Woman's Hour - Digital sisterhood; Christina Lamb; Learning to swim

Episode Date: March 10, 2020

Friendship can be one of the most powerful and important aspects of any woman’s life. We explore what sisterhood means to different women at different points in their lives. Kelechi Okafor, Danielle Dash and Seyi Akiwowo all met online. They all have large social media followings and talk about the importance of digital sisterhood.Foreign correspondent Christina Lamb has reported on wars for over thirty years. She has now written a major book, Our Bodies Their Battlefield, exposing how in modern warfare, rape and sexual violence are used to humiliate, terrify and carry out ethnic cleansing.Last week saw the launch of the Black Swimming Association, which aims to turn around the fact that 95% of black adults and 80% of black children in England do not swim. It’s a trend echoed more widely in the UK – with Swim England reporting that almost a quarter of all children leave primary school without being about to swim 25 metres. So what are the barriers to learning to swim? And how can they be overcome? Jane speaks to Carina White from Dope Black Mums and Ali Beckman, the technical director and lead teacher of the swim school, Puddleducks.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2, and of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme. Peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hi, this is Jane Garvey and you have downloaded Woman's Hour from Tuesday 10th March 2020. Good morning to you. Christina Lamb of the Sunday Times is one of our guests this morning. She'll be talking about her incredibly important new book about the impact of sexual violence on women in war. Not easy to read at all, but absolutely vital that we all talk about this and try to understand it and its consequences. So Christina Lam on the programme today. We'll also celebrate the digital sisterhood, why it's so important to support each other online. And we're going to talk too about when ideally twins should be born but we are going to start with the coronavirus and with the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists

and the president of the organisation Dr Edward Morris joins us this morning. Edward just explain what any woman who's pregnant needs to be aware of right now. Good morning, Jane. Yes, thank you. So pregnant women do not need to be concerned that they're more likely to be infected. It's important that they should be reassured by this fact. The difference with pregnant women is that they tend to handle infections slightly differently. It can make them more susceptible to the consequences if they do get infected. And that's why we're saying that if a pregnant woman is concerned that she could have coronavirus, the best thing to do is contact NHS 111 early or use the NHS 111 online tool.

And it's important that with any interaction with the health services, that she tells the people that they're speaking to that she is pregnant and that will help us put her in contact with the right people to get the correct advice. There's also no evidence at the moment that being pregnant and catching coronavirus spreads or passes to your baby. There is also reassuring data about breastfeeding in that there's no evidence that the virus is passed into breast milk to the baby. So if she chooses to breastfeed, if a mother is well, then she is more than able to breastfeed in a normal fashion.

If, however, she's concerned that she could be infected or indeed has been proven to have coronavirus, then at the moment we are advising that still the benefits of breastfeeding outweigh the risks of separation because, as we know, breast milk has lots of benefits to the baby. And there are precautions that we have worked with the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health

to be able to help mums breastfeed if they're concerned about their infective state. Now, the last thing I'd want to do is spread any sort of fear or panic here, but honestly, how do you know? Bearing in mind we know so little about this virus, how can you be so sure of all that? At the moment, as you rightly point out, this is something that is a very evolving situation. We've worked at the Royal College with our partner colleges, paediatrics, anaesthetics

and midwives, to look at the data that exists there at the moment. So there have been some cases published from China, and indeed we're looking at previous coronavirus type infections to look at how they have behaved in pregnancy. And we can see from that that at the moment, the evidence is not strong about the passage of infection, as I've just talked about. What we are doing at the college and we are committed to do this is to keep a very close eye on information and update both the guidance that we've given our health professionals out there on a regular basis, but also to update the answers to the frequently answered questions. I think it's really important that everybody, if they get an opportunity to visit our website, to effectively bookmark that page and visit it weekly just to make sure that things don't change. And presumably you're working very closely with your midwife cohort, your contacts within the midwifery profession,

and every single midwife in the United Kingdom is equipped to deal with questions about this, are they? At the moment, we have very close links with the Royal College midwives. We always have done, but in particular, we're keeping our communication channels very much open. And certainly the system at the moment is preparing itself, as we've been given guidance by the chief medical officer, to be ready for an expansion in the outbreak, should that happen.

And really briefly, Edward, a reminder of the symptoms. So the symptoms are those of a cold cold as we're hearing, a light respiratory infection. So if you have that and you're pregnant, the very best thing you can do is contact NHS 111 and also your midwife. Thank you very much. That is the view of Edward Morris, who is the current president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. And if you're pregnant, if you've already talked to your midwife, if you are concerned, let us know how it was treated and what information you were able to get.

