Woman's Hour - Listener Week - Nits, Accents, Becoming a mother unexpectedly, Paddle sports, Losing your belongings, Choirs

Episode Date: August 29, 2020

Louise Somerville thinks we need to talk more about nits. She feels that increasingly schools are inconsistent in how much they help parents deal with nits and that clear advice is lacking. We ask how best to deal with nits and head lice, and the stigma attached, and why it matters. With entomologist Richard Jones and Joanna Ibarra from Community Hygiene Concern.Daisy Leigh was 23 when she felt an unfamiliar kicking sensation and was shocked to discover she was 30 weeks pregnant. She had just two months to prepare, mentally and practically, for becoming a mother. Nine months on, she says her daughter is the best thing that's ever happened to her.Women and Paddling: kayaking, canoeing, paddle boarding, rafting; what are the attractions, what is involved, and how can paddle sports help physical and mental health? Cadi Lambert runs the #ShePaddles programme for British Canoeing, and Emma Kitchen has started training to be a coach to help people improve their paddle skills.Are women taken more seriously in the work place if they have an RP accent? Jane hears from listeners Karen Jenkins, Bethan John and Dr. Melanie Reynolds, and Professor Deviyani Sharma, Professor of Socio-linguistics at Queen Mary University of London.How do you cope when you lose all your belongings? Eve, Pat Plumbridge and Sue Hepworth discuss.How much do you miss singing in a choir? Carolyn Acton, Sandra Colston, MD Funky Choir MD and Liesbeth Tip, Clinical psychologist at the School of Health and Social Science at University of Edinburgh, discuss.Presenter: Jenni Murray Producer: Dianne McGregor

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. Good afternoon. This was Listener Week, when every subject that was discussed came from you. Jessica wondered if one's accent still has an impact on how seriously a woman is viewed in the workplace. Does she have to speak with received pronunciation? Eve lost all her belongings when she was a student. What did she miss most and how did she cope? And Daisy, who unexpectedly found she was pregnant at 30 weeks. I'm used to my tummy growing and, you know, getting a bit

podgy. So I had no problem that I'd put on some weight at the bottom. It was not a baby bump at all. But this doctor said, oh gosh, you haven't noticed this bump. And then she did an ultrasound. She actually went silent. When she went silent, I knew she was about to say something quite life-changing. Very life-changing, I would say. Fiona recommends taking up a paddle sport, a canoe, a kayak or maybe a board.

Why is it good for you? And the women who are missing singing in a choir as the virus has temporarily shut down, getting together every week. How easily can they come back together? Louise Somerville got in touch about that perennial problem so many of us suffered over the years with young children, nits. Louise thinks schools are increasingly inconsistent in how they help parents deal with the problem. No more nit nurses and not much clear advice for parents.

Well, Jane was joined by the entomologist Richard Jones and Joanna Ibarra from Community Hygiene Concern and why does Louise think there's a feminist angle on knit? When I first came across Headlice my now sort of very grown-up child was a small rural village primary school and the letter came home from school and it was a really clear letter I remember being in shock at the time and thinking oh my goodness what's this the infestation feeling scared about it feeling a little bit vulnerable about it yeah was grateful because not only was there a very clear letter written about the lifespan how to deal with them, what the technique was.

But there was also an illustration with drawings, followed by a note saying, nip along to the school office. And there were combs available, two pounds each. So it was not a stigma. It wasn't a stigma at that time. Everybody had the letter. The conversations were happening more. And wet combing with conditioner was definitely the recommended method. And now the situation seems quite different.

Because? My best guess is that my youngest son has been at a junior school with two male head teachers and my best guess is that they are not combing their children's hair. And having spoken to a few parents recently, I've discovered that it appears to be the mums that are mostly on the case with dealing with the head combing. And I'm thinking that those head teachers are not recognising that this is a public health issue,

that it really affects families and our children. It takes a lot of time to deal with it. And the sooner we are notified of an outbreak the sooner we can deal with it. All right stay with this Louise um let's bring in entomologist Richard Jones and Joanna Ibarra who's from Community Hygiene Concern um Richard first of all when head lice well when did they first start that's an idiotic question but they seem to have always been with us. Oh they have yes um head lice have been with humans even before we were human, so many hundreds of thousands of years.

And they've adapted incredibly well to have survived so long on our heads. Yeah, and they used to be told they only like clean hair. True? Absolutely not, no. In fact, any hair at all, the cleanliness of the hair is completely irrelevant. One of the things that I think people don't realise is how active head lice are, how fast they are. We've got this idea of these vermin living amongst the stalks of our hair on our heads. But actually, if you ever see one moving around, I wanted to photograph one many

years ago and I combed one out of my children's hair and put it on some snipped ends of hair on an envelope. And it was very difficult following the beast up and down. They're supremely adapted. If you look at them under a microscope, always a delight. They've got the most amazing claws, which are exactly the right size to fit on to human hair. You know, I don't make a practice of asking men to send me photographs for a string of reasons, but I wouldn't mind seeing that photograph of that knit, if you don't mind, Richard, if that's possible. I'll see if I can hook it out. It was quite a few years ago, but it should still be around. I think we'd like to share that with the Woman's Hour audience.

