Woman's Hour - Women, alcohol and lockdown, The Equal Pay Act at 50, Public toilets, Giving birth in lockdown

Episode Date: May 30, 2020

An editorial in the British Medical Journal reported that one in five harmful and dependent drinkers got the help they needed, and now the proportion will be lower. How do you cope with an alcohol problem under lockdown? We hear the experience of a listener, the journalist Catherine Renton who has been sober for over 3 years, and from Julia Sinclair, professor of Addiction Psychiatry, University of Southampton and consultant in alcohol addiction. She’s also chair of the Royal College of Psychiatry’s addiction faculty.It is fifty years since the Equal Pay Act became law. However, it’s proved tricky over the years for women to find out what their male comparators were earning. It’s also proved tricky for women without financial and legal support to use the law. However, cases have been brought over the years and as the law has been strengthened. Frances O’Grady, General Secretary of the TUC and Jane Hannon, Employment partner at the law firm DLA Piper discuss. The writer Michele Roberts discusses her memoir Negative Capability - written after the rejection of a novel by her publisher caused hurt and depression. Lizzie tells her story of giving birth during lockdown. We also hear from the obstetrician Dr Kenga Sivarajah.Council cuts have meant that there are 50% fewer public toilets than a decade ago. Coronavirus has caused even more closures – albeit temporarily. But where does that leave people who need urgent access to the loo? Jo Umbers from the Bladder and Bowel community explains how this issue is affecting women of all ages. Raymond Martin, from the British Toilet Association, discusses the economic and health importance of public toilets in a post-Covid world.Jackie Kay, the National Poet for Scotland, discusses her new online poetry and music festival Makar to Makar, which is streaming via the National Theatre of Scotland's YouTube channel. We also hear poetry from Gerda Stevenson and music from Claire Brown, who are both performing in the festival.Presenter: Jane Garvey 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. Hello, very good afternoon. This week we talk about pregnancy and giving birth in lockdown and also what life is like with a newborn. You won't be able to forget the story of Lizzie, so you'll hear more from her a little later in the programme. We'll talk too about coping with an alcohol problem during the coronavirus lockdown

and we'll feature the writer Michelle Roberts on dealing with rejection. I lost all memory of previous success or respect or the affection of readers. That was the dreadful thing about it. That just all vanished and there was nothing but feeling like a smashed empty eggshell. You can also hear Jackie Kay, Scotland's MACA or National Poet, talking about her weekly online festival of poetry and music. And are you staying in because so many public toilets are shut? More about that issue on Weekend Woman's Hour as well.

First, it was 50 years to the day yesterday since the Equal Pay Act became law. That legislation came about after the strike by female machinists at Ford in Dagenham and enshrined in law the right to claim equal pay for work of equal value. But it's been difficult over the years for women to find out how much their male comparators are earning. And women with no financial or legal support may simply have decided not to bother. Here's one woman speaking, in some anger it has to be said, to a BBC News reporter in 1973. We want a fair living wage.

That's all we're asking for. Our wages are absolutely disgusting. We want equal pay for women. The firm are messing about. They just don't want to give it to us. But do you not think the government is trying to introduce equal pay for women, the firm are messing about, they just don't want to give it to us. But do you not think the government is trying to introduce equal pay? Oh the government is, yes. The government's doing everything they can because it's got to be done hasn't it? But it's our firm, they just don't want to know.

I mean we're not only fighting for equal pay for us, we're fighting for more money for our men. Do you want to see the government force firms like yours? Yes, definitely. Absolutely. Definitely. We've got to have this equal pay and it's got to be done. Well, that was 1973, some years, of course, even then since the Equal Pay Act had come in. On Friday, I talked to Francis O'Grady, General Secretary of the TUC, and to employment lawyer Jane Hannan from the organisation DLA Piper. I asked Frances O'Grady what the Labour politician Barbara Castle, who introduced the Act back in the 60s, would have made of where we are today in 2020 in terms of equal pay.