You can email the programme via the website bbc.co.uk slash womanshour or contact us, of course, on social media. It's at BBC Women's Hour. Christina Lamb is the chief foreign correspondent of the Sunday Times newspaper. Welcome to the programme, Christina. Thank you, Jane. Your book is called Our Bodies, Their Battlefield, What War Does to Women and the geographical locations, names known to many of us, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Korea,

Syria, Bangladesh, Germany as well, of course. So rape in war, has it always happened? Yes, it has always happened. I mean, if you go back to sort of the ancient Greeks and Romans and Persians, it's mentioned in the Bible, it's mentioned in Herodotus, the first sort of known written work of history. So it has always happened. But that doesn't mean that we should just say, well, that's OK, I think.

And it seems to me, as somebody that spent 33 years covering conflict, that the last few years I've seen much more use of rape and sexual violence against women than at any time previously in my career. Men are, of course, also raped in war, aren't they? They are, yes, particularly in detention centres in Syria, for example, a lot of cases. I didn't know, I learnt a lot from this book, I should say, I didn't know that it only became a war crime back in 1919.

Yes. But there was no mention of it at all during the Nuremberg war trials after World War II. Why not? No, this is one of the things I find incredibly shocking. We know that there was a lot of rape in the Second World War. We know also about the comfort women taken by the Imperial Japanese Army.

And yet in both the Tokyo and Nuremberg tribunals, nobody was brought to justice for what they did to women for the sexual violence. Was it referred to? No, it wasn't. And I don't know, you know, at the end of wars, and we're seeing it again over and over again now, it's because people somehow think that the main issue is the killing and that this is somehow a side issue. And maybe it's because

that it's mostly male political leaders that are still, you know, negotiating. If you had women, it might be different. But the fact is that there's been very little attempt to bring to justice. And even in recent cases, so I really became very passionate about this after reporting a lot on what happened to the Yazidi girls and women who were taken and kept as sex slaves by ISIS fighters. And there was a lot of international outrage, as you know, and lots of coverage of what happened to them. And some like Nadia Murad came forward and told their horrific ordeals that they've been through. And yet there hasn't been a single prosecution of any of these people. And lots of people have been caught. Can we go back then to Berlin? Because if you know anything,

you know that rape happened in the city of Berlin when the Russian forces entered the German capital towards the end of the Second World War. What do we honestly know about what happened there? Well, we know that as many as 2 million women were raped when the Russian soldiers, Soviet soldiers went in. Lots of women committed suicide because they were so, it was so horrific what was happening. And gangs of men were going round and capturing women and raping them.

And, you know, there's a lot of evidence. But what happened, and this is one of the problems that we see again and again, rape is one of the crimes where it's the victim that is stigmatized, sadly, and it shouldn't be the case. And so when the war ended, people were ashamed to talk about what happened. And also the men that went back to their wives didn't like to hear about it because it felt like they hadn't been able to protect them. And that's why it's used as a weapon of war

because it destroys communities. What does Russia say now about that? They deny it. And yeah, they're completely... I mean, Anthony Beaver wrote this famous book and talked about it. And he believes the records have actually now been removed from the Russian archives. He wrote his book, I think, in the early part of the 21st century.

So there's a temptation, of course, to other this and to make it about other nationalities behaving outrageously. What do we know about how the British army has conducted itself? Well, this is one of the things I looked at it seems so widespread and why was it happening and is there some armies where it happens less and there's maybe less research on this than you might think and it doesn't seem to be that many things done about the actual perpetrators it's much more about the victims and survivors.

So I think, you know, there are obviously cases. There's no way that the British Army was different. I mean, people sort of make comments that they put bromide in the tea and that they therefore... It's a bit of a joke somehow, yes. But there do seem to be in some armies there have been much more cases. And actually in my book I particularly focused

on places where rape was used as a weapon of war, so where soldiers or militias were actually told or ordered to go and capture women or rape women, because otherwise, I think it really would be endless because it has happened in so many places. So do you speak or attempt to speak to the men who've done it? Yes, because as I was writing all these terrible stories of the women that I had spoken to in so many different countries. Of course, over and over you were thinking, how can anybody do this? And how can they get enjoyment from doing these terrible things to women? And so I became very keen on speaking

to some of the perpetrators, which is not easy. And I managed to talk to another woman. But sitting with a male ISIS prisoners as a Western woman probably was not ideal. And I don't think there was any way that they were going to really talk to me about what they had done to the women. So they talked about how their cousins had had sex slaves or their cousins had done this but not they said they themselves hadn't been involved so is it a pack mentality that descends and is completely uncontrollable or are there outliers brave men perhaps men that we need to give credit to who say no stop it or i won't do that? Well there may well be but they haven't come out publicly so and it's quite hard to generalize because obviously in some cases

people have been ordered in some cases like ISIS they were told that these are devil worshipers and that this is what should be done to them. So it was more ideological. In Nigeria, Boko Haram, who have taken thousands and thousands of girls. We remember the Chibok girls who were taken from their school, but there are thousands of other girls. In that case, for the young men, many of whom were unemployed and had no money, actually it was very difficult for them to find wives because they couldn't afford a dowry. So to be given a girl who'd been abducted was like a kind of bonus for the fighting that they were doing.