OK, so all different sorts of hair, all ethnicities, every single human can have nits. There's no doubt about that. Absolutely none at all. So, yes, wherever you are in the world, there are nits. Right. And to get rid of them, first of all, to be sort of counterintuitive, does it matter if you've got them? Probably not on head lice and the thing one of the biological factors to take in is that head lice and body lice are very similar and whether we call them one species or two species is pretty arbitrary and we're very lucky that head lice really don't cause us any fuss

but body lice which i think is luckily something that we've eradicated now spread diseases mostly through their feces getting into cuts in the skin and there are awful reports um usually in times of war or famine or mass migration terrible disasters where people have got nothing except the clothes they they lie in. And those clothes are infested in the reports of 50,000 lice being retrieved from these people. And at that point, it's unlikely that anemia through blood loss is going to be an issue. But there was certainly the allergic reaction to the saliva that they inject, which has anticoagulant properties there is that is a real issue and that's why of course people feel lousy um they get irritable

they have a slight temperature uh they can't focus um and this this is why yeah and the nitty-gritty of course which is in your hair which is that the droppings and the idea of a numb skull because you lost the feeling in your skull because you've been bitten so many times. But these all show that really seriously heavy infestations can have an effect. Right. I did not know that the term numb skull originated there. Joanne Ibarra from Community Hygiene Concern. What do you advise if a family has nits? What's the solution? Well, first, let's pick up on the fact that lice move very quickly in dry hair. But if they are bathed in moisture, if they're really wet, they stay still. And the easiest way to get your hair really wet is to wash it with ordinary shampoo.

And then put on any conditioner. and sodden and soaking while you are facilitated with untangling and straightening the hair with an ordinary wide-tooth comb. And then you can come in with a bright yellow bug-buster comb and hook them out very easily. And that's the way that you know that you've got life. Yeah, now, this can take... And that's the easy way to address it. When you say easy, it's quite time consuming, isn't it?

Depending on the length of hair. Yes, but you've got to bear in mind that if you don't detect life, and this is the way to detect it when you've got a low number of life on the head, unbeknown to you, because they're probably not even causing telltale itching, your child might be passing them on and picking them up from other children whose parents don't know that their children have got lice,

and they're going round and round and round, which means that lots of people end up doing successive treatments one after another when they realise that there's a problem. So we introduced bug-busting, wet-combing detection of lice days. The next one is Halloween, 31st of October. I'm quite interested, Louise, in your theory about height and nits. Can you just remind me of that? Well, it's something I saw on Twitter this morning.

I looked on Twitter to see if any men were talking about head lice or if again it was just the women yes and one mum put that her child touchwood had never had an infestation of head lice and another parent responded with is your child tall yeah and and it turns out that according to the mums on twitter that if your child is tall, their heads are further away from the other children and that life seem to move down. But I'm also particularly interested in what Richard said about the speed and how Joanna countered that by saying that when your hair is very wet, they don't move as fast. So I'm going to put myself in the firing line of embarrassment now and say that when combing my hair a couple

of weeks ago because we've had a recent outbreak of head lice in July during lockdown strangely enough I was combing on one side and then I felt that there was there was an itch or a movement on the other side of my head so then I moved the comb to the other side and I'm practically thinking this is ridiculous head lice don't have a brain they can't move away from the comb is there any point in coming one side of my hair and then quickly moving to the other side or should I be going all the way around the head in a more orderly fashion very briefly that's one for Richard yes several centimeters a second a couple of centimeters a second they can move. They're incredibly fast.

Yes, it's funny how you can sometimes feel them crawling around. I'm quite proud, I think, to be the only man who's ever combed and knit a headlouse out of his hair and then presented it as an exhibit that same day at a meeting of a National Entomological Society. How proud your whole family must be, Richard. They are, yes. I remind them of this all the time. The speed they move is incredible, and I think that's something to take into account

when thinking about head lice transferring around the classroom. And as a good biogeography analogy that you can borrow here, and that your child's head is not a lone island. They don't have an infestation that you have to cope with and that your child's head is not a lone island. They don't have an infestation that you have to cope with. They're part of an archipelago, and a head louse can start on one child and possibly move through half a dozen other heads before it gets to the end of the day in a classroom. They really are incredibly active, and because they're very small, people miss that key biological point and that's actually how infestations get around so fast. Richard Jones, Joanna Ibarra and of course Louise. It was a long time ago but

my mother certainly thought her daughter would never get on with a broad Yorkshire accent and sent me for elocution lessons. I suspect in the 1950s she was right. But Jessica, originally from Leeds but now in Manchester, wonders if nothing has changed and a woman will only be taken seriously in the workplace if her accent is strictly received pronunciation. Deviana Sharma is Professor of Sociolinguistics at Queen Mary's University of London.

