Mum's the worst

Naomi Wolf became a media fixture with her first best-selling book, The Beauty Myth, which examined the idea that society puts pressure on women to be beautiful as a way to keep them under control. Her second book Fire With Fire attempted to broaden the idea of feminism beyond strident anti-male or victim feminism, encouraging women to use their political power while still retaining a feminine identity. No stranger to controversy, Wolf’s outspokenness, offset with a relatively glamorous image, made her one of the youngest ‘celebrity feminists’ (with some of her most vociferous critics being other noted feminists).

In the early ’90s Wolf founded a group called Culture Babes, an experiment to create an ‘Old Boy’s-style’ network of women activists and writers. Eyebrows were again raised when she was hired as advisor to Al Gore during his presidential campaign, reportedly in order to help him remodel himself in the role of ‘alpha-male’, creating a public perception of a leader rather than a follower.

The San Francisco born writer’s latest book, Misconceptions was written after the birth of her two children, as she realised that there is a huge number of social, psychological and practical issues surrounding motherhood of which she hadn’t been aware and which, it seemed, nobody was prepared to tell her.

“I thought I was up on women’s health issues,” Naomi smiles wryly, but the treatment she received at the birth of her first child prompted her investigate further. “Each woman I spoke to after my own traumatic experience of the birth told me their own traumatic story and each of us thought that it was just their own particular unique set of medical circumstances which has resulted in such a bad experience.”

In the book she delivers a very frank personal account of the months leading up to and following the birth, and her description of the actual event itself makes for powerful, if disturbing, reading. Although desiring a natural birth with as little medical intervention as possible, Wolf was told that her baby was in distress, hooked up to an immobilizing foetal monitor, given an epidural, and eventually a caesarean section. She remembers it in terms of being “drugged, cold, bleeding and vomiting, panicking and paralysed” as she was cut open and her baby lifted out of her. Exhaustion, the disorienting effects of the drugs and the painful scars added to her post-birth discomfort.

She feels that this hugely traumatic experience made it harder to bond with her baby. “I believe the experience of a caesarean and the other interventions were largely the cause of my post-natal depression,” she says, and doesn’t agree with the view that post partum depression should be viewed as normal, or something to be expected, so therefore sufferers won’t relate it to any trauma or sense of dissociation incurred during the birth.

“A lot of women don’t have the information or feel comfortable enough to question methods or request alternative procedures. If a doctor tells you that something is going to save your baby’s life, you’re not going to question that. But if you later find out that could have been avoided, you’ve a right to be angry.”

Wolf has been criticised for scare-mongering, with the view that pregnant women need to be reassured and shouldn’t be worrying about the more difficult aspects of birth.

“Pregnant women don’t have anyone telling them the truth,” Wolf argues. “All you get is soft focus books with pictures of blissfully happy moms and infants, that gloss over the painful realities. Some women might prefer not to know what to expect. I personally found it terrifying that something was being kept from me.”

As we discuss the state of maternity care in Ireland, Naomi sheds her generally soft and hospitable demeanour and gets visibly angry. She is appalled by the articles and statistics she has just been given and reads aloud extracts while adding her own comments.

“Two maternity units have just closed down, one in Monaghan, one in Dundalk, despite a lot of people signing petitions. There’s a huge shortage of midwives, even in the capital. I was shocked to find that hospital midwives in Ireland have less autonomy than they do in the US, because the US has less autonomy than most of Europe!” she exclaims.

She holds misguided hospital policy responsible. “About fifteen years ago an obstetrics system of active management was devised at the National Maternity Hospital in Holles Street in order to maximise resources and efficiency. Unfortunately it created this system where the birth is sped up and consultants are expected to process three births per 24 hours. For example, it’s routine in Ireland to perform an amniotomy – deliberately breaking the waters to speed up and induce the birth – whereas that’s considered quite a drastic step in the US. So if a woman in Ireland doesn’t want to have her waters broken she could have a battle on her hands,” Wolf sighs.

She goes on to explain why she, in common with many, feel that midwives are a better proposition than doctors. “The whole nature of childbirth changed when obstetricians took over, in order to justify their higher fees. Midwives get paid a tiny percentage of what obstetricians get for similar work. These specialists are trained for these heroic interventions, which are so rarely actually necessary, but they tend to use these methods, ‘cause that’s what they’ve been trained for. And of course they want to get back to the golf course as quickly as possible,” she says with scorn.

Wolf has also received flak for the admission that her ideas on abortion began to shift when she became pregnant – although remaining a passionate pro-choice supporter, with another human being growing inside her she inevitably began to question the idea of an autonomous ‘individual’ and wonder more about the ‘foetal rights’ to life. “My position didn’t change but my feelings did,” she avers.

Naomi Wolf readily admits she has encountered a lot of hostility from the media and both radical and reactionary commentators, but sees this as a necessary part of her work. “I’d prefer that people wouldn’t be so hostile to things I view as common sense, i.e. the suggestion that you shouldn’t cut women up unnecessarily, but people have strong reactions for a reason and everyone’s entitled to their opinion.”

Her advice to expectant mothers is to create their own support system to help them through, to be as well-informed about the hospital procedures as possible and to seek out independent unaffiliated childbirth classes. She recommends that after the birth the mother is not left isolated and alone to look after the baby by herself, and should insist that her partner gets as long as possible time off for paternity leave.

“Women don’t realise how powerful they can be as a political force,” she states. “Women need to start raising their voices about this, telling the health minister that they are going to vote according to whoever makes this a prominent issue.”