So it's different reasons in different places, but in some places, in Congo in particular, a DRC, really horrific things that they're doing to people, setting fire to their vaginas and just unimaginable torture. If we can go back to the Chibok girls, they were an international story. They were the hashtag, bring back our girls, was something that we all, I was going to say, indulged in. I suppose there was an element of that, if I'm honest. There was a virtue signaling element to this, wasn't there, for a time. Michelle Obama was involved. Did they ever come back?

No. And in some ways, the media attention may have made things worse for them, sadly, because they have become, someone described it to me as the crown jewels of Boko Haram. They've become very precious to them. And so they want the most that they can possibly get. So some, they took 219 girls. Two lots have been released over the last 18 months after negotiations and money and prisoner swaps. And So around 100 have been released, but there are still more than 100 in captivity. And the shame that we all should bear is that so many of these victims of appalling sexual violence

are then disowned by their own families and communities. They just don't want to know them. Absolutely. I mean, that to me was the saddest thing, really, to see, to have gone through all of this and then for your own community not to take you back. And Nigeria is a good example of that, or a bad example. Those goals have first been taken by Boko Haram and forced to do terrible things. Then if they are rescued by the Nigerian army, sometimes they rape them too. Then they are put in camps and often their communities and families won't take them back. And the only way that they can survive is to have sex with the camp officials. So these girls are being victims over

and over again. It's terribly sad. And I don't think we should just keep turning a blind eye to this. No. Well, there have been attempts. I mean, it's somewhat mocked, I guess, the Angelina Jolie, William Hague initiative, but you speak very, you say, actually, that was good. That was something. Well, at least they brought attention to it. And in a way, maybe, you know, it seemed a bit unlikely having this sort of boarding Yorkshireman foreign secretary. It shouldn't have been mocked though, should it? And this glamorous Hollywood star together. But, you know, it did bring attention to it.

And you can argue that what actually has been done since then, in the five years since that, is not that much. But they've certainly raised the profile of it. And I think, you know, as people will say, this has always happened, but why should it be happening so much more now? And why? And it all goes back to justice, in my view, it is so difficult to get justice for what happened. It's hard enough here, as you know, in the UK to get justice for rape, we had the lowest level of convictions on record last year. So imagine in a place where the people running the country are the perpetrators and have guns and the police are all corrupt and the courts are corrupt.

How are you ever going to get justice? I think the international community needs to step up and help on this, these women. Because we're talking about hundreds of thousands of people. Well, I really hope that your book goes some way to making things change because God knows they need to, judging by what you say here. Thank you very much. Thank you. Christina Lamb, who is the chief foreign correspondent of the Sunday Times,

Our Bodies, Their Battlefield is the name of, as I say, her incredibly important new book. Now, we enjoy celebrating friendship on this programme, friendship between women particularly, of course. And gathered together now, we've got Kelechi Okafor, Shehi Akiwowo and Danielle Dash, who all know each other online, know each other in real life as well, I should say,

which is underrated as a way of getting to know people, I've found. You've all got big social media followings and really importantly, you're here to celebrate backing each other up online and in the social media space because it is so so important. Shay if I can start with you because you founded Glitch UK which is a non-profit it's trying to stop abuse online and you wanted to do that because did something happen significantly? Yeah it's funny because the abuse kicked off three years ago and me and Danielle were on the receiving end of it. And that was the first time we interacted.

And it was actually Danielle calling it out. And then we did media together, but we actually never physically did it together to say, look, misogynoir online, online abuse online is not OK. And I knew having support of people online, I could fight this fight around online abuse. And then now three years we're a charity and we're delivering workshops and we're talking to the UN. But that's because of people being kind and supportive and sisterhood on Twitter. Right. Okay. Briefly, Danielle, for anyone who doesn't know, just define misogynoir. Misogynoir is racism and sexism combined that targets specifically black women. Okay and something happened involving you? Yes all the time not one thing many things I think that when you are vocal and you have an

online presence and you articulate yourself in ways that call out white supremacy and racism you make yourself a target and there have been often times where I have written articles or posted stuff or just like been quite glib about something. And the right wing, the trolls, the egg emojis on there, they will find my account and they will go to town. And if it wasn't for my sisterhood with people like Kelechi and Shay, I would have left Twitter a really long time ago but it's in that uniformity in that determination to continue to allow each other to grow that I've been able to continue on social media but it was hard but there's something there around even though you don't call things out and you just want to be and celebrate you like it could be Black History Month it could be like it could be a hashtag it could be Queen and slim it could be whatever people will find that hashtag of joy and try and come for you with that so even when you're being authentically

