Stand and Deliver!: And other Brilliant Ways to Give Birth

My last birth was very orgasmic in a sustained sort of way, like I was riding on waves of orgasmic bliss. I knew more what to expect, was less afraid, and tried to meet and flow with the energy rather than avoid or resist as I had first time. The effect was probably mostly psychological in that it gave me tremendous satisfaction just to have accomplished such a difficult passage safely. I felt great for months afterwards, which helped me to feel positive about myself in general. This in turn affected how I felt about myself sexually. I also think that, for me, learning to let go and let my body take over in labour helped me to tap into a part of me that I never knew before, and helped me to feel more willing to let go while making love.

Many women find that after giving birth, a few weeks or months down the line, sex becomes better and better with their partner, and some experience orgasm for the first time. Might this be you?

Sorry Darling, I’ve Got a Headache

What if you just don’t feel like doing it? Pregnancy may drip-feed you hormones that soften and engorge your yoni, make the clitoris more sensitive, and hit a triple jackpot with making the lubricating cervical glands work overtime, but what use is that if you are forever rushing to the loo to chuck up your Boots sandwich? It is all very well wandering around in a state of semi-arousal, but if this is accompanied by tiredness and aching breasts, then what’s the point? My favourite line in Vicki Iovine’s Best Friend’s Guide to Pregnancy is when she describes the urge to hit her husband over the head with a bedside lamp when he goes near her breasts in the first three months. Not everyone is in the mood at the beginning.

Although Dr Miriam Stoppard in the New Pregnancy and Birth Book says, ‘The majority of women I have spoken to about sex and pregnancy have almost universally felt that sex was better than ever,’ I reckon she conducted most of her research in the nymphomaniac district of Amsterdam. The truth is that sex is a very complicated issue among individuals, let alone couples, and it tends to be where we dump all our private and collective neuroses.

Most commonly, our body image determines how we feel as a woman. Sad to say in our post-feminist age, but if pregnancy makes you feel fat instead of gorgeous, then that is going to translate immediately into your lovemaking. The light will go firmly off when undressing, some of you may reach for the chocolate box rather than the fruit bowl, and you just won’t feel desirable. You may even subconsciously push your man away.

However, always remember that the reality is that most men find the extra curves and roundedness of women in the early and middle flushes of pregnancy a real turn-on. So don’t you dare confuse your own feelings with those of your partner. Men are conditioned by nature to fancy fertile women, and you are a walking example of voluptuousness.

Pregnancy is the time to buy some postcards of Rubens’ paintings to stick on the fridge, with white fleshy mamas breastfeeding cherubs and muscly men hovering in attendance. It’ll remind you that heroin chic wasn’t always fashionable.

Not Tonight, Josephine

Men do sometimes go off the idea of sex at the very end of pregnancy, however, usually when we women have finally reconciled ourselves to our fulsomeness and are suddenly prepared to test the theory of carpet burns. They also harbour fears of harming the baby in some way during a bonk, as if their huge member will puncture the amniotic sac like some Roman spear (just how big do they really think they are?). You may want to let them know as early as possible that this has never yet happened in the history of humanity. If you need to get technical, explain how a baby is protected by the amniotic sac and the walls of the uterus, and that the sperm cannot get through the mucus plug. Only if the mucus plug has come away at the start of labour should you need to refrain from making love.

Some men (and fewer women) can also find the presence of the baby off-putting in some way, as if there are three of you in on the act. This is another fear that should be winkled out and explored as early as possible, because that presence ain’t gonna go away for a while, and will be making itself known much more vocally down the baby monitor than it is now. This might be the moment to book a dirty weekend away in some bed and breakfast in Brighton. Having nothing better to do than eat, sleep and make love should flush out this fear in full.

Above all, you can no longer take your sex life for granted in your pregnant state. If you as a woman decide to take charge of the bedroom in pregnancy, and love your body in order to give birth the best shot, there is plenty of work to be done. As all the heightened hormone level shows, your body is willing if your mind will follow. Forget feeling guilty about missing the yoga class, and substitute it for a candlelit dinner for two instead. Swop the phrase ‘pelvic floor exercises’ for ‘romp on the floor’, and put a smile back on your face. Sex got you into this mess, and sex can help get you out. So what are you waiting for? Let’s go shopping.

What to Buy to Feel Sexier in Pregnancy

One friend bought pregnancy massage oil, ostensibly to massage the area under her bump that became sore at the end of a working day (the hormone relaxin softens the muscles and can sometimes cause a bit of grating around the pelvis). Asking her husband to do it as an evening ritual, she found one thing used to lead to another. (For pregnancy massage oil visit www.activebirthcentre.com.)

Another bought a good push-up bra to accentuate that great pregnancy asset – big boobs. Even if you have always been a firmly buttoned-up sort of girl, try leaving one more shirt button undone around the house, à la Sophie Dahl, during these nine months just to experiment with your new curviness. At the very least it will get you in training for breastfeeding.

