Despatches from a mother who started late (and is running to catch up)

Women 'unprepared for childbirth'

Many women are going into labour underestimating how painful it can be and overly optimistic they will be able to manage without drugs, a study suggests. Researchers at the University of Newcastle found 'discrepancies' between women's expectations of labour - and their actual experiences. In England, around a quarter of women who give birth end up having an epidural, the spinal analgesia which eliminates the pain of contractions, although many did not plan on having one. "Of course it is important to have hopes for how you would like your labour to be. But those involved in providing ante-natal sessions, while listening to these, need to make sure that women are aware of how things may go and help them construct realistic expectations," says Joanne Lally, who led the research. "The problem with some of the courses out there is that they concentrate so much on doing it naturally that inevitably women feel as though they've done something wrong when those techniques aren't enough for them." The BBC quotes Anna Davidson of the Birth Trauma Association suggesting women should be less competitive with each other about how they give birth. "Ante-natal sessions do need to be more realistic - perhaps including women who have given birth and had very different experiences. But mothers themselves need to stop being so gladiatorial about what they managed to endure. We sometimes seem to forget that while childbirth is natural, women in the past regularly died as a result of it."

Posted 20 March 2008 16:53

Childbirth Childcare Health

• StumbleUpon
• Delicious
• Reddit
• Facebook
• Digg