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What they don’t tell you about pregnancy

Plenty of women experience pregnancy, but not all of them talk about what it really feels like.

Plenty of women experience pregnancy, but not all of them talk about what it really feels like. Photo: Getty

When Edinburgh-based journalist Chitra Ramaswamy was pregnant with her son, now three-and-a -half, she hit her due date and sailed right past it.

She was then offered a procedure she had heard precious little about, a membrane sweep.

“It’s done by a midwife, who basically inserts her fingers into your vagina and sweeps round the cervix and it’s supposed to release these hormones that will help to kick start labour,” she says.

“There are horror stories about how painful it is, but I decided to go for it, and it wasn’t really painful at all.”

The real surprise came with what the midwife said next. “She said, ‘oh, I can feel the baby’s head and it’s so lovely and smooth’ and I was just absolutely shocked.

“It was the most obvious thing in the world that there was a baby inside my body and yet it absolutely blew me away that someone could touch the baby from the outside world when he was still in my body.”

It’s one of several no-nonsense revelations in Ramaswamy’s award-winning book Expecting, The Inner Life of Pregnancy (out May 1).

“I also never knew that you bleed for six weeks after having a baby,” she laughs. “I mean that completely shocked and appalled me as well.”

Ramaswamy also reveals when your body is starting the labour process, something called the mucus plug, which has been blocking the cervix, pops out.
And after the pain of giving birth, it’s not over. You then have to birth the placenta.
Chitra Ramaswamy felt she had to lift the veil on the mysteries of child-bearing.

Chitra Ramaswamy felt she had to lift the veil on the mysteries of child-bearing.

Divided into nine chapters, one for each month, Expecting was borne of Ramaswamy’s frustration at guidebooks focused purely on the medical, rather than the psychological.

“It seemed to me it had not been afforded the kind of intellectual and philosophical dignity that other really key experiences in life, like love, war and death, have,” she says.

“There are reams of books written about these subjects. Where was birth in literature? It didn’t really seem to have a place.”

Expecting is a both wildly funny and deeply affecting. What shines through is her love for her same-sex partner, Claire, and for their family.

When Ramaswamy was experiencing first-trimester morning sickness, in a cruel twist, her mother was undergoing chemotherapy treatment for breast cancer.

“Both of these things in our bodies were making us feel so terrible, but one was a tumour trying to destroy my mum’s body and the other was growing inside me and it was a life,” she says.” I just found that contrast quite painful but lovely at the same time.”

Pregnant or not, the book is riveting.

“There is something thriller-like about pregnancy,” Ramaswamy agrees.

“Reality, like so many women’s experiences, is so much messier and dirtier, smellier and more interesting. It’s got moments of huge excitement, delight and joy and moments of absolute horror.”

And as for society’s code of silence? “Women totally remember giving birth and they are desperate to talk, it’s just that no one wants to listen.”

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