Day T Minus 39

...and so I continue the countdown.

Today Naomi Wolf's Misconceptions: Truth, Lies and the Unexpected on the Journey to Motherhood arrived in the post. Naomi Wolf - for the unenlightened is a feminist author. Probably Feminist with a capital F type author. She's the kind of writer who sort of spends a lot of time pointing out all the crappy things that happen to women. It's not that these things don't happen, it's just that she makes a living pointing these things out. It's kinda negative.

Don't get me wrong. I'm a big fan of negativity. I used to support audit and inspection and regulation - so I know, negative can be positive. But is negative what you really want to read at D-Day -39? Well, I certainly sat down to read it.

And yeah, negative can be good. If it all already confirms your choices. Medical intervention can be, you know, medically necessary. But sometimes it's done for other reasons, obstetrician convenience, profit, well-intentioned but misplaced worry. Ms Wolf's book was a combination of her own personal journey in pregnancy - and catalogue of horrifying interventions and deliberately obscured data on agressive interventions (c-sections and episiotomies).

I've decided that I really prefer at little intervention as possible. I have a delicate disposition - but one that's much more suited to enduring pain than enduring indignity and other people's stupid rules. And that's why I'm choosing a home birth. We had our "booking in" section on Sunday - a senior midwife came round to take a look at our house. We seemed to pass, despite our rather disorganised approach to organisation. (We'd done a bit of a tidy before she came round).

One thing about booking a home birth was that we were assured we'd actually get more one-on-one care from midwives than we would if I laboured in hospital. We've booked a doula as well, to help smooth the relationship between us and the medical professionals. Where I live, the NHS operates a team midwife approach - it's quite likely that I'll meet the person who delivers Cletus on the day that she does so.

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I spent some time reading out the bits of Naomi Wolf's book that would annoy him most. Particularly a section about women subverting their choice to give their baby their own surname.

I knew that would send him absolutely spare. He's never totally accepted the fact that I never changed my name. I've never totally accepted that he doesn't accept it.

Anyway, Naomi Wolf points out that many women are surprised that even men who are "feminist" are strongly of the opinion that their offspring should have a patriarchal surname. I'm not surprised. Not in the least. After all - as I told the ViL "Mama's baby, Daddy's maybe" - the surname thing provides the man reassurance and acknowledgement that the child is his. And no matter what anybody says, that's an important thing. To the man and probably to the child, too.

When I asked the ViL if he would mine a hyphenated name, he did surprise me. He said he wouldn't mind. Actually I don't want to. My surname is kinda hard to spell. And we will be using it as one of Cletus's middle names anyway.