Читать книгу The Gentle Birth Method: The Month-by-Month Jeyarani Way Programme - Karen MacLeod Swan - Страница 6

If you imagine that pregnancy means waddling, puffing up stairs and being the size of a house, then you’re going to be pleased you bought this book. Because if there’s one thing that characterizes absolutely all the mothers who follow my programme, it’s this – they’re light on their feet.

At nine months, when most expectant mothers can’t get their shoes on, mine have a spring in their step. When most can’t get off the sofa, mine go off on a two-mile walk – they’ve got energy, confidence and excitement, and the only water they retain is kept in a bottle in their handbags.

You’ve heard of those women who are back in their pre-pregnancy clothes two weeks after giving birth – well, you could be one of them. I’m not advocating no weight gain during pregnancy by any means – in fact it’s crucial that mothers lay down some fat – but I do believe that mothers should control their weight gain in order to modulate the size of their baby. Babies are definitely bigger when the mother is overweight and both factors – big babies and overweight mummies – lead to a higher incidence of complicated births. My studies show that an optimum-sized baby for a mother of average build leads to a gentler birth – and less incidence of post-natal depression, because the mother doesn’t have to add getting her figure back to her ‘To Do’ list.

How can this sort of pregnancy be yours? Well, in the first instance, by following a simple diet. But before you gasp with horror at the thought of expectant mothers on diets, this is absolutely not about losing weight, deprivation or hunger. Yes, it does involve excluding certain foods – I ask all my mothers to cut out wheat, refined carbohydrates (puddings, chocolate, bread, biscuits and so on) and, in the last month, gluten – but here’s why.

When I was working as an obstetrician in an NHS hospital, the same thing happened every night when I was on call: I would be woken from my sleep to attend a mother with complications. The midwives would tell me, ‘this lady has been in labour for 24 hours, she’s now been pushing for two hours and the baby’s stuck’. I would do a vaginal examination and find that the tissues were congested and swollen around the baby’s head, the baby’s head was squashed and moulding, and all around it was oedema (water retention creating an obstruction). It was ghastly and the only option was to apply forceps and drag the babies out. I think I was quite a skilled operator and tried to be as gentle as I could, but this situation necessitates an episiotomy and I despaired of having to carry out this procedure on women night after night.