Melanie Brown, aka Scary Spice, welcomed her third child into the world last week. No word on the name yet, but big sisters Phoenix Chi and Angel are, I’m sure, as eager as the rest of the world to hear what wild and wonderful title by which the child should henceforth be addressed.
The baby girl’s arrival was not the only significant part of the story. Poor Scary Spice was photographed in the throes of labour, stumbling through the hospital car park in her jammies (which were not even her good ones), with no make up, hanging on to her husband, walls, cars and passers by, trying desperately to make her way into the maternity unit through a sea of paparazzi photographers and the excruciating waves of labour. For a PR conscious celebrity, who has full make–up and hair done before she even pops out for a pint of milk, I'm sure she would agree it was not her finest hour.
I cringed when I saw those pictures in the papers. I think every woman who has ever had a baby did. For we all knew that labour is a most intensely private moment for us ladies. We are vulnerable, we are in pain, we are stressed and worried about the health of our babies. We are often in awful, terribly mismatched night attire and unflattering bedtime slippers. Labour is not glamorous, it is not fancy. It’s as rock bottom as a girl can get and it’s not a time for meeting people you know from work or getting your photograph splashed all over the front pages of national newspapers.
The last time I was in labour the midwives sent me out walking around the warren of corridors in the hospital to help things progress quicker. I wasn’t adequately prepared for the expedition – wearing a horrendous navy blue nightshirt from a budget retail outlet and bedroom slippers circa 1986 which, in any other scenario, would have assured my arrest for crimes against modern fashion.
So off we set, the husband and I, around the lovely new wings of the hospital and into the hospital proper.
We walked and we walked. And we stopped and held onto walls, said bad words and told husbands that there was never to be any more children, ever. And we walked some more. It was like we were in a cocoon, just the two of us. I didn’t for a moment stop to think that folk might judge me on my bad choice of nightwear or how the sight of my make-up free face, or my poor choice of hairstyle that day might burn the very irises out of ordinary hospital dwellers.
Thing is, when a girl’s in labour, the fashionable side of her brain that would ordinarily make her shun bad nightwear or hairstyle choices shuts down in order to give full power to the ‘Please God, I’ll do anything, make the pain stop’ department. Simple fact of the matter is, labour means for a few hours she doesn’t actually care how she looks.
That’s why it’s good to have a sensible man around.
On our travels around the hospital we turned one corner and walked into a crowd of people. While I held onto the wall and breathed the husband quickly established that the gathered crowd were not normal visitors and that there was a clear and present danger of me appearing on the six o’clock news. Someone – it may have been the Queen of England – was cutting a ribbon at the bottom of the corridor and those milling around with their cameras were a broad selection of my journalistic colleagues and friends from across the North with various digital recording equipment.
If you look closely at the footage from that day you will – in the far right hand corner – see a big, fat pregnant lady wearing a £1.50 nightgown with rabbits on it being manhandled around the corner with a coat over her head. This was not a kidnapping as you might assume, it was the husband saving me from the eternal shame of having pictures of me in labour beamed all over the world.
So Scary Spice, I do feel your pain. I did feel sorry for you. I was almost that soldier. However, I admire your restraint. Had the paparazzi decided to snap me while labour was in progress there would be threats of violence, there would be actual violence, there would be the forceful positioning of digital photography equipment in certain regions that biology determines the sun cannot possibly shine.
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