and apologetically yourself as a black woman you are under attacking which is why the sisterhood I think is beautiful because like you're coming for one person which means you're coming for all of us. Kelechi this is a big part of your world as well isn't it yeah tell us about your own experience. Like Daniela said there's been numerous but i guess the most prominent one was when my instagram was shut down because i was calling out um somebody who was behaving in a very uh damaging way online towards other mummy blog you know towards other mummy bloggers but specifically a black mummy blogger was being attacked as well so i just felt that i needed to speak up about this i can't just watch people be treated in this way and their mental health deteriorate because of the way that they've been treated and in my speaking out about it tweeting about it um this person and

their kind of fans started reporting my page and then my Instagram page got taken down but we have tried I should say to get a statement from Instagram, they haven't been available so far, but carry on. And then I found that this, Daniela wrote a piece about me, you know, on her site. And she even added my PayPal link to say, you know, people support her because, you know, Kelechi also, you know, does things that brings her income from being on these sites. And Shai wrote a piece for Galdem about the same thing. And that was sisterhood really at work just something happening to me where I was being silenced and other women other sisters using their voices to amplify my own and using their platforms to add and like to amplify what was happening to

me right so the more people who join in and offer support the problem don't never goes away does it or do you think by supporting each other you actually begin to change and stop the trolls i think what would how can you really stop white supremacy you know white supremacist patriarchy affects us all regardless it affects us all but what we are doing is because with this globalization that social media has allowed us to have we've got a worldwide digital citizenship so that means that we that we've got a worldwide sisterhood. And that means that when we start supporting each other, we start encouraging each other, celebrating each other.

We build that collective self-esteem. So then we can start looking at structures and how we will go about dismantling and replacing these structures with something that benefits us all. But in the meantime, let's just support each other, celebrate each other and let each other know that we see each other.

And that's supported by academic research that talks about ways to be an active bystander online. So it's just the same thing we do offline when we know there's an emergency or someone's harassing a woman, we intervene in effective but safe ways. There's academic research to show that what we are doing, supporting, reporting abuse, amplifying, replying, all of that can help diffuse abuse as well as change behaviours

so people can see, like, rah, that's not how I should be behaving. And we can start forming a code of conduct, I think, on language we don't yet have. It can sometimes be hard to intervene, even if you see something in front of you. It's actually quite a brave thing to do, to intervene. Is it even harder to do if it's a member of your own sisterhood daniella what would you say about that i think it definitely is hard to intervene when you have a member of your sisterhood

somebody that you have been known for amplifying maybe falls short of the standard that we all hold that isn't again we don't have a code of conduct for it but we all understand that oh this is how we'd like to behave and when somebody does fall short we were just talking about this it's about going to that person as a sister not maybe amplifying it for the whole of the world to see but don't make it public especially when you're trying to correct somebody because you don't want your correction to be performative you don't want to be performing for the crowd you want it to be a genuine thing where you're like, hey, sister, you've said something that was cruel or unkind to this other part of these other marginalised people.

You need to do better. And these are the ways I think you could do that. And you can do that in a less fraught way when you're not in the public eye. It's really important we do that because otherwise sisterhood becomes about friendship and it becomes clicky and status and hierarchy. And that's dangerous. And that's us reproducing the same thing that we've been trying to get against, which is, you know, patriarchy.

So accountability is important. We just need to also own the fact and celebrate the fact that this can be a very positive place to be. And it can also lead to work and to money earning opportunities, can't it? Daniela was the first person. I love Daniela so much. I don't think people understand. Well, they understand now. Old world. I remember getting a DM, a direct message,

private message from Daniela saying, I don't think that I should be the one to write this piece for the Metro. Do you want to write it? She really did that. Literally. No one ever does that. Unicorn. And it was really touching that somebody believed in me enough to say you should be the one to write this and since then i've been

prolific in my writing just because one sister said to me i believe you can do this go on i don't want to cry do you know what it is i think it's so funny because when you're in your homes you think of everybody else as being so much bigger and like because you know Kelechi everybody knows Kelechi do you know I mean Kelechi is the person who is going to lovingly get you together okay and so the idea that nobody had done that before me kind of brings tears to my eyes because this is the kind of voice in the UK that we need. Do you know what I mean? Somebody who is knowledgeable, confident, equipped, ready and able to do what's needed to do to get us onto that next place where we don't have to have conversations always around race or, you know, things that hold us back and look to what do we actually want to do? What do we want this world to be? So I'm really happy that

I could be part of Kelechi's story. Has she put any more work your way? Let me tell you something about the way people always come to Kelechi said that you Has she put any more work your way? Let me tell you something about the way people always come and say, Kelechi said that you might be the best person. So we have actually just been volleying opportunities back and forth to each other over the last three years. Because if I get a voiceover, I don't offer it to Jenny Murray.

See, you guys should have met online like us. Thank you all very much for coming in. I appreciate it. Thank you. And Danielle and Kelechi, good to see you all. Thank you very much. Thank you all very much for coming in. I appreciate it, Shaney and Danielle and Kalichi. Good to see you all. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. At BBC Women's Hour.

