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You'll Laugh, You'll Cry
Standing in the shade at the Central Park Zoo this...
Missing Something? vol.1
Learning
Need a Distraction?
Mother's Day Pastoral
Are You Trying to Tell Me Something?
A Smattering
Things I Had Forgotten
Look Ma, No See-Saws!
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While I was pregnant for the second time, I wasn't particularly interested in reading about the birth process. When I was carrying Felix, I took a birth class and read all sorts of stuff, but as is probably typical with second children, I was too busy to revisit the depths of the mysteries of birth with Sebastian.
And perhaps it is because my experience with Sebastian's birth was so different from the one I had with Felix that my curiosity has been somewhat revived, so I was particularly curious about a book review in the Times Literary Supplement. Three books are discussed, one of which sounds unspeakably annoying but Tina Cassidy's Birth: A History has all kinds of fascinating historical facts, of the sort that I adore (as anyone stopping by these pages probably knows too well by now). Consider this tidbit about Queen Victoria flouting the preferences of her church:
"In 1853, Queen Victoria notably defied clerical wisdom by inhaling chloroform during her eighth accouchement. The Lancet had firmly deplored such unnatural tinkering with 'natural' labor but, as Cassidy explains, it was not the fact that it was a tremendously inexact science that bothered the public. Rather, the problem was that taking away pain appeared to tamper with divine decree (ie, Eve's curse). It followed that, when Queen Victoria, the referred temporal head of the Anglican Church inhaled chloroform, this seemingly inconsequential private act unleashed a paradigm shift in assumptions and practices on both sides of the Atlantic; the wealthy forthwith embraced chloroform a la reine. Soon enough, in another telling paradigm shift, 'refined' women were seen as being too delicate to do anything but be knocked senseless during birth."
First of all, Queen Victoria had endured seven times before. Surely she was entitled to a break if she wanted one.
Second of all, if even a great monarch (who herself, the review points out, owed her crown to the fact that King George IV's only possible heir was stillborn- a result of a reluctance to intervene with forceps) can be reviled for her birth choices, I suppose I can feel better about getting flak for mine. Now I'm in good company. And so are you, no matter what you did.
But I should give this up because once the kids are in the world, there is plenty of other stuff to read, whether for oneself or to the children. I just found a new blog that discusses children's books, Kid*Lit(erary), and I'm very excited to see what gets reviewed on those pages. Anyone who loves James Thurber's The Thirteen Clocks as much as I do, (read the review), must have some good suggestions.
posted by Elise at 12:15 PM
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