Having a Baby

Read the following texts, make sure you know the vocabulary marked in bold print.

The Matter of Birth

1) Discuss the questions:

In many legends, storks deliver babies by flying to the parents’ house, carrying the baby in a shawl. Is it so?

Do you know any couples who are childless?

Do you think that more couples are childless because they don’t want children or because they can’t have children?

A The day I got the results of the pregnancy test – positive, “pregnancy confirmed” – I was over the moon. I sat down and made out a shopping list straightaway.

List for baby: cot (or crib) for baby to sleep in, pram and pushchair (and a carry-cot) to transport him or her, 2 dozen nappies for him or her to wear (underneath), safety-pins for his or her nappy, high-chair for him or her to sit in at meal-times, bib – round his/her neck when he’s/she’s eating, dummy for him or her to suck, rattle for him or her to shake, toys and dolls (and a teddy-bear) for him or her to play with, potty for him or her to sit on to avoid nappies as soon as possible, masses of cotton wool for general cleaning and wiping.

I couldn’t believe it: me a mother-to be! Actually pregnant! Expecting! “An expectant mother” – that was my favourite description of me. My friends all joked about me being on some kind of fertility drug, conceiving as I did so soon after our wedding.

I had the customary morning sickness for a while, but after that, no trouble. I went along to the ante-natal clinic every fortnight and started all the proper breathing exercises like an excited child.

And I read! Book after book on the subject of childbirth: how big the foetus is in the womb at the various stages, the pros and cons of confinement at home, how 15% of pregnancies end in miscarriage, the dangers of this and that. Some of it wasn’t very pleasant reading, I can tell you.

The felling of relief was indescribable when, at the beginning of the fifth month, the doctor said he could hear the baby’s heartbeat. He was a fully-trained gynaecologist, by the way – or was he an obstetrician? – I can’t remember. A few days later I felt the first kick, and that was a pretty exciting moment, too.

It was in the twenty-eighth week that things began to go wrong. I had had several blood tests before, but after this one I was told my blood pressure was far too high – there was a risk of blood poisoning – and I would have to go into hospital. There followed a period of heartburn, cramp, vomiting and insomnia. I kept overhearing bits of conversations: “may have to induce labour”, “if the baby is premature, well…” etc. My mind was filled with visions of incubators, induction, Caesarian operations and appalling complications. And the baby wasn’t due for another six weeks!

When the time came, I was in labour for twenty-three hours. I remember shouting through a haze as they took me into the labour ward: “No drip! No drugs! No stitches! Please!” I came out having had them all, and in the end it was a forceps delivery – or so I’m told.

After all that, I just looked forward to the simple joys of motherhood. When they told me I couldn’t breast-feed and she would have to be bottle-fed, my post-natal depression really started. Some nights I would lie awake mumbling “Never again”.

It’s been pretty well the same story each time, but after the fifth I gave up saying “Never again”. I really do think that the stork system of having babies has a lot of advantages.

B Doctors praised the fortitude of a mother yesterday who made medical history when she gave birth to triplets, one of whom had grown outside her womb.

The surgeons delivered the triplets by Caesarean section last Friday after it was discovered that one of the babies had created its own placenta outside the womb, putting the life of the mother at risk.

Doctors had discovered that the mother was expecting triplets earlier in the pregnancy but it was not until the 28^th week that they realized that Ronan had developed outside the uterus and was the result of an ectopic pregnancy. The mother had conceived naturally and was not taking any fertility drugs. The majority of ectopic pregnancies result in termination.

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