If you're part of a sisterhood, digital or otherwise, well, you're part of ours if you're listening to this. So we're very, very glad to have you. Now, swimming. The Black Swimming Association has got to do something, it says, about the fact that 95% of black adults and 80% of black children in England don't swim regularly. In fact, three out of five black British adults can't swim at all.

Swim England reports that almost a quarter of all children actually leave primary school here unable to swim 25 metres. I talked to Carina White from Dope Black Moms and to Ali Beckman, who's the technical director and lead teacher of a swimming school called Puddle Ducks. I think you have to look at it on a generational level and look at the different generations. So this generation, the generation before and the generation coming up as to why a lot of them can swim or can't swim. If we look at my dad and my aunt's generation, for example, both of them learned to swim in Jamaica, in seas and in rivers. So coming here and then having to all of a sudden swim in a swimming pool where the chlorine smell and the chlorine is so, so strong, it completely put them off wanting

to continue swimming here. So I can swim. I went to swimming lessons when I was younger. My dad made it, you you know a priority and my mum did also that we learned to swim because it was an important life skill my daughter goes swimming as well but speaking to a lot of the mums in our whatsapp group and our don't black mums whatsapp group a lot of the mums can't swim and what the reasons for that were were that as black women getting your hair wet and getting the chlorine into your hair and having swimming caps that don't fit over your afro hair was a big thing so I do think that now the generation today the kids are taught to swim um in school yeah well

I was going to say when my kids were at primary school I think it was year two you were marched to the pool and you were taught to swim doesn't that happen anymore um it is part of the national curriculum but as we know there are a lot of uh public pools public swimming baths that are closing down so some schools don't have access to a swimming pool near them my daughter's school does she she's been having swimming lessons in school since she was year in year three but again she absolutely hates it she actually learned to swim last year in jamaica she was she spent six weeks in jamaica with my dad and she learned to swim there um so there are you know i do think now there are way way more kids that are learning to swim and even if parents can't swim they're trying to encourage their children to learn to swim because like i

said it is a life skill well i mean there's also a world of difference Ali between learning to swim on a glorious summer's day in Jamaica and going to your chlorine infested pool in you know on a freezing cold day in Britain in February. Yes I think I know what I'd prefer but yeah I think Karina's right you know the the the lack of access to swimming pools is a barrier. You know, we teach, you know, 22,000 children to swim a week. But even we struggle to get pools. And school lessons are the same. You know, the pools are not available. The children are not going to be able to swim.

Right. Can you just put me right in terms of what the national curriculum says about swimming? So at the moment, I mean, it was introduced into the curriculum in about 1994. And the outcomes are supposed to be that you perform a safe rescue, self-rescue in water. That could be jumping in and returning to the side of the pool. It can be competently and confidently and proficiently, as they say, swim in a distance of about 25 metres and using a range of strokes effectively that's not always the case I mean I've seen school lessons take place and I've seen children swim 25 metres but for me it's not been effective or safe

but they've done it and a box has been ticked You've watched them and they struggle has been ticked you know whether that's okay you've watched them and they they struggle to complete the distance what happens yeah i mean it's taking them a long time you know they're constantly you know struggling in the water but actually it says that they've got to swim 25 meters and you know they're ticking a box to say they've done that but to me that's not safe swimming and and have you witnessed schools struggling with um with black children for example do they equip them with the right swimming hats is that all that organized for them um not what i've seen um you know i mean i'm you know i have

seen children come to our lessons um afro-caribbean children and yes struggle with swim hats and i know there's the there's a market out there there are products on there at the moment there's one that's going to be released very shortly but I don't think they're sold at swimming pools like Karina says you know you have to order them online. Is it true that the sooner you start to learn to swim the better you're going to be and the safer you're going to be Ali? Yeah I think a lot of it is about water confidence. You know, too many people are putting too much pressure on themselves to learn to swim and to achieve something

without thinking about the fundamentals. So, you know, water confidence is key. You know, it's something that we focus on within our lessons all the time, the first thing that we focus on. You know, once you've got that water confidence, you're relaxed in the water, you understand how your body moves in the water, then you can start to learn to swim by introducing strokes.

And the problem is if you're going school lessons and you're getting 30 minutes a week with another 20 children, they're going to focus on learning to swim rather than what's needed, which is water confidence. There is a really important part of this, isn't there, Karina? Because Britain is an island apart from anything else. It's pleasurable to go to the beach, but any kid on a lilo can get themselves into difficulties.