Does the way you speak still matter today in Britain? It definitely still matters. We just recently did a national survey to see what people think of that question. And we asked for opinions about more than 30 accents. And then we compared the ranking that we found to surveys that have been done over the last 50 years. And we found almost exactly the same hierarchy with RP at the top, and the same ranking across all 30. And the only difference was that the distances were slightly smaller. So the lower ranked ones had come up a bit. So that's a

positive. But unfortunately, yeah, it seems to be quite an established kind of prestige ranking. All right. But this is about it's not about being liked. It's about being taken seriously. Right. Yeah. So what we were asking about was prestige specifically. So, yes, in the workplace, RP will probably still get you further. And there is research that shows that strong accents are associated with masculinity and standard RP like speech with femininity. So women might come under pressure to accommodate a bit more to RP. But that's exactly as you say, that's about the workplace in the pub with your friends is a completely different story. All right. We'll come back to you. Karenkins is a listener um grew up in surrey uh now lives in north wales and you're married to a scouser you lucky thing yes i am what happens when he tries to book a

restaurant table well um it's our experience i don't know whether it's because of our accents, but very often Steve will go into a restaurant, book a table, be able to book a room um in a hotel where we've been told there's been no vacancies um and i've been able to secure a room yeah well he's been told there are no vacancies but yes you're fine i mean i can't believe that's a thing um karen would you acknowledge that you have an accentless accent actually yes, I would say that my accent is fairly neutral, much like yourself, Jade. Steady. It would be hard to say where we were from. Yes, yeah. And it's helped you.

You're a teacher. And so have you modified your voice in your line of work? Not in my line of work, but I guess like Debbie Sharma was saying, that sometimes in a social situation, you will modify your accent depending on where you're going, who you're meeting. Yes, when I was at school, I went to a large comprehensive in Surrey and I would say that it was more of an estuary accent that you know in order to fit in right that was probably the way that we spoke.

Okay let's put a different spin on this. Bethan is in South Wales and Bethan you went to work as a doctor in Liverpool and what reaction did you get there? Hi Jane, I had pretty much the opposite experience to the the last listener so i'm from yeah i'm from the south wales valleys i moved to liverpool uh seven years ago for work um and i'm still here now absolutely love liverpool um but yes i distinctly remember um on one of my first days on the ward speaking with a very thick uh south wales accent which i was very proud of yeah and a patient looking at me and turning to my colleague and saying sorry what language is she speaking um and uh realized that obviously

i was speaking english in a very thick welsh accent and just generally could not understand a word of what i was saying um and then over i've noticed over the past seven years that my my accent my welsh well the welshness of my accent has certainly toned down a bit. And I've even picked up then a little bit of a Scouse twang at times as well. Yes. And it just it helps your professional life along for you to behave in that way. Certainly does. Yeah, certainly does. It just makes I think patients just find it a lot more understandable. And colleagues also, obviously, in the NHS, we're lucky to be working with colleagues from all backgrounds

all ethnicities and I think having maybe a bit more of a generic accent certainly helps in that way Thank you very much Bethan and Melanie is originally from Yorkshire now you live in Oxford

and what happened to you in terms of the way you speak? Well, when I did my PhD, it was put to me that I should change my accent in order to teach and present well, to fit in with academia, to fit in with the student body, and to challenge patriarchy better, to be seen as a capable feminist. I see. So that would actually back up what Devyani was saying right at the start,

that in order for a woman to be taken seriously, women must change their voices. So what did you make of that at the time? Well, I thought about it and then I thought, well, how is this going to happen? Because I haven't got any cultural, you know, middle class cultural capital. I left school when I was 15. And I just thought, well, I can't do it. I didn't know how to do it. I just had no clue.

And then I thought, well, what happens to these students who come after me, who speak like me? What about them? Are they going to have to do it? And I just felt it was really fake, because to me, when people change their accent, it comes out sometime. You know, and you're just seen as fake, and I just, I didn't want to do it, so I resorted. Now, I take your point, because you felt that people like yourself, because I know you left

school, and you went to night classes, did you, and got all your exams? No, I went to Ruskin College at first, which was fantastic. Because that was a working class college. It was great. There was no problem there with my accent. It was just when I went to do my PhD and my doctorate and then start teaching and fit in with academia, if you like, it was put to me that I should change my accent.

Well, isn't that interesting and frankly quite insulting? And as you say, it robs those people like yourself of hearing people like themselves doing jobs that they might want to do themselves. And I also thought, well, what does that say about working-class women? Are you saying that working-class women aren't capable? And I knew my research had shown me that working-class women are more than capable, which challenges all the stereotypes. Yeah, really interesting. Thank you for that, Melanie. So Devyani, you're right. I shouldn't have doubted you in the first place. It would seem that women are the ones

who are obliged to change their voices. And perhaps I've fallen foul of that as well. What do you think? Well, I think it's difficult to judge individuals for the choices they make because you come under so much pressure. I think the thing that we try to communicate more widely is for people to be aware that they use accent as a kind of shorthand for guessing social information about people. And it's often wrong. So it's you know, you kind of use accent as a stereotype and you make assumptions of people before you've given them a chance. So even though people, you know, have every right to adjust their accent or not, it's actually a very difficult thing to do. Your last speaker said something so important, which is not everyone has the opportunity, the aptitude, the desire to do that. And if everyone else, you know, if there's a norm of changing how you speak towards a kind of middle class standard, then we don't hear the other voices. And when someone brings that voice into a certain situation, it's heard as an outlier, an exception, as problematic and risky.

