THE WANTED BABY – DO I WANT A BABY?

Marie Stopes wrote her book for lovers in the early days of contraception when ignorance of sexual matters abounded. Pregnancy was an inevitable consequence of married love, and contraception was used to space babies sensibly to allow the mothers to recuperate from childbirth. Today women can choose, with varied forms of contraception, either to have no babies at all, to have and space them, or to defer them until the most favourable time. Among these many patterns are women who fluctuate between wanting and not wanting babies.

Mrs N. married on the understanding that neither of them wanted a baby. She was referred by a gynaecologist to a specialist in psychosexual medicine because she was still complaining of dyspareunia following a laparoscopy and urethral dilatation, performed in an attempt to find the cause for her pain. Nothing abnormal had been found. She had been complaining of dyspareunia for 18 months and there had been no intercourse for a year.

She was a smart business woman wearing a suit, who came briskly into the room and sat down. She very quickly began to tell the doctor how angry she was with the people in the hospial. She had felt weak after the operation, so much so that she had to be off work for a whole week. No one had warned her that it would be like this, with so much abdominal pain and feeling so unwell and her original problem had certainly not been resolved.

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