Yeah, I mean, we've seen that recently, that, you know, tragically there was a family who died over Christmas abroad on holiday. And what was interesting was that they could swim, but automatically as soon as the newspaper report came out, people saw a black family and assumed straight away that they couldn't swim. So I think the bigger question is, you know, as a society,

the stereotypes and the unconscious bias that we have towards Afro-Caribbean children or African children about whether they can swim or not. And I think when you look at those stereotypes, they do filter down into the barriers of children learning to swim. So, for example, like Ali said about the confidence of swimming, my daughter absolutely hates the group swimming lessons. And when I've been and just randomly been in the swimming centre swimming pool at the same time as them you can see that sometimes there's a focus on the kids that are confident at swimming and the ones that are less confident are kind of left to you know waddle in the water or wade in the

water because they don't they're so restricted on time if you've got three or four kids and you want to teach them how to swim you know there's so many different barriers but it is really really important that kids do learn to swim because there are so many dangers and when you look at the statistics there are a lot of black kids that are drowning because they don't know how to swim there was a tragic incident in america a few years ago where six boys all drowned trying to save their friends because none of them could swim and the parents tragically had to look on because they couldn't swim either so they couldn't save them so I do think it is a life skill and it is literally a life or death situation whether you can swim or not. How do you get the reluctant child to engage with the whole process? Personally I think the the best way to learn to swim is to be taught in the water.

So, you know, at Puddle Ducks, our learn to swim programme, we have the teachers in the water until a child can actually achieve 25 metres. You know, and being in the water with a child and engaging them and being able to move them into the right body position, you know, educating them all the way through and therefore empowering them. Their learn to swim journey is a lot more fun and a lot more effective and it's the same with adults as well if you're you know if you're in the water with them a learn to swim individual you know just engaging them in that in that process and you know making that journey fun and making them water confident

what if the child has an unfortunate experience first time round, perhaps feels that they're, I don't know, they're floundering slightly? How do you get over that? I think the main thing is that it needs to be, the parents need to help, or, you know, not just the parents, a caregiver, grandparents, you know, if the parent's not confident, you know, get them in the water at the weekend, have fun with them. It can be frightening though, can't it?

I mean, we don't want to underestimate just how frightening sometimes it can be. Oh gosh, yeah, it's absolutely terrifying for some of them. And that's why having a teacher in the water, you know, giving that child the confidence and the reassurance that they need to, you know, to help them get past that is really important. That is Ali Beckman of Puddle Ducks. And you also heard from Karina White from Dope Black Moms talking about kids and the importance of learning to swim. Now to a new study by researchers at Edinburgh, Glasgow and Bristol universities looking at over 40,000 twins born actually in Scotland between January 1980 and December 2015 to find out the optimal time to deliver twins. Professor Jane Norman is Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Bristol. Professor Norman, good morning to you.

Good morning. Now, on the face of it, the headline of this study is actually quite frightening. I'm just going to say it now. I didn't want to start with it because I do find it quite frightening. I'm just going to say it now. I didn't want to start with it because I do find it quite frightening. Twins born before 37 weeks have a greater risk of perinatal death and special educational needs at school. Yes. Tell me exactly what that means. So this really tells us, as we knew before, that if your baby is born before 37 weeks, whether you have a twin or a singleton, it has a higher chance of dying. I think the importance of this new research that we did shows us that the advice from NICE,

that if you have a twin pregnancy, a straightforward twin pregnancy, you should have your babies at 37 weeks, is actually the right guidance. We know that because if you have your babies at 37 weeks, if you get to 37 weeks and don't go much beyond that, that reduces the risk of the baby dying. But the important new thing from this research

is we've shown that that also maximises the chance of the baby doing well when the baby goes to school. If you are pregnant with twins, are you more likely to go into premature labour? Yes, so 60% of women with twins will go into preterm labour. We have very few, we have no strategies in fact to prevent women going into labour with twins and in fact the things we do for women with singleton pregnancy that we know will improve the outcome for the baby, so that's giving steroids to improve the baby's lung health

and sometimes giving magnesium sulfate to improve the baby's brain. Although we know they work in singleton pregnancy, we don't know that they work in twin pregnancy. But of course, twin pregnancies are becoming more common, not just because of IVF, but because I gather older women are also more likely to have a twin pregnancy. That's absolutely true. So I think there are still a lot of really important unanswered questions about twin pregnancy. But I think one of the benefits of this research is that we can say that the guidance from NICE, which says try and get to 37 weeks, but probably you shouldn't be getting much beyond 37 weeks, is the right guidance. And the suggestion that if you get to 37 weeks and you're healthy and your baby's healthy,

you should talk to your baby's pregnancy healthy, you should talk to your doctor about having induction of labour or caesarean section. That is the right guidance from NICE to improve outcomes from your baby when they go to school. I've never been pregnant with twins, but does anybody in that situation challenge the advice at all or are they actually perfectly happy to go along with a 37-week birth? So I think this gives really important information both to pregnant women and to clinicians that that advice around 37 weeks is the right advice. And it also gives information to clinicians and pregnant women