Well, I hope that she would recognise that we haven't got far enough. I mean, at this rate of improvement of closing that gender pay gap, it's going to take another 50 years. That's far too long for women to wait. And why should we? I think if we've learned anything over the years, it's that there are always decent employers out there who will do the right thing. But there are always some, as the Fari contributor earlier said, who simply won't. And so you need a level playing field, a law that requires all employers to play fair by women. But, you know, there are still millions of women missing out today. So it would be good to talk about what we need to do to make

sure that it's a reality. Sure. But we have to also be honest, the traditionally male-dominated union hierarchy, which in the past made decisions that would have adversely affected female workers and members and done good things for male workers and members. It wasn't that long ago the GMB union was criticised for not looking out for cleaners on the same pay grade as the men who emptied the bins but the women were getting 12 grand a year less well there's always been an issue about bargaining power hasn't there and I think one of the things that we have to do is a trade union movement is use our bargaining power to benefit everybody that's what was happening in Glasgow, biggest pay strike in 2018, biggest pay strike ever of 8,000 council workers.

It's what happened with Julie Hayward, the GMB member, the cook, you remember, who took the first ever equal value claim and got the support of the shipyard workers who were predominantly men to do that. They clapped her when she won um so you know they're i'm not saying we're perfect but what i do know is that if you are a member of a union and have the union backing you're far more likely to win equal pay and all the other policies like family friendly working and job sharing everything else that makes it possible uh for women to get the wages they deserve now um, I am well paid, if I might dispute the fact that I'm equally paid, but I'm definitely well paid. I'm prepared to acknowledge that. You are also well paid. Just to remind people how much you earn.

I'm on £112,000 a year. But what I think is important is that the principle, regardless of how much people earn, the principle of equal pay is still really vital. We've seen that in the media industry, the BBC, obviously, Samira Ahmed, with the backing of her union, led by Michelle Stanistreet, the NUJ, together with Bechtu, have won equal pay cases and have pushed for equal pay throughout the media industry. My point is that it's a principle. It shouldn't matter how much you earn. It's not acceptable for women to be discounted, as it were, simply because they are women. No, but I wonder how many of us are guilty in our personal lives of behaving in a very different way. I had to have a word with myself the other day when I realised that I was, I'm very fortunate, I have a cleaning lady and I have a man who cleans my windows. Actually, I pay the man who cleans my windows more per hour than the woman who cleans my house. Now,

where does that put me? And why am I doing that? think there's something um very deep in society about the value that we afford different kinds of labor and we've seen this most graphically probably in the care industry you know we've all come out probably for the last time on thursday night to clap our key workers the vast majority of them women care workers looking after our mums and dads, seven in ten of them earn less than £10 an hour. And they haven't even had proper protective equipment throughout all of this. What does that say about the value that we put on women's work? Why is it so often described as unskilled when we know that some of the most important jobs in society are highly skilled and yet the worst paid. So how do we go about changing that mindset? Because you're absolutely

right that the work traditionally done by women is not paid at the same level as the work traditionally done by men. How do we change it? I think we've got to break down this occupational segregation for a start. I think we have to, you know, why is it that we think car mechanics caring for cars are more skilled than predominantly a female workforce caring for children? What's going on there? So we need to break that down. I would like to see much more sharing. I'd like to see apprenticeships more equal so that we had many more women young engineers and many more our elderly relatives, then how is it? It's not that easy for women who are still shouldering the majority of that to do a double shift. Well, let's bring in employment lawyer Jane Hannan from DLA Piper. Jane, your job is actually

to advise employers, isn't it, on how they can avoid claims? Yes, that's right. So we do a lot of work in terms of talking to our clients. They don't want to pay people unequally. They want to ensure that all of their staff are paid correctly. But what we do is we do a lot of work with them in terms of looking at, well, are they properly moderating their pay? Are they rolling out job evaluation schemes, for example, to check what people's jobs actually are, working out where jobs are of equal value to ensure that they're properly paying people so that they're not inadvertently creating a gap in terms of the pay that they're giving to roles which are perhaps predominantly done by women compared to those predominantly done by men. But it's still at the moment, the onus is on the woman to find a male comparator and to go from there. Surely, Jane, that is a real problem for the average woman. I think that's right. And previously there was an ability for women to complete an equal pay questionnaire.

