Woman's Hour - Nurses on the Frontline; Why babies laugh; Glasgow City FC; Marisa Meltzer

Episode Date: May 1, 2020

The number of people who have died with coronavirus in the UK has now passed 26,000, with some 15,000 in hospital. More than 100 NHS workers have died, a third of them nurses. What are the experiences and concerns of nurses working on the front line? Jane Garvey talks to Rachel Winterflood, a critical care nurse; “Mary” who works as a nurse in ICU and Jessica Sainsbury, a student nurse who has opted to finish her training with clinical practice.We talk to the two women who set up Glasgow City FC in 1988 at a time when sexism was a real problem in achieving equality in women's football (and still is!). Denied the access to the football they wanted to play when they were growing up Laura Montgomery and Cas Stewart decided to create the best team in Scotland and did! Glasgow City FC went on to win 13 consecutive League titles and reach the UEFA Women's Champions League quarter finals twice.The psychologist Caspar Addyman’s new book The Laughing Baby is all about the science of why babies laugh. He tells us what sets off a peal of delightful giggles and we hear stories and recordings from listeners about the things that have made their babies laugh.Marisa Meltzer was put on her first diet at the age of 5. Fast forward nearly four decades, Marisa comes across an obituary for Jean Nidetch, the woman who founded Weight Watchers in 1963. Marisa feels a moment of intense connection and decides to sign up for a year of Weight Watchers. In her book, This is Big Marisa ties together the biography of Jean Nidetch with her own story about body image, weight and her complicated relationship to food and dieting.

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 this is the Woman's Hour podcast. Incredibly, I'm gazing up at a screen which tells me it's the 1st of May 2020. Hardly seems possible. Good morning and we are going to talk to three nurses in a couple of minutes here on Woman's Hour. Also today, we're talking about babies laughing because, well, we can. And here is a baby laughing. I haven't officially got favourites, but that is good, isn't it? More laughing babies on Woman's Hour today. And we'll also talk about Jean Nydich. She was the founder of Weight Watchers.

And there's a really interesting new book out about her. It's called This Is Big. It's a book about Jean and her life. And it's also the story of the author's own relationship with her weight. So we'll talk about that. This Is Big is the name of the book. Marissa Meltzer is the name of the author. And she's live on Woman's Hour from the States a little bit later.

But the Prime Minister said yesterday, and it's all over the front pages of the papers today, we're past the peak and on the downward slope. Nevertheless, we all need to bear in mind that the number of people who've died with the coronavirus in the UK now stands at over 26,000. So we'll talk to three nurses this morning. To Jessica Sainsbury, who's in a final year of her student nursing. She's currently working in mental health. Rachel Winterflood is in critical care in the Midlands of England. And a woman we're going to call Mary also works in critical care in the south of England and she's somebody who's been doing that job for 17 years. Rachel, on the other hand, who's the first person I'm going to speak to, only qualified as a critical care nurse back in October.

So, Rachel, if you can, tell us a little bit about what the last couple of weeks of your working life have been like. Hello. It's quite hard to quantify it I mean obviously when it all first came in we were obviously really scared as I think everyone in the country was um I think it was more the unknown um and the unthinkable really that was going on um but as a team we've all banded together and worked together and I've had the support around me um from nurses that have been doing it for a lot longer than I have um are also scared but we've been supporting each other and working through it together yeah. Now a lot of nursing staff have been allocated to you and to your department who wouldn't

necessarily be in critical care. You were trained for critical care but you're now in a position where you're talking to other experienced nursing staff about how to do your job yeah um so we're having as a trust we're bringing people in from theatres because obviously a lot of operations have been cancelled or delayed um so we're bringing people in from theatre from outpatients um and my heart really goes out to them really because it wasn't a choice that they came into critical care um and yeah we've been training them up they've all been brilliant and really positive and obviously it's been thrown in at the deep end and with only seven months experience i've been trying to help them along with as much as i know um to try and get them happy and comfortable in the critical care

environment which is very different to the ward environment that I think they're used to. How does it differ from a more traditional form of nursing? Okay so in critical care we're basically normally one-on-one or two-on-one on patients so we're basically dealing with people that have organ failure either single or multiple and just need round-the-clock support to try and get them better and to fix them, really. So it is very intense, as it is in the name, and it is critical. But we have good stories and we have bad stories. But we all band together as a team to do our best for that person and that individual. Thank you very much, Rachel. We'll come back to you.