And so that's one of the dangers of having an expectation. Well, just do your best and try and get rid of it because then we just don't hear the rest. Professor Devyana Sharma. Now, we've all at some point lost something that really mattered to us. A ring maybe that belonged to grandma or some photos from your childhood. But what is it like when all your belongings are lost? Eve wrote to tell us how she lost all her belongings when she was a student and wondered how other people had coped in similar circumstances. Well, Pat Plumbridge is in Cornwall,

Sue Hepworth's in the Peak District and Eve's in Devon. How did she lose all her belongings? It was a few years ago and my father was having some difficulties and ended up putting all our things into storage and then due to sort of financial constraints, was never able to get them back again. So the sort of removal men came and everything was put up in boxes and everything was taken away and never seen again. And what effect did it have on you? Because you were quite young when it happened.

Yeah, well, I think mainly it was the sentimental things that were um the most sort of painful to lose because at the time I was sort of moving between houses and things anyway um hadn't sort of settled anywhere particularly yet so the financial side of getting on our feet in terms of getting a sofa and those sorts of things was not too bad but the things like photographs and the diaries and old books and presents from people those are the sorts of things that I really missed. Now, Pat, how did you come to lose all of your belongings? Well, I live in Newlyn, and I live right on the seafront, and there was a pub next door to me, and I've always lived on this front,

and at 20 to 1 on Sunday morning, somebody was shouting, get out, Pat, your house is on fire, and the whole of the pub was alight, and it caught light to mine too. So I just dashed down the stairs, and the beams all fell on the bed that I'd come out of, and I just got out in time,

and I stood on the front of the harbour and watched my house burn to the ground. Now, you're now 95, Pat. Yes, I was 94 at the time. It was a year ago. What particularly pained you that had been lost from such a long life? Well, everything I lost. The only thing that I really saved was I've always written a diary. And luckily, it was in a leather trunk.

And the leather trunk didn't burn and all my diaries were saved and so were all my clothes because they were locked into wardrobes and it was only smoke damage I was lucky but everything else went furniture and everything and photographs and unfortunately I haven't any relatives so I I can't claim any back or anything from anyone. So what happened in your case? We were in the process of moving house and we couldn't find some, we'd sold our house, but we couldn't find anywhere to live. So we went into furnished rented accommodation and we put our things in storage. And after 18 months of still renting, we got a letter from the storage company saying that the warehouse had burned down and all our things had been lost along with the belongings of 90 other families. So what was lost that you'd really

cared about? In those days it was 24 years ago there weren't any digital photographs and it was the photograph albums of my children when they were little, which was really painful. And also I saved the nicest of their toys and their books, hoping to use them with my grandchildren when they came along. They were lost too. And things, family things, we didn't have a lot of expensive furniture. Most of it was secondhand, but it was hundreds, well, my husband says thousands of books and family things we'd inherited. You had I think kept a few very personal items with you.

What didn't you lose that are still precious? A jewellery box which came from my grandmother. I took with me a couple of photographs of the children which were in frames which we took and my very favorite books um yeah that was it really now pat you had lived in your house that burned for i think 62 years and your mother had lived there too How did you cope with losing everything? Well, I was very, very lucky because I stood out at the front there, very traumatized, not knowing what to do or where to go, because all my friends are elderly and they're in one bedroom flats. But I was just standing there and

a man just along the road, a neighbor, came along and only knew him passing. And he said, what's happened, Pat? pat i said my house is burnt down he said what are you going to do i said i don't really know so he said well i've got a house here i'm getting ready he said for the summer season and i'm on my own and i've got three double bedrooms they were en suite i'll come back and i'll look after you so he was called crusoe and he took me along the road and he kept me there for five weeks and looked after me until I could find a flat in the village, which I did eventually. I know the piano was saved. That's right, my piano, my mother's piano.

And your clothes were saved. That's right, yes, and a few bits and pieces. Why were they so important to you? Well, because I'd had them all my life. We were in the pub for 30 years, my mother and I, next door as landladies. And then when we moved, it was right next door. So we brought all the furniture from the pub into the house that we were in. So everything in there was sentimental value because we'd been in there for 30 years before.

And so when we came into the house next door, we bought everything from the pub into this house. So it had been all part of my life. How did you really cope with it? Such a huge loss. Well, I always think life goes on. Eve, let me ask you, how are you coping now with all that loss that happened so long ago um yes fine I think I'd probably I'd take obsessive amounts of photographs of my children and make sure they're all backed up on computers and things like that which obviously couldn't do back then um but sometimes I do still think about all the things that were lost, and it is sad.

I sort of put it to the back of my mind. I don't want to seem selfish or materialistic or anything, thinking about those things, but it is a sort of grief, I suppose. Certain things really matter, don't they? How, Sue, briefly have you managed to replace things? Well in terms of photographs some of my family gave me photographs of my children, not very many, they weren't really a comfort because they were sort of posed family groups not funny little photographs that you take yourself. But it was kind of them.