about the risks if they continue beyond that time. So the risks are not high, but they're not zero. And this research allows us to give women the correct information. All women are different. And for some women, it's really important to have their baby at 37 weeks. They've had enough by 37 weeks, and they don't particularly want to carry on much longer. And they would prefer to have caesarean section or induction of labor rather than continuing the pregnancy. Some women feel strongly that they want to continue the pregnancy. And again, I think that's an important decision that they should be able to make as long as they've got the right information in front of

them. And does it depend on, this is all a bit complicated, but on how many placentas are involved? You're absolutely right. So twins go into two types, one where there's two placentas dichorionic and one where there's one placenta monochorionic. And we know the ones with one placenta are probably at higher risk. And the current advice from NICE is that actually if you have one placenta, you probably should have your babies delivered at 36 weeks. We didn't have enough information to show that that's the wrong advice, but we certainly have enough information to show that the advice, if you have two placentas, that you have your baby at 37 weeks is the right one. Can we talk about the idea that there might be a greater risk of special educational needs?

What do we know about that? So we do know that babies with twin pregnancy have higher risk of illnesses just after they're born compared to singleton babies. And what the data shows here is that babies who are twins have higher risk of special educational needs compared to singletons. So that if you're born at 37 weeks, for instance, and you're a twin baby, you probably have between a 10 and 12% chance of needing extra help at school, that's special educational needs. Whereas if you're a singleton, you probably have about and 12% chance of needing extra help at school, that's special educational needs, whereas if you're a singleton, you probably have about a 5% chance of that.

And, right, is that something that people are looking at as well and trying to find out why that's happening? So I think this really relates to the health of twin pregnancies. We know that twin babies are likely to be smaller than singleton babies. We know that the twin babies do have a higher chance of dying than compared with singleton babies. And that's one of the reasons that if you have a twin pregnancy, you're much more likely to have a lot more visits to the hospital when you're pregnant.

You're more likely to have more scans and you're certainly likely to have more checkups. NICE has recently issued some guidance around management of twin pregnancies and I think all of this guidance aims to improve outcomes for babies and women with twin pregnancy and reduce that gap between singletons and twins. But the headline really we need to take away is if you can get to 37 weeks and all should be well. Statistically speaking all will be well. Absolutelyistically speaking, all will be well. Absolutely. Statistically speaking, you know, the chances of you having a healthy baby or two healthy babies is very high. So the advice is try to get to 37 weeks, but don't try too hard to go beyond that. That was Professor Jane Norman.

And I know that she thinks it's extremely important that we give due credit to her lead researcher, who is Dr. Sarah Murray of Edinburgh University. Now, not surprisingly, lots of people had things to say about today's programme. From Sarah, I had identical twins last year at 34 weeks. I realise it is important to get to 37 weeks. It was actually 36 for me as I had a single placenta. However, it isn't a choice to get into labour early. It's frightening and it's dangerous. And telling women to try to get to 37 weeks is both meaningless and guilt-inducing.

So thank you for making me feel guilty this morning. Don't put unnecessary pressure on women who are pregnant with twins. We don't have a choice if we go into early labour. No, quite right, Sarah. And my apologies if my comment did have that impact on you. Obviously, I should say it certainly wasn't intentional. From another listener, in response to your item on twin pregnancy length, I agree with your guess that long-term health and educational outcomes are better for twins born after 37 weeks. However, the long-term consequences of going to full term with my twins, 39.5 weeks as a mother, were not explained to me. My twins are now 11, they're healthy and they're doing

very well educationally. However, the size I reached in delivering two normal weight babies, they were 7.6 and 6.11, meant that my stomach muscles split down the middle and even with physiotherapy after their birth they have never knitted back together. This may have happened even if I had been induced at 37 weeks and actually I probably wouldn't have agreed to be induced but women should be advised by their midwife about the balance between outcomes for their babies and for themselves. That's a good point and thank you for making it. Claire says, I had twin boys in 2014. I had a straightforward natural birth with my daughter and I wanted the same for my twins. I was never allowed to consider a home birth and they booked me in for a c-section as soon as they

knew I was having twins. I had to fight to get my obstetrician to agree to schedule it for the first day of my 37th week. In the end, they decided to induce me at 36 weeks and 3 days, as their movements had diminished. Thankfully, I was already 3cm dilated and they were able to break my waters. My epidural failed, but I did have a completely normal natural birth. I found it very frustrating though at no point was I allowed to consider my own wishes. I just got a flat refusal with no explanation. I wasn't even allowed to sit on my knees as they had the heart rate

monitor strapped to my stomach. Women are constantly being ignored and belittled during pregnancy. It's horrible that so many people start motherhood with traumatic incidents and it shouldn't be like this. Happily, Claire goes on to say, my boys are happy and healthy and nearly six now. Yeah, Claire, I bet you're busy, but thank you very much for telling us about that. My husband and his twin sister were born at home

on the 29th of May 1939 in Glasgow. She was nine pounds, four ounces. He was eight pounds, 12. And the doctor told his mother she was only having one baby. She told the doctor all along that there were two, but he was adamant there was only one. He did give her a bouquet as an apology. Well, that is good of him. Lucky for them, they were both healthy in every way. And my husband is coming up for his 81st birthday. Well, I hope that goes well. And Lynn in Glasgow, thank you very much for telling us about that. And I hope your late mother-in-law hugely appreciated the bouquet.