Mary, who's been working in the south of England. Mary, you've worked around the NHS for nearly 20 years. But even with your experience, I wonder whether you were in any way prepared for the last couple of weeks of your working life. This past couple of weeks, it's been much control. But initially, it was chaos. We didn't have equipment, we didn't have senior support, we were very short staff and so it was really unbelievable and the junior staff were working hard and we were really not knowing what the outcome would be for patients. And we did see so many patients at one particular time, very unwell, very unstable, very sick. In my 17 years of being in ITU working as an intensive care nurse, I've never seen this.

I've never seen this. And I remember coming home and not sleeping properly, thinking what's happening, how far would this go, what support we're going to have. But thankfully, as I said, in these past few weeks now, it's been much control. We're having lots of support from our leaders. We've got PPEs that are much, much comfortable. They're not sweaty, don't feel dehydrated and tired and thirsty. And it's a lot better. We hope it continues. You mentioned that initially you didn't have the right sort of protection. How long were you working without it, Mary?

I would say for the first couple of weeks when this crisis started I looked after a few patients that had COVID. I didn't even have masks and these patients were not intubated initially so they were coughing. We had to put them on what we call CPAP because we're trying to prevent intubation and we're using high flow oxygen equipment and these patients are coughing and so we are around their vicinity so we didn't have any equipment at all. The only equipment we had was our ordinary aprons and gloves that we had which we use for attending to patients. Now I know that, you are originally from Sierra Leone, and you'll be aware that, as reported by the Health Service Journal,

as of the 22nd of April, 71% of the nurses who have died from COVID in the UK were from a BAME background, but BAME staff only make up 20% of the workforce. Does that really concern you as you go into work? It does really concern me because we are most of the time the nurses on the shop floor. Most of the BAME staff are the staff that are junior members of staff at the shop floor with the patient, not in many management positions. So it does affect us. And now we're having emails about risk assessment. We've never had any risk assessment initially to say, what is your risk, what you need to do. And even with the fitting of mask, I've never been fitted with mask to see whether I've got complete protection. So I'm just going there, put the mask on, hoping that pray that I don't get infected.

And my worried also coming home, I'm trying to isolate myself from my my daughters so if I do get infected I'm not passing on passing it on to them. Yeah we need to remember don't we that our nursing staff do have lives they do go home to their houses and flats and you've got people to care for there who are dependent on you. I also gather that you've struggled to do your shopping over recent weeks. Oh yes, as I said, initially when we start having patients with COVID, we're just walking, walking in and out of hospital, coming, rest and go back. And then I went to the shop, there was nothing there for me to get. And I was really frightened then. I wasn't initially frightened about looking after the COVID patient. It's when I went to the supermarket to do my weekly shopping and there

was nothing for me to get. And I was really, I thought like, it's like in a war zone. We're going to be starving. There's nothing here to get. I was really scared. That's when it really sinking to say, this is serious. this is really bad. Mary thank you very much. Jessica Sainsbury is on the students committee the head of it actually at the Royal College of Nursing final year student nurse. Jessica what are you actually doing at the moment in terms of your work? So I have decided to we were given the option whether we could opt in to change the end of our nursing education program um so that we finished it out in practice so due to my um and my own health that was the best option for me personally and i was also very acutely aware of um you know the staff shortages in in the nhs so i felt that i i had

to go in um and and do my bit really so what are you doing so i am based with a mental health crisis team which is community-based i am studying to be a physical health nurse as well as a mental health nurse so i'll have two registrations so I did have the option about where to go and I was just very keen to help out with the mental health front line because although you know we're not in your traditional front line we are still very much operating and seeing people who could potentially be positive with the virus and we still need to look after people's mental health as well. And to what degree are the patients you're seeing impacted by everything else that's going on around all of us at the moment?

This is an anxious time, to put it mildly. Yeah, it is definitely something that is on our client group's mind as well, to the point where a lot of people who would normally be using this service are avoiding it. Obviously, I can't comment on behalf of all of our clients, but it has been something that people are wary of and they may not want nurses coming into their homes due to the virus um you know and they're also not willing to to come to us either so um it which is quite concerning because these people need um the interventions that we're able to offer but they're avoiding it due to the virus thank you very much jessica um rachel, I was really struck by the passionate tone of the email that you sent to our programme. You talk about noses red, bleeding and blistering, hands cracked, appetites gone because of how restrictive and claustrophobic the masks are. And you also say

I love my job, but I and I chose it. I bloody fought for it, in fact, but I didn't choose to go to work every single day and risk my life and watch my colleagues risk theirs. I bloody fought for it, in fact. But I didn't choose to go to work every single day and risk my life and watch my colleagues risk theirs. I didn't choose to have to isolate from my family either. None of us have chosen this. And you plead with the public and say your job right now, and I'm pleading with every one of you, is to follow the guidelines set out for you.