Allegra tried perineal massage during pregnancy, done with her partner, using olive oil. (The perineal area is between your bum hole and your vagina.) Not a very British thing to do, but she admits: ‘We just ended up laughing, it was so funny, I would kind of lie on the bed and he’d watch TV over my shoulder. That was towards the end, during the last month.’ (For perineal massage oil visit www.activebirthcentre.com.)

Pregnancy tights are difficult to find and uncomfortable at the worst of times, so buy some stockings or lacy hold-ups instead. Emma did this during pregnancy and used to flash her husband as they walked out of the door in the evening, and then enjoy his extra attentiveness in the cab and during dinner. All men live in hope.

Rosie suggests buying one really sexy evening dress for the pregnancy. She invested in a designer dress, and found the designer adored doing something different for her shape. The final outfit was a skin-tight satin under-dress with a cutaway claret velvet dress coat over the top with extra emphasis in the cutting on the cleavage. Says Rosie: ‘It made me feel so sexy, and everyone said they wanted to be pregnant to wear the dress.’

Exchange your dad’s-old-shirt-as-a-nightie for a grown-up satiny or, if someone else is buying, silk negligée. While your gamine legs might have looked great from under the shirt before pregnancy, winceyette won’t work if the legs become tree trunks. The negligée may only need to make an appearance when you are feeling in the mood, but just wearing it usually produces a male Pavlovian reaction.

Lying in bed in New York, pregnant and waiting for her husband to come home, Lois found that surfing the channels for the soft porn became a useful evening ritual. ‘The sight of all these nubile young men parading around in my bedroom always seemed to get me in the mood,’ she admits.

CHAPTER 3 My Body Is a Temple (#ulink_ec813ebc-4c4a-5ac5-a3c4-2034eee66dcb)

Elizabeth Gilmore set up an $800,000 birth centre in New Mexico, had the midwives employ the doctors, and brought the C-section rate down from 35 per cent to 4 per cent in the town of Taos. It has the highest out-of-hospital birth rate in the United States. I visited Elizabeth out there, interested to hear some of her Wild West views on birthing better. Here’s what she said:

Have you ever seen an auction of expensive Arabian mares? I happened to catch one on the news the other day. They are raised in beautiful stalls, lovely fields full of grass, woken up every morning with hot mash. They get massaged and washed and played with, and swim in these special tanks. Because these mares are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and a foal up to a million dollars, they get pampered and spoiled, with ribbons woven into their hair. What if we thought that each pregnant woman was worth a million dollars, and we treated her like a princess, like an Arabian mare, and that her baby was worth millions of dollars because that baby was going to be a contributor to society?

Just imagine. Because no one else is going to do it for you. Pregnancy is your time to pamper and spoil yourself.

If you are a working mother looking after a small child at home, or a working mother commuting to and from an office, then there is even more cause for some Arabian-mare treatment. If it helps to think that you are doing this for the good of your baby, rather than yourself, then so be it. Whatever it takes to keep you looking after yourself. Any of the therapies you choose to have will help you during the birth, but in ways that you probably can’t see from where you are sitting now. It may be that they give you time to focus on your body, or teach you how to relax, or remind you how well you can cope with a little pain and discomfort – like my recent reflexology session taught me when I went in with blocked sinuses.

Eat Well and Multiply

Because indulging in good food is one of the few vices left to women once pregnant, I am including it as a therapy. I am not going to patronize you with lectures about the benefits of healthy eating, you know the rules. Just don’t do as I did in my first pregnancy and use the lady-with-a-baby excuse to binge for nine months on chocolate and snacks. I put on two stone and produced an 8-lb baby. Second-time around, when I binged on fruit, vegetables and anything healthy from the deli, I put on no extra weight and produced two babies weighing a total of 13lb. That’s more like it.

Maternal nutrition is going to matter in the run-up to the birth (and in recovering afterwards), so do think carefully about what passes your lips. Imagine you are training to run a marathon and eat accordingly. You want to be as fit as possible for labour and new motherhood. In the first couple of months of your pregnancy you want to eat ‘nutrient-dense’ food because the placenta, a national-grid-like infrastructure supplying the baby, is developing.

Placenta Matters

The placenta is like a giant root system, tapping into the mother’s bloodstream. As the embryo implants within the uterine wall lining, cells branch out to destroy the wall separating the mother and child and expand the diameter of the blood vessels. The mother is able neither to constrict the vessels supplying the embryo, nor to regulate the flow of nutrients to the placenta without starving herself, so the baby gains considerable control over its own intake.

By the 8th week of pregnancy, the placenta composes 85 per cent of the total package and, end to end, the villi (the finger-like projections to increase the absorptive surface of the placenta) stretch about 30 miles. Once the placenta has secured the supply lines, then and only then does the baby start growing. If you worry that morning sickness is ridding your body of all your best efforts to eat healthily, don’t. There are studies to suggest that vomiting may even stimulate early placental growth.

The most important addition to make to your healthy eating in the early days is to eat fresh fruit and veg. There is no need to limit your intake, eat as much as you can as often as you can. There is new research to suggest that such a diet high in vitamin C will also combat free-radical damage to blood vessels, lower blood pressure and reduce the incidence of pre-eclampsia – a dangerous condition that occurs usually in late pregnancy and requires the baby to be delivered immediately.

