Out it pops

Because such things weren't talked about much when I was young, I was actually middle-aged before I realised that pregnancy was quite a complicated and perilous business.

For a long time I thought it was all very simple - you got pregnant and then nine months later out popped the baby. What was all the fuss about? Why were mothers always congratulated for doing something so routine?

It gradually dawned on me that pregnancy was in fact quite a trial. Every stage can be problematic. You can fail to conceive, fail to remain pregnant, fail to have a healthy diet or a healthy lifestyle. The baby can be premature, or defective, or harmed by medical mistakes, or suffer a cot death.

So if you manage to overcome all those hazards, congratulations are very much in order. Hardly a case of "out pops the baby". More a case of surviving a tough obstacle course against all the odds.

So I welcome the increasing trend to be more candid about pregnancy and all its difficulties. It means I'm much more aware of the ordeal women may be privately going through, however straightforward it may all seem from the outside.

I'm amazed that after all the problems of pregnancy, women don't always say "that was dreadful - never again" but are often willing to go through it several times to satisfy their burning desire for children. I can only admire their unflagging determination.

I'm very glad pregnancy is something that only happens to other people.

Childhood blanks

It suddenly came to me that I know next to nothing about my early childhood. My mum was very silent about a lot of things (like the second world war and her personal ailments) and my infancy was one of them.

There are so many unanswered questions that only now occur to me. For instance:

• Did she conceive easily?
• Was her pregnancy easy or difficult?
• Did she have a miscarriage?
• How long was she in labour?
• Was it an easy birth or were there complications?
• Did she have a a caesarean?
• Was I an easy or difficult baby?
• Did she adjust easily to being a parent?
• Did my father give her enough help?

I have some of the answers but mostly I'm in the dark. I assume she got pregnant easily because I was born very soon after the war (March 1947). As far as I know it was an easy birth and she didn't need a caesarean. And presumably I was an easy, well-behaved baby but maybe she just preferred not to remember what a pain in the arse I was. But I didn't speak until my sister appeared in April 1949 (it must have been the excitement of getting a sister).

So in general my early childhood is a bit of a mystery. All I really know for certain is that my mum got pregnant, gave birth to me and changed a lot of nappies (and they were the old-style cloth nappies, long before disposable nappies came on the scene).

Unanswered questions - the story of my life.

Wot, no kids?

Now and then I still feel a little embarr-assed that I don't have any children. Having children is seen so widely as the "normal" thing to do, that even after many years of being childless, and not in any way regretting it, I still feel it's a choice that needs to be somehow justified.

Nobody ever asks me why I don't have children, nobody ever gives any hint that it was an odd decision, but nonetheless I always feel slightly unusual, a bit of a maverick, a bit of a rebel.

I suppose it doesn't help that there are two schools close to our home, and twice a day dozens of children pour in and out of their parents' cars, the parents obviously doting on their little offspring and watching them protectively.

It also doesn't help that any woman who gets pregnant is promptly congratulated by all and sundry, everyone admires the gradually swelling belly, and when the baby finally appears, yet more congratulations are offered.

Unfortunately all the fervent enthusiasm and showers of baby-gifts, however natural they may seem, inevitably give the message that having a baby is much more impressive than not having one.

I can justify my child-free decision by pointing out how much extra cash I've had and how much that's improved my quality of life, but somehow that just makes me sound a little selfish and smug, as if other people's sacrifices for the sake of their children are worthless.

In fact being "selfish", not replenishing the human race but thinking only of our own pleasure, is what childless couples are often accused of. If I suggest that maybe the anticipated joy and reward of having children is itself a somewhat "selfish" desire, the reaction will be frosty to say the least.

I've never felt that I've missed out by not having the patter of tiny feet around the place. But it still seems a bit like the exception that proves the rule.

Baby blues

I really don't understand why some women are so desperate to have children they resort to round after round of gruelling and costly fertility treatments to get them.

Isn't it enough to have tried for pregnancy, failed, and made new plans that don't include children? For a startlingly large number of women (and men), it isn't.

Being childless seems to leave them with such a black hole, such a sense of something missing, they just can't accept the situation.

The average child-seeking couple spends £4782 on fertility treatments, even though only 47% of women end up with a baby*. Some couples take on mortgage-size debts to carry on with treatment to the bitter end, they are so unwilling to admit defeat and their physical failings.

I'm baffled as to what prompts this raging obsession. I suppose some women are still convinced they're not a real woman unless they've borne a child. Or it's a variation on plastic surgery - they just can't accept their 'flawed body' and have to put it right. Or else it's the men putting pressure on them to continue the family or they'll find another woman who can.

And surprise surprise, many women feel guilty that their hedonistic lifestyles may have jeopardised their ability to get pregnant, while most men don't think about that and still assume it must be the woman's fault - even though 30% of all fertility problems in Northern Ireland are due to male infertility*.

