Wednesday 18 April 2012

Once upon a time

Has anyone seen the fabulous new series called Once Upon A Time? It is a new take on old fairy tales, bringing them into present day. Very clever and extremely well done. However, some of their audience will be young people and the labour scene where Snow White was giving birth was so cliche that I almost cried. She was doing the usual crying and screaming and acting as if she was being tortured.
What message does this give to our young people today? It tells them that labour will be very very very painful. As soon as any of them get pregnant and start to labour they will remember all these images and they will naturally start to feel anxious. At that moment in time all hopes of a pain free labour will evaporate like fairy dust.
The midwives among us could tell that she was supposed to be in the second stage of labour and so it does get a little painful as the perineum stretches but how could the young audience know that.
Ms. White was also firmly planted onto a bed - THE WORSE PLACE TO LABOUR - as it is difficult to remain upright on a bed and the uterus will not be able to work with gravity and so the contractions become stronger and so may become painful. (see the posts - Why Labour Hurts 4)
I don't want to give the story line away but Ms. White was under threat at the time from the evil queen casting a very bad spell on her that was speeding like a huge dark swirly thing towards her and her prince. So really, she could be forgiven for having a painful labour cos who wouldn't if labouring under the same circumstances?
Her anxiety would flood her body with adrenalin which is the main cause of painful labours. (see the posts - Why Labour Hurts 2 and 3)
If pain free labours are to become an accepted part of our society then TV producers have to stop using birth as a fulcrum for drama and forcing their actresses to overact. Stop teaching young people to fear labour cos then painful labours become a self fulfilling prophesy. Change in how we perceive labour is coming, if you see a huge dark swirly thing coming towards you then don't worry, it's not the evil queen, it's the anger of all the women, who suffered in labour after being taught that the first stage of labour was meant to be painful, and then they learn the truth.

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