What is it you've seen, Rachelachel that has angered you so much i think i think it's just really hard when i go to work i live in telford and i travel to birmingham that's obviously my choice to commute in um the amount of traffic especially at over the last few days has just been unreal um the amount of people um just just in cars just driving around and just walking really close to you in corridors and in streets and just not really thinking about what risk they can have um and i think it's just frustrating especially as nurses and i think it's of anyone really um obviously it might not you it might not be yourself that gets covid or suffers with covid and if you're blessed it won't be your loved ones either but i think it's the fact that

we need to have the responsibility as a country to protect everyone and i mean as nurses the ability to care and think about the well-being of someone we don't even know is something we just do every day that is our job yeah and i think it's just trying to get everyone to think about the greater good really and we need your help to be able to do that so we don't have obviously a potential second wave um because that's obviously we've got a lot more in place than we did at the start um i was really lucky and we all were fit tested for masks and all had our masks before this crisis started because I think in critical care

we do deal with infectious diseases sometimes. That is something that happens. So our trust, we're on top of that luckily. But when you hear the Prime Minister say we're past the peak and on the downward slope, what was your reaction to that? It was hard to hear. I think it needed to be a little bit more clearer

that obviously at the moment we still need to have that responsibility and still need to keep the social distancing in place. It's a big concern that obviously if we come out of this lockdown that sometimes it's being adhered to and sometimes isn't, it's obviously clearly helped with the numbers, hence why the numbers are going down. But I think our big concern is if everyone just goes out and carries on as normal and maybe forgets how they should be acting, we're just going to have another wave and it's just going to hit us harder. Yes, we might be more prepared, but there's still a limit to beds and space that everyone has um throughout the country and i think we just need to think a bit outside the box and about other people yeah other than ourselves i think in the interest of transparency i need to

say that i am a non-executive director of an nhs trust but but rachel it's worth bearing in mind that if people had seen what you've seen over the last couple of weeks they would not be approaching this with any sort of light-heartedness this weekend would they they'd still continue to take everything very seriously exactly and i think it's to take this time at the moment and i know it's been said before but to hold your loved ones close to call them if you can't see them and make sure you love them completely and cherish them because at the hospital at the moment we're not allowed to have families in obviously um in people's last moments and that that's the hardest thing for me personally and i think my colleagues to deal with and i think we all need to think yes it would

be nice to be able to go for a walk or to go walking in the Lake District but at the moment I'd rather have my family sat next to me healthy and well. Thank you very much for making your point so passionately and indeed we also thank you that was Rachel Winterflood who's a critical care nurse you also heard from a lady we're calling Mary who also works in critical care in her case in the south of England and from Jessica Sainsbury who is a final year student nurse currently working in mental health and our thanks thanks to all. And if you want to discuss what you heard there, at BBC Women's Hour on Twitter. Worth saying that on Tuesday's programme, we talked about research indicating that women were more likely to follow the guidance on lockdown measures. Well, yesterday, the National Police Chiefs Council reported its data on the 9,000

fines issued for breaching the current guidelines. And it's just worth noting that 80% of the fines did go to men. So that was announced yesterday and backs up what we were discussing a little earlier in the week. Now, Glasgow City FC was established in 1988 by the two women you're about to hear from, Laura Montgomery and Cass Stewart. And they had a simple ambition, quite a bold one, to create the best team in Scotland. And they have. They did. Glasgow City FC has so far won 13 consecutive league titles and got to the UEFA Women's Champions League quarterfinals twice. Cass, Laura, good morning. Welcome to the programme. How are you? Good morning. Very well. Excellent. Thank you both very much. Now, Laura, can we start with you? What was your

experience of playing football when you were growing up? Yes, very, very limited. I should add we were formed in 98, so you've just made me quite a bit older. Apologies. Yeah, I mean, I was born in the very end of 1975. So basically when I was at primary, I played every day, but I wasn't allowed to play for the boys team. Similarly, you know, and obviously there wasn't a girls team. Same thing kind of happened in secondary school, to be honest. And it kind of took me to form my own team at school, which was fantastic. We looked brilliant. We had a strip. We just had no one to play against.