And in terms of books, people gave us secondhand books and we went through a lot of secondhand bookshops. We haven't replaced the books. That's our heartache. One of the miraculous things was that we had three grandfather clocks and one of the grandfather clocks we'd bought for my father-in-law when he became a grandfather. And the workings and the brass face my husband found in the ashes of the storage place. And a local clockmaker soaked them for 18 months and managed

to fix the workings. So the grandfather clock now works. Sue Hepworth, Pat Plumbridge and Eve. And Susan sent us an email. She said, when my mother was 27, she had to flee South Africa, leaving everything she'd ever owned. As children, if we got too attached to objects or if something was lost or broken, she always said, it's just a thing, nice but unimportant. I live in a wonderfully empty house with few possessions and feel very lucky to have had that message as a child. Still to come in today's programme, paddle your board, your canoe or maybe a kayak, why it might be good for you and the benefits of being a member of a choir which may

become possible again as lockdown eases. And don't forget that you can enjoy Woman's Hour any hour of any day if you can't join us live at two minutes past ten during the week. All you have to do is subscribe to BBC Sounds and you find the daily podcast there for free or you can find it through the Woman's Hour website. Daisy Lee got in touch. She was 23 and using birth control when she felt an unfamiliar kicking sensation and she was shocked to discover she was 30 weeks pregnant. She had only two months to prepare, mentally and practically, for becoming a mother.

When did it occur to her that she might be pregnant? I came home from a very busy day at work and I lay down on my bed on my own. I was completely alone and I felt a feeling I had never felt in my life and it was almost kind of like a fluttering but it was also very prominent so it was I could almost feel like you see in a film a sort of a foot coming up and touching my tummy and I had never, ever felt it before, which is funny. So it was obviously the first day that my daughter had decided to show herself. I didn't even automatically think I was pregnant because I was so taken aback. You can imagine by feeling that. So I, I lay there and I just thought, oh my gosh,

I thought even if I am pregnant, how on earth can I, this baby be moving inside of me? Because I, I can't be, I knew that you had to be seven, eight months or nine months pregnant to feel that. So it was very, very out of the blue. What did your partner say? So before, well, I actually didn't tell anyone. I was so taken aback that I kept that news to myself for at least a day, actually. I took three pregnancy tests the next day which ended up all coming back positive um and I I almost panicked but I also thought you know what I refuse to believe that I'm very far along maybe I'm early in a pregnancy and that's okay because

it gives me time so I took I had those tests and I booked an emergency doctor's appointment um still didn't tell anybody didn't tell my partner because I didn't want to panic him so I ended up going to that appointment and the doctor confirmed that I was pregnant. And then after, during that day, after sort of being passed around by doctors, I ended up having an ultrasound as well. And that's when they confirmed I, she lifted up my dress actually and said, oh gosh, have you not noticed this bump? And I said, I do not have a bump. I've, essentially I had thought I put on some weight at the bottom of my stomach And I said, I do not have a bump. I've essentially, I had thought I'd put on some weight at the bottom of my stomach because I was, I was carrying this baby so low down in my pelvis

that I, the top of my stomach, I could breathe in and I could feel my rib cage and there was nothing there. So I thought, you know, as a, as a woman, you know, my weight fluctuated anyway, and I'm used to my tummy sort of growing and, you know, getting a bit podgy. So I had no problem that I'd put on some weight at the bottom. It was not a baby bump at all. But this doctor said, oh, gosh, you haven't noticed this bump. And then she did an ultrasound and said she actually went silent. And when she went silent, I knew she was about to say something quite life-changing. And she said, oh, Daisy, you're actually looking about 30 weeks pregnant,

which is seven months. And, I mean, you can imagine, I looked at the ceiling and I just, I was gobsmacked. I didn't even have any words to say. So before I told my partner, I actually called my poor mum and I shouted down the phone to her that I was pregnant. I didn't even process the news. I hope you didn't attempt to blame your mother. I didn't blame my mother, but she did live with me. So she couldn't believe that she hadn't seen it happen herself. I lived with three younger sisters and my mother, and no one had seen that I looked pregnant because I didn't. But I didn't process it.

I literally just shouted, Mommy, I'm pregnant. Help me. What am I going to do? And she came and picked me up. And then we kind of went through the process together before I even got to the stage of telling my partner. But when I did tell him, I told him later that day. And I had to tell him the whole story. You know, he hadn't even known that I felt kicking.

So I explained it to him and he was just, he'd slept in a bed with me for seven months and never known a thing. So he was absolutely gobsmacked, but he was fantastic. He was so supportive and he went and told his family and came back to me and said, Daisy, we can do this. We're going to be fine. On a serious note, I guess you hadn't been living the life of a pregnant woman, had you?

Because you didn't know. Exactly. So luckily for me, I mean, a lot of my story is very lucky. I'm not a big drinker and I hadn't been at all that year. Almost perhaps that was subconscious. But I had had no interest in having, you know, alcohol or anything or partying or anything like that, even though I'm in my early 20s. So I very much was focusing on work and my relationship. However, as you say, I was running around and I was on Oxford Street and going to meetings and, and just not acting pregnant at all.

