I'm sure they won't mind my saying, but two of my colleagues are expectant mothers, and I'm fascinated by the then and now situation of having babies. For a start, both have lists of things they can't eat, including lots of cheeses, other dairy products, paté, and lots of shellfish. All these are to ward off Listeria, which, as I've no doubt said before, sounds to me like a good plant for a hanging basket but is in fact a nasty food poisoning condition which can harm unborn babies. Nobody told me not to eat anything, although I was lucky to escape the past generation's attitude of eating for two. Alcohol for modern mums is definitely out, and don't even mention cigarettes in the same breath as babies, if you've got any breath, that is. We were given to understand that a glass or two of stout was good for us because of the iron content. Wine was not recommended, but then as it would probably either be Liebfraumilch or a ghastly cough medicine tasting Portuguese rose, it wasn't a loss. My personal opinion was that a good large slug of Southern Comfort just before being wheeled into the delivery room was practically an essential, but even in those days the staff didn't agree. Jealous I suppose. As for smoking, let's just say that there was a time when you could have collected lots of ashtrays with 'property of so and so maternity ward' written on them, which nowadays will be so rare they are probably a collector's item. And so to men. Woebetide today's dads-to-be if they don't go into the delivery room. In my day, woebetide them when they tried to. Old fashioned midwives didn't really approve of men. They may have accepted that such a creature had been necessary some months before to provide the initial product, but were certainly not welcome when the end product came into view. Men were noisy, unhygenic and prone to hysterical fainting. Far better that they stay pacing up and down for hours in a dull little room painted a bilious green and furnished with overflowing ashtrays and ancient copies of Punch, as far away from the delivery room as possible. Better still, they could be down the pub with their mates, drinking pints of mild and bitter and buying cigars in preparation to hand out to all and sundry, even if they didn't smoke. Most men arrived to visit their new born with a green pallor from unaccustomed cigar smoking and red eyes from a hideous hangover. As for home births, the husband was firmly told to stay downstairs and boil water, not that anyone ever used the water, nor said what it was for, apart from keeping him out of the way. By the time I had my first baby things were a'changing and men were getting into delivery wards, going to childbirth classes and helping with breathing exercises. The old midwives pursed their lips as nasty, grubby male creatures stumbled round their wards wearing gowns and masks and asking awkward questions like 'which end shall I sit?' The husband of a friend of mine was nearly evicted after being caught using the gas and air machine. Quite a lot of men did faint. Others must have wished they were back in the days when matron didn't allow anything resembling the male gender anywhere near her delivery suite, unless they were a doctor. Today, if television is anything to go by, the delivery room is like a movie set, choc-a-bloc with people videoing the whole thing, half the relatives sitting on the bed and the other half crowding round the door, father-to-be in the scrum somewhere. Home birth has been in, out, in again ad infinitum. Sounds lovely, giving birth in your own bed surrounded by loving family. Soon, however, loving family will be yelling up the stairs that they can't find the milk saucepan or tin opener and demanding explicit instructions as to how to find the washing machine. And your idea of a long lie in with a nice cup of tea will go straight out of the window as your caring sharing other half tries to master the art of sliding baked beans onto burnt toast. I seem to remember that the first meal my husband proudly presented me with after the birth of our second daughter was a heap of slightly charred sausages accompanied by fried bread and tinned tomatoes. Not the kind of repast you fancy after a hard night of pushing. Now, I suppose, takeaways are the welcome answer. One thing that hasn't changed is the amount of stuff babies need. Considering they are creatures who don't go anywhere, don't hold any social engagements, have few opportunities to get their clothing dirty, apart from the obvious, and are kept in a reasonable temperature most of the time so don't need summer, winter or ski wear, the list of requirements is ludicrous. I had a list a mile long. It included six Viyella nightdresses and four petticoats. Now why on earth would a new born baby need a petticoat? Or a nightdress come to that, never mind six. They didn't need morning clothes or afternoon clothes, or going out clothes or early evening wear. Or matinee jackets. Who on earth ever decided that a baby needed a matinee jacket? And yet people would knit you the things, in coy colours like peach and yellow if they didn't know what sex the baby was. Yellow is not something that suits a little person who is red in the face and bawling most of the time, especially when it gets its fingers caught in the frilly bits. And then there are nappies. I hear that real nappies are back, Terry towelling ones that is. As a person who once arranged a war dance ceremony round a well-lit bonfire as she threw on the last of her 'real' nappies while whooping and shouting for all the neighbours to hear, I can't be asked my opinion on this. All I can say is that when disposables came in it was like manna from heaven falling into a new mother's lap, just as it was when someone decided to import the first duvet that did away with bed making. I think I got the second one in Sussex, and that was only because a woman beat me to the counter of our biggest department store. Almost at the same time as disposable nappies, I found out about baby-gro outfits, invented by someone who had actually seen a baby, and, so the rumour went, they were available in lots of colours including dark blue. A friend who was an air stewardess on the America run bought some for me. The health visitor was horrified. Firstly, because they were navy blue, and therefore 'didn't show the dirt'. This consigned me to the section under 'slut' in her book. Secondly, they were easy to get on. No tiny buttons, ties or ribbons. Thirdly, because the baby could live in its baby-gro night and day, so the idea of nice crisp white nightclothes went out the window. Baby clothes in those days had to be white with the possible addition of sickly pastels. This was to prove that a new mum was diligent in her wifely duties and wouldn't countenance one tiny show-up stain. We'd already clashed over baths. Why would a new born baby need two baths a day? It didn't go out in the garden or play with the dog or stick its fingers into drains, it just lay there and, providing two points of its anatomy were kept clean, was fine. It was bad enough for a first time mum handling a precious new bundle which we thought was so delicate it might break, without having it as slippery as an eel. While today's new mums are spoilt for choice with equipment and stuff designed to be as labour saving and as handy as possible, it was not always so. Prams were enormous and usually one inch wider than would go through the front door. Carry cots, just basically an orange box with handles, and covered in horrid canvas which soaked up sick at an alarming rate. Maternity clothes were little girl outfits expanded, so we all looked like great big clumsy toddlers in our smocks. There were no nice bouncy chairs or slings or hammocks or car seats or easily cleaned equipment. The only thing you could look forward to was a high chair which usually pinched your fingers as you pushed the tray into place and a wooden playpen which I quickly found worked better if you sat in it and let the crawler have the run of the rest of the room. Ah, happy days. I doubt that new mums and dads will be faced with the same dilemma after our home birth. The midwife, who had the bedside manner of a rattlesnake and had been snappy and fairly unsympathetic throughout the night, turned to my husband and told him to 'get rid' of the afterbirth. He, having been quite prepared to boil water, make tea and plump up pillows, but nothing more, went white. 'And you can't put it in the dustbin,' she snapped. He asked what he was supposed to do. 'Bury it,' she said. We didn't have a garden then, only window boxes. The only open space near us was a fairly genteel park, the area peopled usually by retired folk who would probably have noticed a man surreptitiously burying a bundle in the beds. Or there was the racecourse up the road, but I doubt also if there was an opportunity to sneak into the members enclosure without being seen. Eventually I think he drove to woods in the dead of night, praying that a passing police car wouldn't spot him. I'd never heard of such a thing, before or since. Was it some kind of revenge dreamt up with a woman who had already indicated that I could have been more thoughtful than to go into labour at midnight, thus interrupting her night's sleep. It could have been worse, I suppose, if his initial plan (he told me later) had worked. Then my dear daughter's birthday could have been marked by a headline in the local paper reading 'man arrested for dropping suspicious bundle off the end of the Palace Pier'.