So pretty much it wasn't until I went to university at 17 years old that I was actually able to play organised football. How did you actually play against anybody? Indeed, did you manage to play against anybody? To be honest, I mean, looking back, the kind of teacher that I probably bullied into taking us, I mean, I think we played in about three or four years, we played three games. So he must have been on the phone to every school, just asking them if they could put a team together. But we know we got together every week. Obviously, rydym yn gwybod, fe wnaethon ni gyd bob wythnos. Yn amlwg, rydw i wedi chwarae yn y gwneud oedd y ffordd i'w chwarae bob dydd, ond roeddem yn cael, rydym yn gwybod, sesiwn bob wythnos lle roeddem yn teimlo ein bod ni'n

dod i gyd fel tîm a'n hyfforddi. Felly, rwy'n meddwl, yn y ffigur mawr, roedd hynny'n rhywbeth, ond yn sicr, wrth gyd, yn ffrustruol iawn i gael yr holl ddau aelodau, ac yn gwybod, a blwys gyda fi a oedd yn ffrindiau, a fyddwn i'n chwarae gyda nhw bob dydd ac, ie, ar y to have all these peers and boys who I was pals with that I would play with every day and yet at the weekend they could go and put on a strip and play as part of a team and I couldn't. Cass, did it frustrate you too? It must have done. Yes, well, I'm 10 years older than Laura so while she was going through that struggle at primary and secondary school

I was going through it at secondary and university and so university was the first time I actually managed to play football in a five-a-side. How was that arranged? Was it difficult? Did you have to muscle your way in and put a few noses out of joint? Well yes I did actually because the advert was for

a league, five-a-side league and I put an application in to put in a team and I'd been there at university, I was very excited about the first prospect of actually playing football because it had been kept from me during my primary school and secondary school and when the application went in the I was then pulled into the sports committee head of the sports committee to tell me that it was a boys league and girls weren't allowed to apply so after a bit of um argue barguing we agreed that I could put a team in and I was allowed two boys in the team as well as five girls.

So that was fine. I mean, we could play football. We didn't really care. So we played in a league. And how did you two meet? Because Cass is a cheat. Go on. So, yeah, so I went to University of Glasgow.

And as I said, they had a team. And in joining that team, Cass played for that team, despite the fact Cass was in full-time employment and went to another university 10 years previously. She had absolutely no right to be there at all, Cass, did you? At every rate. But Glasgow City FC, established, as I'm now absolutely certain in 1998, who had the original idea? Can you agree on that, Cass?

I don't think that either one of us could say it was my idea because it was just a meeting of minds. We were both equally frustrated for playing with a team that wasn't particularly great. We were frustrated with the administration, the lack of good quality pitches. We played on potato fields half the time, that's what it felt like. It was just a meeting of minds, we just get so frustrated with everything and said look we could do a better job, we know that we can create a team of better players, we can get better facilities and it was just a meeting, it was like a perfect storm really, we were equally frustrated and would you agree with that Laura or are you going to take credit?

No, no I'd love to I will succumb to this, no it was definitely Cass was right, it was just a meeting of minds to be honest that we kind of both felt we could create something pretty special together You cannot though have fantasised

about the level of success you've had of 13 league titles in a row, that is incredible. And the quarterfinals of the Europeans. I mean, this is not small fry, this stuff. This is really, really huge success on any level. And really significantly, Laura, there's no connection to an established men's team. No, and I think, to be honest, I mean, probably now when Cass and I reflect,

one of our biggest frustrations is that the team probably hasn't had the recognition they deserve. You know, because I kind of think, you know, to win 13 titles in a row is extremely challenging. And we have done that every year with, you know, a significant overhaul of the squad. You know, so it's incredible reflection on the players that we've had

and their winning mentality to have those standards to continue to want to win year on year. And then on the European front, I mean, if I'm being brutally honest, Scottish teams should be nowhere near the quarterfinal. I mean, we play teams that have budgets just so astronomically way above ours.