I'd actually been on holiday the month before as well, in a bikini, and I'd been on a beach, you know, having a cocktail with no idea that I was six months pregnant so um I yes the first thing we worried about of course was the health of this baby um and the midwife that did my um my ultrasound was very keen that I got a scan booked and I mean the doctors that I called up couldn't quite believe it I thought it might be relatively common actually for this to happen but they they had not heard of anything like this. And I ended up having to get a private scan the next day as there were no NHS scans available for a few days. So I went to a private scan with very, very much afraid with my mother and my partner.

And as you said, I just I had no idea if this baby was even going to be born OK or healthy. And luckily I got there and the midwife, lovely midwife, did a very full scan for me and I was too scared to even look at the screen because it was still just sinking in for me. But my mother looked at the screen for me and the midwife was going, you know, there's five fingers, five toes, a perfect lung, perfect lungs, everything's there. And luckily the baby was completely healthy and she said, do you want to know the gender? And I said, well, I haven't actually got time to say no to that question. I've got two months. So yes, please tell me the gender. And it was a beautiful baby girl who was completely healthy. So I was very lucky. Yes. I mean, I know you're very anxious to point out that you know how lucky you are. First of all, you were healthy and you're in a loving relationship. And this pregnancy, although a shock, was not a disaster for you because you had support.

Yes, I was. I was so blessed. And although, yes, in that first week we were in complete denial. And I'll be honest, I was very, very, very scared. I didn't want to become a mother that quickly. I wasn't I thought, how can I have this responsibility on my shoulders? However, as you said, I was in a stable job with a stable boyfriend and I had lovely support from family members. So we said to ourselves, this poor baby has been in my stomach, growing herself completely on her own with no help from me. And the worst thing I could do would be to sort of not honour her

and to bring her into a world where we're not ready for her and where we're scared of her. So I made a very conscious decision to sort of look at it as a blessing and to just give this baby everything that I could. So we made it very positive as soon as we could. But as you say, the reason I like to speak about this is because there are women out there who, bless them, they wouldn't be in a position like I was.

And maybe I could have been 16, you know, or I could have been in a relationship where my partner wasn't going to be supportive, or where I didn't have enough money to do it. And that's why I just think it is important that women are aware that sometimes, I like to say, nature actually can win in this circumstance. And we do take birth control to sort of, you know, do as best we can to plan for a baby. But sometimes, sometimes yes nature wins and you you just have to go with that have you got um a peer group of mothers of a similar age because i think the average age now for a british woman to have her first child is about 30 so you are you are something

of an outlier absolutely well i will say in my um circle people that I know, I was definitely a very, very rare case and nobody else was even remotely ready for children. I have one very close friend who has planned for a baby and she's got a beautiful daughter. And I'm very lucky to have her because we sort of went through our pregnancies together, although I had two months and she had nine months of pregnancy. But she was there. And I actually would say that social media has been a great help for me because that's where I found the women who are my age and there are lots of women out there in their early 20s who chose to have a baby and have beautiful families and they plan for it and they're very happy in their situations and so I find a lot of solace in talking to those women but in person as you say no a lot of people my age are not ready at all and I do feel you know definitely as I do feel as

an anomaly yeah well we need to just honor young Savannah um who has well she made her presence felt uh significantly of course on that day when you felt her move and she's kept on moving because and this will irritate parents throughout the land because you're about to you're about to annoy them with how um precocious she. When did she walk for the first time? My very advanced daughter started walking at eight months, which was, I thought I had months left to plan for that, but she just went off. She's an absolute rocket.

She's all over the place. She climbs up on sofas. Yeah, and she's walking down the streets with me now and she's 10 months old. So I definitely have what I call a miracle baby. OK, so how do you think she'll go about her life quickly by the sound of things? So are we talking Olympic Games, a life in politics? What do you reckon? Oh, I will let her do whatever she wants to do, because I think she has very big plans, clearly.

And I'm not I'm not to stand in her way. You know, when she was in that womb, she was not letting me have any say in anything so whatever she wants to do I will stand by her and I know I honestly I do I'm I'm so I'm not only proud of her but I look up to her in a way because she I just can't believe how independent a little fetus can be um and yeah I will support her for all yeah all her life you have so much joy awaiting you not least not least the first time she tells you you don't know anything about anything. Believe me, that probably won't be very far off. I'll give it about another year. And are you back on the pill, Daisy? Oh, gosh. So I would say that the pill is absolutely effective. I would never tell women not to take it. But I would say that for me,

it clearly did not work. And I just think that I mean, there was no reason for me to fall pregnant on that pill, seeing as I was taking it so well. So I do think that my body was just that 1% of women who do, you know, it doesn't work for. So for me, I was very keen to find a different form of contraception. And I had to actually go straight back onto it when I after I had my baby, because you can't get another form of contraception like the coil for 12 until your 12 weeks postpartum. So I went back on the coil and I will say I took a lot of pregnancy tests during that time. But then I, as soon as I could, I got the coil fitted, which has been fantastic for me. So there are many forms out there and every, you know, every woman has a different form that will work for them, but I would never say the pill doesn't

