5:45pm Thursday 4th March 2010
By Andrew Mosley
A LETTER fell out of a birthday card sent to my partner by her friend Dominique.
Somewhere in there it said something along the lines of: “On Tuesday night I’m featured in a documentary called One Born Every Minute, in which I’m portrayed as the midwife from hell.”
Obviously, we tuned in.
It would take quite a lot, normally, for me to watch, out of choice, a programme in which the main features were films of women giving birth. This was different, though.
Caseloading midwife Dominique, however, did not turn out to be “from hell”, merely a ‘hell-pful’, if somewhat forceful and slightly patronising enabler of birth. We were treated to a new mother whose son had been born with his bowels outside his body — thankfully, he turned out okay — and another who, determined to avoid a Caesarean, took her body to the limits before giving in extremely late in the day.
The woman in question, Sarah, had her husband, Paulo, along for support. He told the cameras: “I’ve just completed my level five diploma in management and I think I can apply the skills I’ve obtained from that to all aspects of life including giving birth.” This worked fine until he started screaming at Sarah that the pain she was suffering was all her doing and could have been avoided.
“Millions of people go through this every day, but you can’t handle the pain. Have you a lower pain threshold?” he asked, straight from the managers’ manual. Finally, the baby was born and Dominique called Sarah, very generously, a Goddess.
On reflection, though, that may simply have been for putting up with Paulo.
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