After an eight-year hiatus, Channel 4’s beloved is back. Following three women through their births – spanning first and fourth babies, slow-moving labours and frighteningly fast deliveries – I’m delighted to report that the new series’ first episode is as life-affirming as ever. What’s more, having recently had a baby myself, I now recognise the show for the feminist tour de force it always was in telling those stories in the first place.
Just over a year ago, I was in labour for more than 40 hours, spanning two sleepless nights: the first walking up and down the stairs in my shared building, the second in a hospital ward, while machines beeped and a midwife called Kibbia coaxed a whole human body out of mine. It was completely extraordinary and completely normal, in the way that birth so often is, and for me it was monumental. Yet, apart from the cursory “how was it?” questions that lasted only about a week, no one really acknowledges it happened at all.
That silence feels revealing – after all, it’s socially acceptable to discuss all sorts of experiences, from job interviews to relationship breakdowns, at great length. Yet, despite its unparalleled intensity, birth is still something that happens behind closed doors. Whether you chalk that up to squeamishness or misogyny (seriously, if men gave birth we’d never hear the end of it), there’s something confronting, radical even, about screening the whole business on prime-time terrestrial TV.
And as proves, polite conversation’s loss is television’s gain. Birth might be too squicky to bring up at dinner, but it’s ideal fodder for storytelling, with a ready-made protagonist, a dash of peril, and then – all being well – the most extraordinary reward at the journey’s end. Meanwhile, each woman brings her own past experiences as well as future hopes to bear on the drama: while Erin is waiting to meet her second child, 38-year-old Faye is in labour with her first, having had multiple miscarriages previously. As for Nadine, she’s booked in for a planned C-section after a traumatic birth with her last baby – her fear is palpable, and she frequently wells up with tears.
No question, part of the societal omertà around birth is down to its inherent intimacy, emotional as well as physical. Every mother-to-be is preparing to be staggeringly vulnerable, whether she’s having major abdominal surgery or panting through hours of contractions. I personally remember thinking that I would die, not in a panicked way but almost idly, around the 36-hour mark; even the smoothest birth entails pressing our noses to the veil between life and death to an extent that modern life doesn’t often demand.
As such, the people beside you – birth partners but also medical staff – become hugely consequential, and rightly makes them key parts of each story. “‘Are you there, or do you see me after?” Faye asks her midwife, when she learns she’ll need a C-section even after hours of labour. Her voice and face are so tired, so beseeching, I felt my heart break a little; waves of recollection, the sense that Kibbia was the only thing standing between me and oblivion, crashed over me.
Birth has it all – life, terror, love, tears. Sure, there’s no reason acquaintances should want to hear all the gory details, any more than every woman who has given birth should feel obliged to share them – yet, those who want one must have an outlet, and offers a mainstream platform where our stories can be not only reflected but validated and metabolised. That the show has remained so much a part of our cultural zeitgeist despite such a long time away surely testifies to a deep hunger for that arena.
One by one, babes in arms, Erin, Nadine and Faye return home; soon enough, each of their sagas will be filed away. Or they would be, were it not for immortalising their experiences and sharing them with the world. In doing so, they honour countless other women’s stories – painful and protracted, terrifying and tedious – thereby quietly affirming that they’re worth telling after all.
‘One Born Every Minute’ is on tonight at 9pm on E4