15.10, 24 February 2010
The way childbirth is depicted in TV programmes can be irritating – I sigh as I watch yet another actress doing the clichéd dash to the hospital, with crumpled partner in tow. The scene then invariably switches to her lying on her back, huffing and puffing in an unconvincing fashion surrounded by a SWAT team of doctors, with the odd midwife thrown in if we are lucky.
I guess it’s better than what I call the ‘ER type’ birthing scene, named after the hospital-based US TV programme. It usually follows the story arc of healthy, unsuspecting pregnant woman arriving in hospital to give birth, then, following some hideous, unforeseen complication quickly morphs into a nightmarish scenario, often resulting in either the mother or baby (sometimes both) tragically dying.
But I think I was just genuinely disturbed by the birth scene depicted in the much lauded US TV programme
Mad men (10pm, BBC4). Based around the lives of advertising men working in Madison Avenue in New York in the 1960s, the latest episode featured Betty, the wife of one of the main characters Don Draper, giving birth to her third baby.
On arriving in hospital, she is abruptly separated from her husband, who is told ‘your job is done’. Looking forlorn, she is wheeled away by a fierce-looking nurse down a long, strip-lit corridor. Obviously distressed, her wishes are totally ignored. She is shaved, has an enema and the nurse quickly administers what she is told will induce a ‘
twilight sleep’, an obstetric practice very much in vogue in the US at the time.
Following administration of the drugs, Betty slips into troubled hallucinogenic dreams of walking through a tree-lined street in a beautiful summer dress and of seeing her recently deceased father clutching a mop dripping with blood. Because of the drugs, she has been totally removed from reality and the process of childbirth – a practice that is meant to set women free from the pain of childbirth actually imprisons them in a much more disturbing way.
How does it illuminate the debate around birth choices today? For one thing, it highlights the dangers of wrestling control away from women. – Betty had no input, did not participate in what was meant to be one of the most important times of her life. She wakes up dazed, holding a baby that she clearly doesn’t remember bringing into the world. Because they were in a drug-induced haze women often just had foggy recollections of the birth.
Luckily, twilight sleep has been consigned to history, not only because of its horrific side-effects on women, but because it was found to have a depressive effect on the baby’s central nervous system. I don’t think it was ever widely practised in the UK and its use was discontinued after the 1940s, but it was common practice in the US really not that long ago.
I wonder what practices that are commonplace will shock us in 40 years time?
Add a comment to this blog posting
Comments are added to the bottom of blog postings. They are moderated and will not be published until approved by the Midwives team. They may be edited.