So they'd be asking a number of questions of their employer regarding whether they are being paid equally to a particular comparator and asking for that data but that was removed in 2014 so it's now a case of a woman having a hunch. So that's a real step backwards in the 21st century. It is and that's why the Fawcett Society have proposed a new right to know so that you have the ability to, and there's some draft legislation which has been proposed. Obviously, everything's slightly paused at the moment with everything else going on in the UK. But this right to know legislation would give employees the ability to ask questions

about comparators in terms of their pay and hours, about their job descriptions, and whether there is any material factor which explains the difference in the pay so that this was this would increase obviously a number of people making these requests but it would also mean in my view is that employers would have to take this even more seriously at the moment although you know we have lots of claims each year that the overall number is still relatively low. And this would mean that employers could provide that information at an early stage and address those gaps that there are. Jane Hannan, the employment lawyer. And before that, you heard from Francis O'Grady, General Secretary of the TUC.

Now, a couple of weeks ago on Woman's Hour, I think I did mention the fact that I dealt with alcohol in lockdown by not drinking alcohol in lockdown. And that I was beginning to explore the wonderful world of no alcohol lagers. No, nobody was particularly interested in that. of the highlights of a conversation from Woman's Hour this week about alcohol and the difficulties that some people are having in terms of using it during the course of lockdown. A lot of people are saying anecdotally and otherwise that they're drinking more and they're starting earlier. And last week, an editorial in the British Medical Journal said that before COVID-19, just one in five harmful and dependent drinkers were getting the help they needed, and now that proportion will be even lower. So how do you cope if you know you've got a problem? Here is one email from a listener. This is not her voice.

I'm 38 and had been drinking since I was 15, drinking more and more until it became unmanageable. I gave up alcohol in September and started going to AA meetings and seeing an alcohol counsellor. I'm afraid to say that I started drinking again in February and this escalated with the Covid-19 crisis. I turned to drink for comfort and to cope with anxiety. I'm a secondary school teacher and found the two weeks before the closure of schools on March the 20th particularly difficult. So I began drinking every day again, lots of whiskey or gin every night. Like many women, my problem had never really been drinking

in pubs or events, though I would do that, but I'd do it alone at home. So the lockdown conditions are particularly challenging to relapse, especially as AA meetings have moved online. Some people may find it helpful, but for me it's not the same as the physical gatherings and the human connection that many of us alcoholics crave in recovery. I've continued to work in school, but have to work from home for some of the time. This has proved difficult to manage without a routine, without the support of colleagues, and with a lot of time to reflect in isolation. My drinking has drifted into afternoons and not just evenings. I have continued to see the alcohol therapist online and have now started doing daily check-ins. I am determined to get back on track.

Well, that's one anonymous listener. Jenny talked to Catherine Renton, a journalist who's been sober for more than three years, and to Julia Sinclair, professor of addiction psychiatry at the University of Southampton and a consultant in alcohol addiction. What did Julia make of our listener's story? It's sadly a very familiar story. And I think particularly for people such as the case that you had there is that many people early in recovery will kind of struggle

three to five months after they've stopped drinking. And lockdown is an added challenge to some people, but I think not all. And I think, you know, this will be a mixed picture. And, you know, your listener describes as many people do a really long history of alcohol use that became increasingly problematic over time. So, you know, it's taken almost 20 years before taking action. And that's sadly a really very common story, particularly, I think, for women who often feel a lot of shame around problematic drinking and that may further delay their ability to seek help. How much worse are you expecting the isolation, the COVID crisis going to make it for people who do have a drink problem and actually those who didn't have a drink problem before this started but may be developing one? I think what we know is that our increase in alcohol consumption has gone up and I