Also, recent research from Denmark reported in the British Medical Journal showed that women who eat a diet rich in fish during pregnancy are four times less likely to give birth prematurely. Among 8,700 women surveyed, 7.1 per cent who never ate fish had a premature delivery, yet only 1.9 per cent per cent of fish-eaters did. So, if you are still working, have smoked salmon sandwiches, along with some apples and oranges at your desk, and ignore the office vending machine.

Like most marathon runners, you will need to drink plenty of water (up to 2 litres a day). If you can’t face water, try caffeine-free teas chilled in the fridge or the (fairly foul) raspberry-leaf tea, a good uterine-toner, found in health food shops. My American birth partner was so obsessed with my raspberry-leaf tea intake (not to be confused with a delicious Raspberry Zinger from the Twinings Exotic selection) that she was forever brewing up another cup of the tasteless soup for me as the birth approached. It is difficult to see what such a herbal remedy can achieve other than rehydrating you, but raspberry-leaf tea is strong enough to carry a warning that it shouldn’t be taken before 28 weeks or by women with a history of pre-term labour. Suzannah Olivier, author of Eating for a Perfect Pregnancy, recommends doubling your intake as labour starts, to help things go smoothly.

Suzannah Olivier is also unequivocal about the need to take supplements. Don’t skimp and take herbal alternatives to the ones on sale in most chemists, buy the standard Pregnacare, sit it on your bedside table and make it part of your morning ritual throughout pregnancy. The same goes for folic acid during those first three months.

If, however, you are reading this on your way to the delivery suite and haven’t let anything but a good healthy diet pass your lips, don’t panic. Some midwives, such as Mary Cronk, believe that that is all a woman needs during her pregnancy, and that taking unnecessary supplements benefits only the manufacturers. Says Cronk: ‘Supplements, particularly iron in a woman who has plenty, can imbalance the system and lead to lack of absorption of trace elements. Women eating well are usually getting all the goodies their body and baby need.’

Thinking Outside the Box of Fruit

Suzannah Olivier recommends including a few foods that might be new to your diet during pregnancy:

I recommend tree nuts, such as almonds and walnuts, seeds, pulses, pumpkin seeds, pine nuts and sunflower seeds, as well as oily fish – such as mackerel and tuna – which are particularly good nutritionally, as is lean red meat which is a source of iron and zinc, a mineral found in all protein-rich food.

Zinc and essential fats are particularly important for growth in the third trimester when the baby is putting on weight, because, if there’s not enough, the baby will take it from the mother’s reserves. There is one school of thought that believes that some postnatal depression may be linked to a depletion of zinc and essential fatty acids in a mother after the birth.

Make sure you add some calcium-rich food – not only milk, and yoghurt (which is predigested by bacteria so a particularly good source) but also green leafy veg, such as spinach and cabbage that contains magnesium as well.

Finally, for snacks, carry raisins and dried apricots around, because they are good sources of calcium, magnesium, potassium and iron – all needed for yours and the baby’s bone health. For slow-releasing carbohydrates, oat cakes and rye crackers (particularly with mashed banana on top) will fill you up.

If all the above makes you want to reach for the Dairylea, don’t worry. Eat what your body wants to eat. It probably knows best.

Yoga, Walking and Swimming

The safest forms of ‘aerobic’ exercise to take when pregnant are walking (an hour a day is ideal), swimming (which supports all the muscles, increases blood flow and urine output, and reduces swelling) and yoga. Yoga classes are particularly good, especially if you can find or persuade a yoga teacher to set up an antenatal one, because then there is group support as well. Yoga works so well in pregnancy because it makes the most of the natural increase in suppleness due to the hormone relaxin coursing through your body. In addition, Janet Balaskas, who runs the antenatal yoga programme at the Active Birth Centre in north London, lists its benefits as: helping you to ‘make friends’ with your pain and to go beyond your normal limits while stretching; improving blood circulation and breathing; regulating blood pressure and heart rate; and correcting posture to help prevent backache. ‘I would say that after a whole 25 years of being a childbirth educator, I’ve never found anything to be more potentially effective than yoga in pregnancy,’ she says. Although Balaskas does not keep ongoing records of the births of her students, one year she estimated that 80 per cent of her students went on to have a natural birth without intervention – not even an epidural. ‘Natural Active birth is not just for lentil eaters and brown sandal wearers,’ says Balaskas, ‘it is practical and safe.’

If there are no antenatal yoga teachers in your area, you can always start to do it yourself by buying one of Balaskas’ books, such as Preparing for Birth with Yoga (Thorsons, 2003).

Scents and Sensibility

Aromatic essential oils are a great healer for those common discomforts in the last stages of pregnancy, and are particularly good for massage during labour. Take some advice, however, because certain oils should be avoided, and essential oils should not be used at all until after the first three months.

My midwife massaged me on my lower back during labour with some rose oil that she had brought back from Turkey, and it was something pleasant to do while lying in the bath before my waters broke.

Aromatherapists describe rose oil as a uterine relaxant, which helps soften the ligaments and help the pelvic bones expand, as well as being a natural antiseptic and having slight analgesic properties.