work. It's just, for me, it wasn't't going to be my my contraception going forward. Daisy Lee and Annette sent us an email in which she said my mother was told she was having a baby in the July and I was born in September it was a tremendous shock as she had absolutely no idea this was in 1942 She'd been married nearly 20 years and my parents had adopted my sister 10 years earlier. This was her first pregnancy and she was 47 years old. I had a very happy childhood with my lovely family and now have a wonderful family of my own. You may have heard on social media of a hashtag She Paddles. Fiona sent an email saying she wanted to hear more about it and an initiative by British Canoeing and Canoe Wales to get more women out paddling,

a sport that includes kayaking, canoeing, paddleboarding and rafting. Emma Kitchen has started training to be a coach to help people improve their paddle skills. And Cady Lambert runs the She Paddles programme. That's a fantastic thing. With paddle sport, there is such a range. You can do anything from sort of gentle paddling on a canal in a canoe to whitewater, adrenaline, everything in between. And also the big new thing that a lot more people are doing, especially women, we're finding is stand-up paddleboarding,

which can be done on a range of different waters again. It's an absolutely fantastic sport for pretty much anyone of any age and any ability. Yeah, you say that, but you must need a degree of fitness to even begin, Katie. I would say you don't need a degree of fitness, you know, to get into a boat and go for a gentle pad. It's great because it doesn't put pressure on your joints and things. It's actually a really good way to begin getting fit.

Yes, to get started on your fitness journey and also to do it in a beautiful setting as well. And you can't do it on your own. You do need to be with other people, which I guess is also a really nice thing, great for mental health as well. Exactly, yes. It's wonderful for meeting new people. You can go down to your local club or centre,

go on a course, get your initial skills and meet lots of new people. And also the online community, the women's paddling community online, meeting people through that and getting advice on getting started. That's a really great way of doing it. All right. Let's bring in you, Emma. I know that you've recently got back into the sport. How has it helped you?

It's been absolutely amazing for me. My life changed quite drastically about three years ago. And it's really helped me to, I hate using the phrase, find myself, but it's really helped me to remember who I am and get back to the things I used to enjoy when I was a lot younger. Yeah, don't worry about using phrases like that, because actually I think they're really important and there's no reason why you shouldn't embrace the person you really were um because I know you've had you've

had a few issues um what what does it do for you is it being outdoors is it conquering something take me take me there um it's a bit of everything really so I'm I'm a massive advocate for the great outdoors um I think it's wonderful for so many things, fitness, mental health, just generally great well-being. But also there is an element of wanting to conquer things and, you know, trying to push yourself. So I'm very happy paddling on flat water. You know, I'm like a nice sheltered river.

But at the same time i quite like the adrenaline rush as well so i do whitewater kayaking and i've just started recently doing whitewater stand-up paddle boarding as well right i mean that that's not for the faint-hearted surely there's more than an adrenaline rush there there's a there's um there's different we call them different grades so there's different difficulty levels in the rivers. So you get some nice, gentle little rapids that you can learn on. And then there's a lot of things that some of my friends do, which are quite big and scary to me. Yeah. The Sunday Times yesterday had a headline,

Up the coast without a paddleboard, emergency calls soar for water sports. Katie, in your experience, are novices creating problems for the emergency services at the moment? I wouldn't call them a problem, but it would be wonderful if people could get some basic safety advice before they get out on the water. The Go Paddling website, go paddling.info has got absolutely masses of brilliant articles and we've published lots more recently realizing that there are more people out on the water after lockdown just to get people give people an idea of what

they need to think about before they go but we would always recommend that people do start off by going to a club or center just getting getting some initial skills, because it really does help to have those basic skills before they go out. And you have to be able to swim more than competently, presumably. You have to be confident in water. And certainly if you're going out independently, we would recommend that you can swim. But you don't have to be able to swim to get started with a club or centre. You just need to be confident in water because you will have a buoyancy aid on. It's really important that if you can't swim, you would always wear a buoyancy aid. But we do recommend that you generally wear them unless you're on a paddleboard where you also could, you are attached to the paddleboard.

So some people prefer not to wear them on that. But if you're a beginner, it's just always best to wear one. And Emma, the kit you need, what do you need to get started? Well, a kayak, a paddle, a buoyancy aid, or I would even go as far as saying if you're confident in water but can't swim, go for a life jacket instead because that helps you float on your back.

Whereas a buoyancy aid doesn't care which way up you float um depending on the type of water you're doing a helmet as well is really useful um that's basically the the real basics that you would need obviously a kayak canoe or a paddleboard or you know depending on what discipline you want to go down i haven't got a clue how is a second-hand kayak going for these days? That's a bit of a one at the moment, actually, because it's so popular, it's become quite expensive buying second-hand because the people want them, the demand is there. But usually it depends on how new it is.

Anything from between £100 to £400 for a second-hand one, maybe even more. Emma Kitchen and Caddy Lambert. It's been pretty well established that singing in a choir is good for you. It's of benefit physically and mentally, and it gives you the chance to make new friends with whom you meet regularly for choir practice. Two of you wrote to us about the impact of the virus on their choirs. Catherine Venables said her community choir had been a lifeline, but they hadn't met since March and she worried about the effect it will have on their cultural life. Will they ever get back to singing together?

