like any other pain. If you look at the evolution of apes into hominids (and I have studied this at degree level), one of the key differences is that humans are bipedal (walk upright) and apes walk in a knuckle-drag stance. This is made possible by the unique positioning of our hips - in line with our torsoes, not out to the sides. Because of this, human labour is much more complex, painful and difficult than ape labour. In fact studies show that in you examine monkey and ape gestation, for a human baby to be born at equivalent development, size and alertness, it should have a gestational period of one year. However, the size of the baby would make it impossible for it to come out of the human birth canal without killing the mother. On the other hand, if a baby is born too small, it will have all the complications of prematurity, leading to a huge increase in infant mortality. A human baby, gestated for nine months, is as large as it can be without killing the mother: it's an evolutionary compromise.

So back to this crap about preparing women for the responsibility of childbirth: that is not what labour pain is "for". Labour pain isn't "for" anything. It's just pain. Do people really think that if women have pain relief they are more likely to mistreat their children? Think about the people you know who've had epidurals: is this remotely true? And how should we prepare men for the awesome responsibility of having a baby? Knee them repeatedly in the nuts over several hours? Or do we think they are capable of being responsible and loving parents without undergoing extensive pain? The latter, obviously.

In short, giving birth hurts because you are pushing something out of your vagina which is the exact largest it can be without tearing you in half. Make your decisions about pain relief in accordance with advice over medical risk, but please, do not allow yourself to be bullied into a natural birth because of this misguided emotional blackmail.