I mean, it takes us back, our first Champions League experience quarter final in 2015 we played Paris Saint-Germain and they told us their budget was 7 million euros and at that point our budget for our entire club, including all 12 teams

would have been about £100,000 Wow No Cass, I mean that's an astonishing difference and shows how successful you've been. Totally punching above your weight. Yeah, and it's just in our DNA. We just don't seem to let things bother us. We just batter on and we've just got such a determination

especially within the first team. We have a DNA of players that winning is just their philosophy and the coaching staff, everybody just expects to win all the time I can't explain how we've created it. Laura herself is a great leader and has a DNA in her and her energy

and enthusiasm for taking the game forward is a force field that few could match and I think especially people at Margo, Purple TV, who have put this documentary together and our club, I mean, great thanks to them for recognising our achievements and putting it out there and letting people appreciate it and letting girls see that great things can be achieved if you really are passionate and can believe in something.

Well, I really recommend the documentary. Cass, thank you very much. Cass Stewart, and you also heard from Laura Montgomery. Glasgow City FC established 1998. And if you want to know more, The Women Who Built Glasgow City, it's available now on the BBC iPlayer. Now, I talked on Monday to Yvette Cooper, who is the chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee,

Labour MP, of course. She was talking about the increasing rates of domestic abuse in lockdown and confirmation today that Boots is providing safe spaces in its consultation rooms. So what you do if you need help about domestic violence, go to Boots, to the pharmacy counter, that's the most important thing, and ask to use the consultation room. You will be shown into the room and you'll be able to get information there. My understanding is this does apply to every single branch of boots. Not every branch of boots has a consultation room, but there will be somebody on the pharmacy counter who is trained to offer some sort of practical

assistance in terms of passing on numbers and information. So hope that helps. They're available now in boots across the country. Now to laughing babies. And by the way, thanks to everybody who tweeted and emailed and sent us audio files of the babies in their lives. We really appreciate this. Casper Adyman is able to join us.

He's written a new book called The Laughing Baby. What's it about, Caspar? I mean, there's a clue in the title, isn't there? Yeah, it's about how much fun it is to be a baby and the science that explains that. Right, OK. Do all babies laugh? And what age do babies start laughing?

Pretty much every baby. They're practising already in the womb, but the first real laughs are around three to five months. I see. Practising in the womb? Yes, ultrasounds have shown things which look a bit like laughter already in the womb. Well, what might make an as-yet-to-be-born baby laugh? It's just a natural response. I mean, it's something that's already built in, like hiccups when they're hiccuping in the womb. Is it actually just wind, Caspar, if we're honest?

No. That's what people say about the very first smiles, and those are definitely not trapped wind. I've asked lots of parents. They know their babies better than anyone else, and when they say this was a real smile of satisfaction, I'm going to believe them over an old wives' tale. Let's cut to the chase then. Let's just hear some babies laughing.

Chris Baker is a listener. He uses this recording of his grandson laughing as his ringtone because it makes him smile. That is fantastic. And there are more coming. That's the good news. Is it fair to say, Casper, that laughing and smiles from babies are nature's way of rewarding the hard labor of parents particularly mothers

yes i mean it's a way of keeping you engaged with what they're doing i like to think of it as the opposite of babies crying that's a very clear signal that they want something to stop laughter is their way of making you carry on with whatever's going on right at that moment. Yeah, but what might make a baby laugh in terms of physical sensations? Which are the ones that get the babies going? Well, more than anything else, tickling is like the winner there. And that's actually a really ancient thing. Lots of mammals respond to tickling. So it's probably been around for millions and millions of years.

Because I'm not ticklish now. Would I have been ticklish as a baby? Are all babies ticklish? We're investigating that at the moment. It seems like most babies are ticklish and they almost all enjoy it. It's just something that people grow out of, weirdly. Really? That's astonishing, isn't it? I think there needs to be more research on that. Charles Darwin, is it true that he used to go around tickling babies with his beard? So there is a wonderful article Darwin wrote about babies. And in that, he was doing little experiments with his own children.

And he said that when tickled a baby will respond with laughter unless it's by a strange man. And so I just have this vision of Darwin going up to prams in the parks, trying this out. Yeah, well, of course, at the moment, that would be inappropriate on absolutely every level. So if there are any would-be Charles Darwins out there, social distancing, please bear it in mind. I cannot imagine, I've always wondered what it might be like to have twins. Here are some wonderful twin giggles

from 10-month-old twins Fred and Billy. That is absolutely brilliant. What sort of research has been done, Casper, on twins and laughing? Very little, actually. Most laughter is looked at with parents. I did have one. I had asked lots of parents how many times a baby laughed in a day. I had a parent of twins in Colombia who actually counted. She got up to about 500 laughs in one day between them.

