STOP PRESS: Mothers are bad

There has been a lot in the press recently about mothers. Mothers, I think we can all agree, are pretty important. They produce the next generation, and do the bulk of caring for them (hopefully as part of a loving family unit) until said generation are big enough to take care of themselves. You could argue that parenting is the most important job in the world. However, the press has been resoundingly negative about mothers. Mothers are BAD.

First, we had the woman prosecuted for drinking in pregnancy, resulting in a baby with foetal alcohol syndrome. Now, current NHS guidelines say don't drink ANYTHING alcoholic, AT ALL when you're pregnant. When I had my eldest, it was 2 units max a week, when I had my second, it was preferably none, but not more than 1 to 2 a week. So, in the last six years, this has changed. When my mum was having me thirty years ago, there was NO recommended restriction on alcohol in pregnancy, and very little advice to stop smoking aside from perhaps to cut down a bit. However, we were not plagued with children born with F.A.S in the eighties and before. Foetal alcohol syndrome only happens when the pregnant mother is an alcoholic. Most pregnant women are not alcoholic.
Now, women who plan to breed should probably be glad that the woman prosecuted was not found guilty, because if alcohol consumption was illegalised in pregnancy, they might risk being arrested for having a solitary glass of wine at a wedding, or after work. And that would have opened the doors to smoking being illegalised in pregnancy (which would actually be kind of sensible since the link between smoking and foetal damage is better understood than that of mild/moderate drinking and foetal damage), but I'm fairly sure that most smoking women consider the sheer weight of expectation to quit in pregnancy is a sufficient deterrent.

Next, we had the great breastfeeding in public debate rear its ugly head. And I say ugly head, because there is nothing uglier than people trying to claim there's something obscene about feeding a baby. There really, really isn't. Babies need feeding, doesn't matter how you do it. When they are very tiny, they need feeding all the frickin' time, literally, for eight to twelve hours a day. It's not obscene for your baby to need feeding. It's not militant for your baby to need feeding. It's not exhibitionist of your baby to need feeding. Breastfeeding mothers still need to leave the house occasionally, and sometimes they may time it wrong, or have a baby that is teething, or ill, or growth-spurting and unexpectedly demand food. And when babies are hungry, they scream. They howl. They cry like they are being murdered, getting increasingly hysterical, and making people tut. The nice thing about breastfeeding is that the milk is there, ready to go. No "shit I haven't got a bottle" panic.This whole idea that WOMEN DO NOT NEED TO BREASTFEED BECAUSE FORMULA is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. Even the WHO call it bollocks. Formula has become the socially acceptable way of feeding babies, primarily because society is so freaked out by breasts.
I say 'society', as Farage has pointed out, it's mostly men. Urrrghhh, that woman's using her breasts for their biological purpose! Next thing, she'll be GIVING BIRTH FROM HER VAGINA, or something EQUALLY OBSCENE.
The fact is that it is illegal to ask a woman to stop breastfeeding in public. Trust me, as someone who has fed babies all over the place, from the living room, to the pub, to the party, to the shopping centre, if you are offended by seeing a curve of nipple for literal seconds, you need to perhaps re-evaluate your priorities instead of blaming breastfeeding women for making you feel slightly uncomfortable about society's preoccupation with SEXY BOOBIES. Or, you know, join the anti-Page 3 lobby.
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Finally, the terrible and tragic case of Charlotte Bevan. Now, until the inquest, it won't be clear whether she was suffering from puerperal psychosis or 'just' struggled to cope with new motherhood. I put just in inverted commas, because the immediate postnatal period is a time of exceptional stress and emotional upheaval in every single new mother. The leading cause of maternal death is suicide, which should be shocking, yet oddly isn't. It doesn't matter whether it's your first baby or your seventh. It doesn't matter whether you have a history of mental health problems or not. However, with your first baby it is a more pronounced shock, because you're unprepared for the bodyshock, for the odd new emotions, for the responsibility. The key to getting through it is support, and unhappily, many new mothers don't get enough, I've discussed this ad nauseum before. The provision of mental health care during pregnancy and perinatally is rubbish. I suffered very poor mental health antenatally with my second child and received essentially no help except for my understanding GP whose hands were tied. Thankfully, I got better when he was born, not worse. It is a gamble the NHS should not be willing to take.
The Daily Mail, spawn of Satan that it is, wrote an article on how she lived in A NICE EXPENSIVE HOUSE, and had been listening to R Kelly before she went missing. All the papers have suggested NHS maternity wards need better security. They already have good security to keep out baby snatchers, but women who have just had babies are not prisoners. They need help, they need support, they need a lot of love from their families. They don't need locking up like criminals, moreso if they WANT to go home. I had to self discharge to get off the ward with my eldest child, because there was not enough staff to observe me during the day and discharge me, and then when they tried to send my husband home, I freaked out. There is nothing lonelier than being left alone all night in an alien environment with a new baby, with your partner sent away. This was not a sign of incipient madness, just a sign that I badly needed to get away from a cold, unpleasant ward with no privacy (they kept opening the curtains when I was trying to sleep - how does ANYONE sleep on a shared postnatal ward?) and home with my family. Perhaps this should be a spur to improve postnatal care, rather than a reason to exercise medical authority over women who don't want to be there.

The media are increasingly happy to demonise mothers in pursuit of clickbait, with Charlotte Bevan being a particularly poignant case. Politicians are quite willing to attack public breastfeeding (the indignity!) in order to try and win votes from their conservative brethren, rather than encourage something acknowledged worldwide to be a Good Thing. People are quite happy to sit on their high horse, judging alcoholic mothers for inadvertently breaking their children, rather than wondering why there was nothing anyone could do to help. They judge women for daring to er...feed their baby in public without the protection of a niqab or something. They judge a mentally unwell woman for killing herself and her child, rather than wondering why she was allowed to get SO sleep deprived, and where her support was.

Mothers are important. Be kind.

**It makes me sad that I have to add this to every feeding-related blog I write so I don't get attacked as some sort of breastfeeding nazi, but please feed your baby however you want. This isn't an attack on formula feeding, but an attack on people who think breastfeeding is obscene.