Guardian columnist and journalist Zoe Williams is famed for her cynicism and feminism, two things I generally respect and enjoy. So it’s no surprise that this book contains plenty of both. It should all make for a very entertaining and enjoyable read, but unfortunately it’s a highly uneven offering, which confuses and irritates as much as it amuses and informs.
The essential problem is that it’s not clear who’s in the driving seat, Williams the columnist, telling a personal story, or Williams the journalist, who’s attempting to take fresh, factual look at some of the fear and guilt-mongering around pregnancy. Williams has an irksome habit of going from individual anecdote to wild generalisation (more about this later), which readers of her dismissive column about women online might not be entirely shocked by.
On the one hand, Williams is very clear that everyone’s own way is the best way. There’s a lot of fence-sitting, which is mostly annoying, but occasionally welcome. To paraphrase an entire chapter: “well, I breastfed and it was marvellous but you know it’s probably not all that and if you don’t want to or can’t that’s fine too”.
It will no doubt come as a great relief to quite a few readers that here is an author who is not out to judge their breastfeeding choices, and who is not quite on board with the ‘breast is best’ line. Williams even goes to the trouble of rubbishing a few of the World Health Organisation’s claims about the benefits of the boob, by pointing out some of the health stats combine developed and developing countries; so if children are getting fewer stomach upsets when breastfeeding, maybe that’s because some of those countries don’t have reliable access to clean water for mixing formula. Of course it’s not a comprehensive or even particularly scientific look at the evidence and it leaves out a lot of issues, but it’s a thought-provoking break from the usual. That said, it would have been helpful of her to point out a few places where women who wanted to persevere but were having problems could go to for help, such as La Leche League.
On the other hand, the chapter on labour goes entirely the other way and claims that nothing in the world can possibly be any good other than a hospital birth with an epidural. Because nothing else “works”. Never mind the acres of anecdotal evidence from women who have preferred to go another way. Never mind that some people – myself included – might have medical reasons for wanting to avoid an injection in the back unless strictly necessary. Never mind that some birth stories are horrendous and some blissful, which might lead the average person to assume that there is, in fact, no such thing as a typical birth; for Zoe Williams a water birth and gas and air didn’t cut it, so therefore they cannot possibly work for anyone else.
Oh, yes, and offering women anything other than an epidural is a conspiracy to make them go private so they have to pay for the drugs. Uh-huh. That’ll be why epidurals were the first thing discussed at the NHS antenatal class. And why I needed to see an anaesthetist to make sure that one was possible if I required or requested it. I see. But here, of course, I am simply swapping my personal experience for hers; we’re both extrapolating from one case. And that’s not helpful to anyone, anywhere.
Therein lies the problem with Bring it on, Baby. It is actually two books, one considerably better and more interesting than the other. Neither of them are really a ‘how to’ guide at all. The better one is actually the more uncompromising and less scientific. It’s the personal history of giving birth, complete with prejudices and assumptions. It’s the chuckle-inducing chapter that painstakingly recounts all the arguments she had with her boyfriend throughout the pregnancy. The beautiful descriptions of the staggeringly intense swathes of love she feels for her children. These are all welcome, and personal. As she repeatedly says that when she says ‘you’, she means ‘me’, it’s warm, friendly, confessional. There’s a sympathetic woman telling a personal story at the core of this, and if that personal story – which is funny, moving and just a touch bizarre – was all there was to this book it would be well worth reading.
Unfortunately there is the other book. The book that opens by convincingly and refreshingly rampaging across the evidence – or rather lack of evidence – against drinking alcohol during pregnancy, but then lurches into the Great Epidural Conspiracy Theory. Or bewilderingly segues into the time they went on holiday with another couple and she was all horrible because she’d gained lots of weight eating canned octopus. I find it hard to be interested in a book which at least attempts to address whether or not breast really is best before losing interest half way through and meandering into another topic.
Every time I felt I’d finally got to know Williams, the columnist, I was smacked in the face by Williams, the journalist. Except that she’s no Ben Goldacre. This wasn’t the careful analysis of a number of studies (except possibly in the case of the alcohol, which was the most carefully and consistently argued piece in the whole book). It was just a muddied charge, blinkered by anger, through the guilt and nonsense that is thrust upon pregnant women, with occasional forays into statistics.
Don’t get me wrong, I understand her rage. From paternalistic medical attitudes about birth choices and pain relief to the number of things you ‘should’ and ‘shouldn’t’ eat or drink often based on infinitesimal – occasionally almost imaginary – possible risks, pregnant women are in a class of their own, speaking from a feminist perspective. Precisely because men never can have babies, it’s still okay to treat pregnant women like babies.
Still, as sympathetic as I am to the rage, I just felt irritated in large measure by chunks of this book. I was happiest when Williams had stopped equivocating and just had an opinion, even if it was one I disagreed with, and especially, of course, when it was one I was wholeheartedly behind (such as there is no earthly reason to hit a child. Ever.)
So, were I in the habit of giving books marks out of five, this would have to get two and a half. Because somewhere in there is fifty percent of a book worth reading.