Handling the pregnancy stories

Fran Molloy discovers tactics for deflecting the unwanted attention

Once your baby bump gets to a certain size, it becomes pretty obvious to the casual passer-by that you are pregnant (and not just fat). However, when that long-awaited moment actually arrives, it can be very disconcerting to discover that you, and your belly, are now public property. Complete strangers will happily invade your personal space to say “Hey, you’re pregnant!”
(Well, duh!) “How many months?”
Then there’s the rubbing of your belly, often without asking – some pregnant women love it, depending on who’s doing it, while others are appalled. But most pregnant women agree the one thing they could really do without is what so many others want to share, uninvited and unrestrained: the birth horror story.


You can tell by the gleam in their eyes that some people are just dying to scare you. Admitting that you are indeed having your first baby can open you up to all kinds of advice, much of it utter tripe, though some of it can occasionally be quite useful.
A friend of mine became so sick of the advice she was being given she blithely lied to all meddling strangers and told them the baby was in fact her fifth. (However this backfired when one stranger turned out to be a friend of her mum.)
It’s worth keeping in mind the old adage, ‘Advice is usually worth what you pay for it.’ If you have a professional doctor, midwife or childbirth educator advising you, their words are probably going to be the most valuable, up-to-date and useful. On the other hand, comments like “Ooh, rather you than me!” or “Make sure you take the drugs, you’ll need them,” are only going to add more fuel to your birth-anxiety fire, so treat them as a trigger to switch off.
For some reason, many women (and it is mostly women who do it) seem to think it’s okay to tell an expectant first-time mum unpleasant and often explicit tales about the things that can go wrong during birth. And that’s not what you need when you’re already waking in fright in the middle of the night thinking, “Oh my god, there’s no turning back, I actually have to have this baby!” Colouring your nightmares are those stories you’ve been hearing – tales of 56-hour labours, 12-pound babies, eye-popping pain, blood and gore everywhere, babies delivered with a pair of salad tongs and an angle grinder. (Those labours get longer, bloodier and more like an instalment of Friday the 13th with every re-telling, by the way!)


Myth-busting
Pernille Powell has been a doula and childbirth educator for around four years, and has attended dozens of births. In her childbirth education classes she talks to women about the stories they have heard.
“We use it as a myth-busting session,” she says. “I think it’s important to speak about these things, because even though you shrug it off at the time, it can get into your head unless you talk it through.”
Pernille says we all have lots of beliefs from stories in our families,
and things we read or hear or even see on TV, and these things all contribute
to our impressions of what birth will be like for us.
“In my classes, we always work with the legends of birth that are in your family, so women are aware of what they are bringing with them.
If they’ve heard so many times about the terrible birth their mother experienced and they don’t deal with that, it is likely there will be a whole
lot of fear coming up in the middle of their own birth,” she says.
Pernille suggests that women join networks and groups where positive stories are told, such as one of the many supportive pregnancy forums available on the web.
“Not all birth stories are going to be positive but if they are talked about in a serious manner and the issues that come up can be discussed and dealt with, it becomes more real.”
Having a chance to express some of your fears and talk about them won’t necessarily eliminate those fears altogether, but can help you to learn how to manage them, she adds.
“Birth is not all bad and at the same time it is not all good. If you can get
a more realistic picture to prepare you, you are going to be able to deal with everything that happens.”


Write-off your fears
A great technique for dealing with your fears is to write them down.
“A lot of women write that they are really scared of dying in childbirth,” says Pernille. “Or they might say that they are really worried the cord will be wrapped around the baby’s neck.”
It’s also common for women to be terrified about how they’ll cope with the pain of labour and birth, or that they’ll need a caesarean. Fear
of losing control of their bladder or bowel during labour is another big worry for pregnant women, as is general anxiety about being naked or exposed in front of other people during the delivery.
“If it’s any consolation,” says Pernille, “even though it’s a common concern
of women, I’ve never, ever actually had a woman who’s been in labour
who cared a bit about whether she was naked at the time.”
After you’ve committed your fears to paper, sit down, look at them objectively and work out a strategy: get accurate information from reliable sources about what happens if the cord is around the baby’s neck, or how matter-of-fact labour ward staff are about a bit of poo during birth. And next time you don’t have a chance to get your fingers into your ears before the next horror birth story begins, get your pen ready…



Tactics and techniques

Clinical psychologist Ingeborg Vriend specialises in working with women and children, and teaches assertiveness techniques she says can be very helpful in halting an unwanted conversation.
First, she says, identify the level of connection that you have to the person who is telling the story.
A polite but firm statement,
like: “I’m sorry, at this stage
I really don’t want to hear about negative experiences other women have had,” might be a sufficient reply to a complete stranger who has ambushed you on a bus, but it won’t work with your mother-in-law.
“There is a formula that you can work with. It goes, ‘I feel’… ‘when you’… ‘because’… and then ‘I would like’.”
Ingeborg says using this formula helps you say ‘no’ in a gentle way. Used carefully, you can soften the blow of rejection and focus on the positive things this person might have to offer.
“You might say to a relative or friend, ‘I feel upset when you tell me these unpleasant stories about birth, because it makes
me really anxious and fearful, and I would like to hear some of your tips on being a good mum with a new baby.”
Having a trusted professional you can call upon is important for addressing your own fears, and also makes a useful back-stop you can cite when someone else wants to share unwanted advice.
“Make sure you are informed of everything you need to know
from your doctor or your midwife, so you really do have someone you trust to discuss your fears with,” she says.
Sometimes, other women really want to talk about their own birth experience, particularly if it was a bad one, either because they feel they need to warn you about what might happen, or because it’s cathartic for them to get it all out there.
“You can suggest to someone that you’d really like to talk to them about birth after you have had your baby,” says Ingeborg. But if someone is absolutely intent on offloading their feelings with a particularly graphic birth horror story you can always simply try changing the subject. Say, “Oh,
I meant to ask you about nappies.”
Or use the best excuse pregnancy has to offer and duck off to the bathroom for an urgent wee.



Like mother not necessarily like daughter

While it’s easy to dismiss most labour horror stories, the stories from your mum, your aunt or your sister will often hit home because you wonder if you’re genetically destined to duplicate that experience.
That’s a myth, says Pauline Glover, who has been a midwife for 40 years and is also Associate Professor in the School of Nursing and Midwifery at Flinders University, also heading their midwifery program.
She says there’s no published research showing that the labour experience is hereditary.
“There are a few physical characteristics that might be inherited – for example, a family history of women with very small pelvises can lead to prolonged and difficult labours, but in most cases, your labour experience
is your own.”
She points out that no two labours are the same: women can experience a short birth with their first child and a long birth with a subsequent baby, even though the reverse is usually true.
“Thirty and 40 years ago, women in hospitals had a very different experience. They usually had to lie on their back in a bed, couldn’t get up and move around and really didn’t question the direction of their doctors,” she says.
“Your mother might have had an unpleasant birth experience because she wasn’t supported in birth and wasn’t given the information or the options that are available to most women today.”