It also annoys me that 23% of infertility treatment is paid for by the NHS, when the UK is hardly under-populated in the first place. I could think of some much better uses for the money - improving hospital hygiene and wiping out superbugs, for a start. Cleaning not weaning!

* Red magazine survey, quoted in the Belfast Telegraph 5.9.07

Baby shambles

If the NHS is getting better all the time, as the government claims, why did pregnant 22 year old Karen Shaw have to be airlifted from Northern Ireland to a Scottish hospital because neo-natal cots weren't available?

This was hardly a rare medical condition that took the Causeway Hospital by surprise, with the resources needed simply unplanned for.

Karen was expecting twins and her waters broke seven weeks prematurely - as happens frequently to mothers-to-be. But the hospital was unable to cope and had to send her elsewhere.

Her stepfather Paul Parry said she had been "terrified and traumatised" and criticised the local health service as "underfunded and farcical".

Karen has already lost one child after a miscarriage so naturally she was scared of losing the twins. She nearly lost them early in the pregnancy.

The hospital didn't explain the lack of neo-natal cots but claimed there was no risk as two specialist midwives accompanied her on the flight.

But you have to ask why the cots weren't available when premature birth is so common and maternity services are one of the major elements of the NHS.

How can such a basic failure occur when so many billions have just been pumped into the health service? And isn't it ironic that the airlift across the Irish Sea (over 100 miles) probably cost more than the missing cots?

PS: Karen has now given birth to healthy twin boys.

Photo: Karen Shaw

On not having children (2)

An Irish-born reader from Toronto has pointed me to the Ann Landers survey/straw poll from the 1970s which found that the vast majority of those who had had children regretted the experience and would not have children if they had to live their life again.

Ann Landers, a famous agony aunt with a syndicated advice column in North American newspapers for 45 years, published a letter from someone wondering whether to have a child or not. She was deluged with 10,000 responses of which 70 per cent said "Don't do it."

They were very sad and emotional letters, giving all sorts of reasons for their conclusion, in particular: people who didn't want to bring kids into such a messed-up world; parents who said their children had ruined their marriage; people whose children virtually ignored them once they left home; and parents of teenagers in serious problems with things like crime, drugs and joyriding. They went into parenting with high hopes but sooner or later got disenchanted.

Many of them said their relationships were great until the babies came along and everything went downhill from there. One woman wrote: "I was a successful, attractive, career woman before I had these kids. Now I’m an exhausted, shrieking, nervous wreck—too tired for sex, conversation or anything else.”

How come nobody had realised how disenchanted so many parents were? Because it was virtually taboo (and often still is) to voice negative feelings about your kids. Ann Landers pointed out that while it is just fine to moan about your wife or husband, or your mother-in-law, parents are still expected to praise their children and say that child-rearing is a blessing.

For more details of the poll, go to Happily Childfree

PS (October 20): Emilia has pointed me to a properly designed survey which actually got a very different result from the Ann Landers straw poll. That found only 9% of parents regretted their decision to have children, quite contrary to the Landers conclusion. In that case, glad to hear so many parents are actually happy with their lot!

On not having children

When I meet someone new, sooner or later they ask me if I have children, and I say no. If they're bold, they might also ask me if I ever wanted children, and I say no again.

I'm always relieved how tolerant people are about my complete lack of desire to reproduce, given their own enthusiasm for children and their evident joy in having them. I always expect to get a little spiel about how wonderful and life-enhancing they are, and what I'm missing by not having any, but not so. Maybe it's because I'm old enough to be beyond it, or old enough to have come to a mature decision, or old enough to have deep regrets they might trigger off.

But the point is that I've never found the idea of having children at all appealing (and fortunately neither has Jenny). I'm sure it's very fulfilling watching your very own offspring gradually developing from drooling, perplexed babies to mature, intelligent adults (hopefully), but I've always felt that my existing life is complete enough as it is and doesn't need children to enrich it. I certainly never fancied children for what I see as entirely selfish reasons like wanting someone to look after you in your dotage (and suppose your child dies before you anyway?).

Looking at other people's babies, I've never had that heart-wrenching pang you're meant to get, and that deep longing for one of your own. To me it was just a baby doing what babies usually do - looking ecstatic or wrecking something. Perhaps I'm just too selfish and too fastidious to put up with all the mess and disorder of little people doing their own thing, getting under my feet, and generally disrupting my own plans and pleasures.

I also wonder whether my parenting abilities would have been up to the job, particularly when I'm in a cafe or a shop and see children behaving like wild animals and their flustered, wrung-out parents not only failing miserably to control them but apparently unconcerned by their behaviour. I was always somewhat daunted by the responsibility that parenting involved, the need to ensure every single day that your child was progressing steadily towards sensible adulthood and not drifting into some dysfunctional cul de sac of drug addiction or gang warfare. Would I end up one of those bitterly disappointed and guilt-ridden souls, wondering where I had gone wrong and disowning my own progeny? And it happens more often than we care to admit....