And then she sort of she gave up. What? 500? Yeah. 500 separate incidents of laughter? Between the two twins, yes. Yeah, I mean, I've sort of heard anecdotally that twins, when one cries, the other might start around the same time or perhaps even worse, leave it until one's finished and then start crying. What actually I mean, is there is there a similarity between laughter and tears in this respect? I think it's going to be something they share. Absolutely. Yes.

I mean, we as adults, we laugh really much with our best friends. And who could be a better friend in the whole world than your twin? Yeah, of course. That does sound amazing. This is another one. This is more sophisticated in a way. It's from Noor, who is 16 months. And Noor is giggling because her mum is pretending to fall off a chair. Here we go. Now, Nora is probably highly intelligent.

She's a Radio 4 listener. But how does she know that that sort of physical humour is funny? Why is she laughing? I think even at that age, she knows that her mum is doing it as a joke. Actually, Freud thought otherwise. He thought that babies, when somebody fell over, they had a sense of superiority that, ha ha, that wasn't me. But our research says that that's just not true. It's only when it's kind of in this safe, like clowning type way that they're going to laugh. So babies are sophisticated enough to know that it's only pretend?

Yes, absolutely. Right. Trust Freud to be a bit of a killjoy and to find a negative in all that. But he did anyway. Did Freud get be a bit of a killjoy and to find a negative in all that. But he did anyway. Did Freud get anything right in terms of babies and laughter, would you say? No, I tend to think not. I mean, he was very interested in jokes and babies don't really respond so much to jokes.

They respond to the person telling the joke. Right. Because it's someone they trust. Because it's something that they can share with you. They might not understand what you're saying to them at three or four months old, but they know who you are and they really, really like you being there. Is there anything very strange you've found that has made a baby laugh? One of the strangest, and you might have seen this in YouTube videos, is babies that respond to tearing paper. So at first that seemed like just another weird thing.

And then more and more people started doing it and more and more babies were laughing at it. And I still have absolutely no idea why. Well, we had an email from a listener called Bev who said her daughter used to laugh at the cooker all the time. And we've no idea why, she said. It might have been it wasn't your cooking, Bev. It was the cooker that the baby was laughing at. Let's end with Diana's grandson, Charlie, who is catching a softball. Now, he is now 10, but she says she still plays it every day as it never fails to make her laugh out loud.

Well, make your own mind up. Here is Charlie. I think we might have to give Charlie the crown of the gigglers because that was absolutely incredible Casper, is there any way that you can keep on repeating the same gag? Or do babies and toddlers like the rest of us tire of jokes after a while? Well, if you think about peekaboo, which is the ultimate in baby laughter, they're going to keep laughing to keep you playing at a certain point. So, yeah, what they really crave more than anything else in all of this is is your attention and so as long as you're giving them like real attention they're going to keep rewarding

you with laughter yeah and the more attention you give a baby the more they appreciate it simple as that yeah well it's it's what's the biggest thing they have to learn about in the other in the whole world it's it's other people and um you attending to them is their chance to do that okay sometimes it can be hard looking after small babies but i think i'd like to just reinforce that point the more you put in the more you and they will get out of it however hard it might seem at the time yes absolutely yeah okay i don't know why i was stating the obvious there but uh it's always good to hear, isn't it? Casper Adiman, thank you very much. He is the author of The Laughing Baby. And thanks for all the tweets just saying thank goodness for giggling babies.

Just what I needed to hear this morning at BBC Women's Hour if you want to get involved. Now, I really enjoyed reading this book. This is Big by Marissa Meltzer. And Marissa joins us from the States now. Very early with you, Marissa. Good morning to you. How are you? I'm fine. Thank you so much for having me. Great, great pleasure. Now, your book, This Is Big, it's effectively, it's part biography of a woman called Jean Nydich, the founder of Weight Watchers.