Blimey, she certainly deserved it. From Sian, two subjects I'm interested in this morning. I had twins 26 years ago, and my goal from my consultant was 37 weeks back then. I'll never forget his advice from week 18 when I discovered I was expecting twins, that I was the best incubator for them. It's the best advice I've given everyone I know who's pregnant with twins. Sian, thank you for that, and I'm sure you're right. But just to say, of course, that you can't, as our earlier correspondent pointed out, it's not your fault, so-called, if you don't get to 37 weeks. Now, on to the coronavirus. As a mother who was heavily pregnant in Hong Kong during SARS,

I would recommend that pregnant women don't overexpose themselves to bleach and disinfectant in their attempts to maintain a sanitized environment. Right. Okay. I'm not quite sure why that is the case, but thank you very much for telling us about that. Perhaps somebody can explain. This is interesting my this is an anonymous contributor my daughter is pregnant and had a headache and had quite a dry cough which then became a thick bad cough and it was so bad that she called 111 at three in the morning but they just told her to call her gp about the cough she has frequently been to hospital recently so she could have picked something up it may be they decided that she didn't have coronavirus, but I'm not satisfied.

Well, what can I say? I don't blame you, certainly not at all, for being worried. This is a worrying time. There's just no getting away from that. And certainly if you're pregnant, you are bound to be concerned. Charlie says, the guy you spoke to, that was the president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, Edward Morris, but he seemed much less concerned than the midwife I saw on Saturday for a routine appointment. I was due to go on holiday to France this week, and she strongly advised against it. Perhaps this is because I'm still in the first trimester and your interviewee was referring to women past 12 weeks. But my midwife at King's Hospital in London said that my immunity

would be lower because I'm pregnant and they can't be sure of the impact of coronavirus so early in my pregnancy. However, certainly getting a high temperature at this stage would be worrying. So we've cancelled our holiday because we felt it wasn't worth the risk. Again, that is interesting. I did suspect that there would be variable advice given depending on the stage of pregnancy. And I think that's something we need to explore more on the programme. So we'll look into doing that. But obviously, everyone needs to be sensible at the moment is what we all need to be and aware. A lot of people just wanted to express their admiration for Christina Lam, who is a formidable journalist and foreign correspondent. And a lot of very sad experiences. A listener says, we often hear of the rape in Berlin, but rarely of the brothels that the Wehrmacht set up in occupied USSR. Women were just rounded up. It might help to explain Berlin, but I'm not saying in any way it's a justification. Jenny says, Berlin was not the only place that women got raped by the Russians in the Second World War. My mother lived in Königsberg, now Kaliningrad, where many women were raped when the Russians moved in. My mother

escaped that area only to be raped elsewhere by a Canadian soldier. Honestly, no one is pretending that it's happened in far, far too many places. And these hideous acts have been perpetrated by probably, if we're honest, troops of every single nationality. Swimming. Stephanie says, I'm a qualified swimming teacher and a primary teacher as well. I agree with everything being said. There is an absolute necessity to upskill primary teachers so they can aid differing abilities. Sports premium money is there for this. We pay £65 return journey for a trip to the pool.

Our money is lost in transport rather than upskilling people. Michael in Buxton says we could double the number of children swimming regularly by just turning up the temperature of the water in swimming pools by a couple of degrees. Yeah, I've often wondered about that, but there may be a health and safety reason about the temperature of the water. So perhaps we need to be careful about that. And let's be honest, those of us who've braved the seas off the coast of the British Isles, I have done it. Wet suit free within living memory certainly wakes you up, doesn't it? It's not warm.

From Sheena, who's a swimming teacher. British pools don't insist on basic hygiene and people treat pools as communal baths, i.e. get in dirty to come out clean. Northern Europe insists on hats and the fact that everyone should shower beforehand and after going to the loo. Clean people equals clean water with minimum chlorine required. It's the chemical reactions of sweat and toiletries which cause irritation to eyes, skin and breathing, not the chlorine itself.

Right, let's end there. Thank you to everybody who contributed this morning and thank you to listening. And Jenny is here tomorrow. Amongst other things, she's going to be talking about why women who keep cats get a reputation when men with pet cats are just known as men who've got cats. That's tomorrow on Woman's Hour. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. I'm Sarah Trelevan, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies.

I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby.

It's a long story, settle in. Available now.