The Department for Digital Culture, Media and Sport recently issued guidelines and said it should be possible for choirs to meet again outside or in a Covid-secure venue. Carolyn Acton wrote to us to say her choir, Funky Voices, had managed to keep her going through the last few months. Here, they're singing together. Well, we're joined by Sandra Colston, who leads Funky Voices. Elizabeth Tip, who is a clinical psychologist at the University of Edinburgh, researching the effects of singing on well-being and mental health.

And of course, by Carolyn. Her choir sounds terrific. But what does she get from being a member? Well, yeah, exactly. I felt really proud listening to that. It was great. Just huge fun and yeah, great benefit in terms of mental health, stress relief, just really picks you up during normal times when you've had a really hard day at work you can feel absolutely exhausted and go along and you just feel brilliant and then obviously during lockdown we were so lucky that um sandra put it online so we could carry on singing and it really was a lifeline um

to me and to everyone else in the choir i think to to give us to be able to keep going and see everyone on screen and uh and just take part yeah it was really good but Sandra how much has your job leading the choir changed as a result of lockdown can't be easy doing it all on screens no it's very different the main difference being that obviously I don't leave the house so we've converted one of our rooms in the house into a mini studio to be able to give them the best that we can so we also created a green screen behind where I teach from so that we can reflect how we can reflect who's who's actually in the choir that night. So then the members can all still see each other.

Otherwise, if we just purely did it on an audio basis, just using like a simple Zoom, as you said, then they would only see me and themselves as one-to-one. So we've created as much as possible as we can. And I can't hear them. Can they hear each other? No. It must be quite difficult to keep in tune and keep the different types of...

What's it called? I can't remember the technical term. Yeah, there's pitching and keeping them all together. Basically, I'm trusting that they are doing that in their homes. That's all on trust. What I've done is recorded the parts, so like a soprano and alto part or the different pitching within the choir myself, and that's what they can hear. So we stream that to them via the audio and then they

can pick which part they know they're supposed to so like a higher part or a lower part and they sing it through that what does that make sense yeah at parts that was the word i was searching for earlier which i just couldn't think of el Elizabeth, if I can bring you in here, what is it about singing, particularly in a group, that makes it so good for mental health? Well, to my knowledge, there's three key reasons why singing is good for you, and especially singing in a choir. The first, I would say, are the biochemical or the physiological processes. For example, endorphins go up, cortisol goes down. I already heard the first speaker say, you know, stress levels go down.

So, yeah, that kind of goes together. And oxytocin goes up. Breathing in itself, you know, breathing exercises can be very relaxing and are used as relaxation exercise in itself. And then the second reason are the psychological processes that most people are not aware of when they are in a choir. For example in cognitive behavioral therapy you have something called exposure. When you expose yourself to things that you're a bit anxious about, it can actually reduce the anxiety you feel over time. And as you all know, you know, singing together can be quite overwhelming when you first start. So it's definitely out of your

comfort zone. So you challenge yourself. And it also gives a sense of mastery, a boost to your self-esteem, doing things out of your comfort zone, as well as habituates, as they call it, the anxiety response. And for people with low moods in cognitive behavioral therapy, behavioral activation is something that can help people have more positive experiences and at the same time, new experiences and doing more things can also challenge any negative expectations people have from certain situations so that is what about people Elizabeth who who think oh no I can't sing I'd be far too embarrassed to try and sing with other people

standing alongside me in that sense and that may maybe something that comes up later, singing online is actually a good thing because other people can't hear you. So it's a very easy way to start when you're all muted. But it's very rare that someone can't sing because you have muscles in your neck and throat that actually help you sing and produce sounds. And there a lot you can learn and even by being around other people you can pick up on those habits and improve your singing. Carolyn, I know you've had a meeting outdoors, socially distanced, driving practice in a field. What was it like to finally get together again even though you had to be distanced? It was brilliant brilliant it was quite emotional i think for for sandra and for everyone taking part it was so good to see everyone and

also um so sandra has been teaching us new songs during lockdown and so we got a chance to actually hear everyone singing them for the first time not just us ourselves trying to sing along online so it was really special yeah how well did they work together again Sandra when they could really hear each other it was amazing actually yeah as Carolyn said it it was almost like a science project in itself without realising. Until the day I thought, I've not actually heard this in real life and realised that they hadn't heard it either. So they didn't seem nervous at all. So that was cool.

But as soon as they started, it just took my breath away because one, hadn't heard them for you know five months and two they'd managed to to learn these songs that I'd never taught them in in a conventional situation as we'd normally rehearse for the first time and they had got it all exactly how I was teaching it every night they'd got it um so it worked So the experiment worked and it was more than emotional. It was exciting. It was everything. And I had to stop conducting and just listen and watch

and just try and take it all in. I was quite breathless. Sandra Colston, Elizabeth Tip and Carolyn Acton. On Bank Holiday Monday, Women's Hour looks at the legacy of the play Educating Rita, 40 years on. Jane is joined by Dame Julie Walters,

who played the role in the original theatre production and, of course, the later film, the writer, Willie Russell, and four real-life Rita's, working-class women who returned to education in later life. That's Jane on Bank Holiday Monday at two minutes past ten. From me for today, enjoy the weekend. Bye-bye. I'm Sarah Treleaven, 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.