And it's partly about you and your own relationship with your body and with your weight. Your first diet was when you were incredibly young. Just how old were you? You know, I don't even exactly know. I think I was four or five. But, you know, I was young enough that I don't ever remember a reality of food not existing as some kind of diet plan. And your parents monitored what you took in, didn't they? They took more than a keen interest in what you were eating. They did. I grew up in California in the 1980s, which was a pretty, you know, image obsessed time and place and have parents that were pretty sporty people who ate healthy food. And I think that my kind of unruly, rebellious body was

a little bit confusing to them. And they were, you know, coping in the way that they probably knew how, which was to try to discipline what I ate. You did go with your mom to Weight Watchers back in the 1980s. Now, what did you make of it at the time? I just remember it feeling like yet another way that I was being punished around eating that I didn't entirely understand. I have a vivid memory of the night before the diet was going to start and trying to go and drink some lemonade and my mom saying, you know, that'll be your last glass and that I shouldn't drink my calories. And, you know, Weight Watchers then became just this kind of symbol of failed diets for me. What was the atmosphere?

Yeah, what was the atmosphere like at Weight Watchers? It was, you know, I definitely, there weren't any other kids there at the time. That's for sure. You know, it was a little bit humiliating. You were weighed publicly. They didn't necessarily declare how much you weighed, but there was that, you know, it's a fine line, I guess, between accountability and public humiliation. But that part resonates for me, for sure.

Yeah, there's so much fascinating social history in this book, because there were other organisations like one I'd never heard of, TOPS, Take Off Pounds Sensibly. And there was one horrific aspect of that organisation. If you'd gained weight in the week before the meeting, you had to go and stand in what they refer to as a pig pen. You were publicly shamed. Sometimes you had to put on like a little pig nose or some places even made you put a sign in front of your home saying that you were the loser that week. Yeah, I mean, this is to me, I was simply astonished by that. What is significant about Weight Watchers International is that it was founded in 1963, which was the same year as, for example, Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique. Now, would you make the case for Weight Watchers being feminist?

No, I wouldn't say that Weight Watchers itself is feminist because they're a company. And what's more, they're a company that makes money on us being repeat customers and, you know, not being successful at losing weight. But the idea that Jean Nidich had behind Weight Watchers was that community would be essential and that people who were trying to lose weight could find friendship, they could find advice, solace, compare notes with other people who were struggling with the same thing, which is not so far off from the kinds of consciousness raising groups and other kinds of things that they had in that era of women's liberation. Kind of this idea that there was once all of these things that women had to kind of toil through

in private, that was just this sort of thing that they had to deal with on their own and maintain. And, you know, there was this push to make some of those things more public. And I do see Weight Watchers as a piece of that. Tell me more about Jean. Who was she? Where was she from? Like me, Jean was from Brooklyn and she was a working class Jewish housewife who had struggled with her weight her whole life. And when she was almost 40 years old in the early 60s, she was mistaken for pregnant at a grocery store by an acquaintance. And that was really like her rock bottom moment. And she decided then and there to lose weight.

And she did. And she taught the diet to her friends. And that sort of grew and grew and became Weight Watchers. And, you know, she became a millionaire whose face was on frozen foods. Yes. She ended up living and there's nothing wrong with this, but she ended up in sheltered housing. And I was really I don't know how I felt about the revelation in the book that she was still limiting herself in terms of what she ate. She never, she would allow herself one little scoop of ice cream, for example. She was still living the life and the lifestyle, wasn't she, right up until the end?

Yeah, you know, it was a bit of a gilded cage because she lost the weight and that became her source of fame and fortune and really her whole identity. But she had to maintain that weight in order to kind of stay the woman that she had become. And I think it really became how she thought of herself. You know, in researching the book, I talked to plenty of people who knew her and said she actually did struggle and did sometimes gain weight, which is perfectly normal, especially considering she was doing things like quitting smoking and going through menopause. But she wasn't able to ever talk about that publicly, which I do think is sad. I think, you know, if Oprah is an example, we certainly love... She owns part of Weight Watchers, doesn't she? She does.

Yeah. She does. And we certainly love a public figure who's honest about their struggles with weight. It humanizes them, right? That was the American writer, Marissa Meltzer, talking about her book, This Is Big, which is, I hope I made clear,

is partly about her own experience and partly about the life and times of the woman who founded Weight Watchers International. Now, I think it's fair to say that most of you today who contacted the programme just wanted to say, can we have a laughing baby on every day? And I think there's widespread, well, widespread desire for me to be replaced just by a laughing baby. And I get why that would be better on almost every level. Probably also be significantly cheaper for the BBC. So let's do that.

I can head for the hills and just to be replaced by a gigantic laughing toddler from Monday morning. Let's just go through some of your thoughts on this. Barry says, can we just have 10 minutes of babies laughing in every single edition of Woman's Hour from now on? Paul says, thanks for that article about giggling babies. Our children are in their 20s now, but the unstoppable happiness those sounds brought back from their early years was the most heartening feeling I've had in weeks. Well, that was the intention, Paul. Thank you for that. That's brilliant. From Kim, I've been listening to those gorgeous, that was the intention, Paul. Thank you for that. That's brilliant. From Kim, I've been listening to those gorgeous babies

laughing and it took me back to when I had my first son. He was actually a serious baby and it was almost impossible to get him even to smile. We tried everything from the usual peekaboo to blowing raspberries on his tummy. Zilch. Nothing.

I always worried that he'd grow into an unhappy adult. But luckily, he's a very happy grown-up, whereas his two other brothers were great smilers and gigglers. Thank goodness it made the whole thing much more rewarding. I'm smiling just at the memories, so thank you very much. You don't really explain why your first son didn't laugh. I actually just didn't think you were funny, Kim. I mean, he just was a tough crowd.

I'm a bit like that myself. It's quite hard to make me laugh. Not everybody enjoyed the item, BBC Balance. Ugh, babies, says one listener. I've got no children of my own through choice. The only babies I have anything to do with are my nephews. I've got no interest in other people's babies whatsoever and I will not be won over even by laughter. Other people's babies are dull, laughing or not. Oh, there we are. I mean, honestly, you cannot please all the people

any of the time, as Radio 4 will tell you. Maggie did have another thought. I enjoyed this item purely because it was infectious and it made me laugh. A tonic during these hard times as I stand alone in my kitchen listening to the radio. It reminded me of when I used to phone my elderly father, living alone some distance from me. I would ring, wait for him to answer. Then without saying anything, play the laughing policeman down the phone. And the reaction was worth it. He'd laugh

and giggle all the way through the track until it ended. I can picture him at the other end of the phone and I'd laugh myself at hearing him laugh. And that was the connection and the tonic for us both. That is really interesting. I suppose as proof that you can never please all the people any of the time, I really hate The Laughing Policeman. And I used to be upset when it was played on Junior Choice. Here we are. I should also say that my own mother WhatsApped me during the course of that item

and said she remembered the first time that I laughed. I then replied asking when the occasion was and she hasn't yet replied. So there you go. So communication has withered on the vine there. Many people wanted also to comment on the very first conversation we had about the nurses that we spoke to. I think this is important. This is from Lorna. Please, please send that brave nurse's testimony

straight to the government. Get her into the daily briefing so folk will understand the reality of COVID and continue to stay at home. We all need to be aware this is not going away soon. Thank you to those brave NHS workers. Well, so say all of us. Thank you for that. And from Beryl, I was outside my home last night clapping in support of

the NHS, who I think are doing a good job looking after us all. But has anybody mentioned our amazing district nurses who are out there in other people's homes in very close personal contact with patients who may have been discharged from hospital without being tested for COVID. Has anyone asked if they have efficient PPE? I don't think district nurses have mentioned enough. It's time this changed and they too were shown the appreciation that they so richly deserve. I think we have mentioned district nurses. If we haven't, then I apologise, but I'm pretty certain Woman's Hour has acknowledged the wonderful work that these people do. You're absolutely right, Beryl.

And about pharmacies, it isn't just boots. We need to make this clear. All pharmacies now have trained pharmacists and staff that can signpost vulnerable children and adults to the appropriate services, and most do have a consultation room available. So there may be issues, of course, in some chemists and pharmacies with social distancing, but we need to make clear it isn't just boots that can help.

So just to emphasise that. And actually, let's say a big up to pharmacies. I've got a, can I just say, I've got a wonderful pharmacist. I really have actually a couple of very patient brothers who run my local pharmacist who are brilliant. They're not just patient with me, which takes some doing, they're patient with everybody. So yes, let's acknowledge the wonderful thing that pharmacists are

and the wonderful way they are conducting themselves right now. Thanks to everybody who contacted us. Thanks to everybody. You can leave this in because nobody minds on the podcast thanks to everyone who's contacted us this week I think it's fair to say these remain challenging times for us all

but I'm really grateful to my colleagues who continue to come in so let's acknowledge Emma and Sarah and Lucinda and Di who put the program out today. Thanks to them. And thanks to you for listening. We're back live on Monday morning, two minutes past 10.

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's 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.