think there's a split picture. Alcohol Change did a survey quite recently which showed that you know the people who don't drink very much amongst that group which is about 75% of the population who are drinking perhaps at lower risk levels for that group actually many of them have reduced drinking or stopped it altogether because actually it was never particularly important to them and they're prioritizing other things i think the worry is is for those people who are already drinking more than the kind of 14 units of alcohol per week you're shifting the population curve up so a lot more people are kind of pushing themselves into that higher risk drinking kind of area. And then some of those will fall into the alcohol dependent. And that's where the problem

is. And there's been another kind of recent kind of survey looking at how actually that group is now increasing, but that their ability to seek help has significantly reduced because all of the alcohol treatment services are combined with drug treatment services. Much of the focus has been on ensuring that patients with opioid substitution therapy have been correctly looked after, but there's been very little capacity left to deal with people who've got alcohol problems. Catherine, as I said, you've been sober for three years. How are you finding this period? I found it really difficult at first.

March was a particularly difficult month. It's gotten better as time has gone on, but when lockdown happened, I started to think about drinking again for the first time in a long time. It seemed to become everyone's default coping mechanism for the crisis, and I felt like, well, you know, the world seems to be ending, so why shouldn't I join in with them? How much generally are you finding attitudes to boundaries are changing?

I know you described yourself as a social and party drinker. Well, you can't go to parties and there's not much socialising to do. So why is it in your face now? Well, it just seems to be all over social media. And I think the boundaries, the way that things are blurring, the days are blurring together, the afternoons and evenings and weekends. And there doesn't seem to be the definite lines between a working day and after work and weekends anymore.

So I think people are more comfortable drinking all the time so I'm seeing a lot more on social media on my timeline and also I was a social drinker but I did the worst of my drinking the real drinking problem that I had occurred after a period of significant grief and I feel like it's very similar to what people are feeling at the moment they're using it to cope and developing dangerous habits of self-medication. And I'm really worried about people encountering the same kind of problems that I had beyond this crisis. But you haven't cracked, have you, this time? No, I haven't. I've come seriously close, but I haven't cracked. Julia, there seems to be evidence that women who drink a lot develop addiction and related medical problems quicker than men do. Where is the evidence of science, women were further behind in terms of being seen as kind of interesting

subjects. So, you know, you had much of the work that was done in this country in the States was very much focused on men because men seem to be the people who are out in the workplace and were drinking. Then we had the 80s and 90s and the ladette culture. And, you know, kind of women were starting to catch up with men in terms of the amount that they drank. And then we started to see really that liver disease was occurring kind of earlier on in women than would be anticipated just by the increase in numbers. And because of our kind of different body composition and our kind of fat ratios, alcohol kind of seems to have a disproportionate effect on that. And that's why we have the link with breast cancer. So, you know, there are lots of things about our biology that potentially makes us more susceptible to the effects of alcohol.

But also, I think, you know, the motivations for drinking for women can often be that sense of managing kind of anxiety, depression, all of those things that have already been mentioned. And so it can be that people sort of are reliant on it or using it as a form of self-medication. But actually, you know, we need much more evidence about this. As a researcher, I would say that. But I do think, you know, that the combination of motivations for drinking in women kind of fears about kind of going to present for help, perhaps when they recognize it as becoming a problem. And as your previous speaker just mentioned, that sense that if everybody else around you is drinking, and I think it's also about the fact that we're

not doing other things, if you see what I mean. I mean, alcohol is always there. Many of my patients have always said to me, you know, I just turn on the television and people are drinking, alcohol's everywhere, billboards are everywhere. So in some ways, I don't think lockdown has increased that. But perhaps what lockdown has done is taken away the other images of other ways of dealing with things and getting out and socialising. Catherine, as Julia has said, there are fewer and fewer places for people to go for help. But I know you do have an online support group. How helpful is that? I'm a member of several online support groups and they have been invaluable like your emailer said the lack of physical contact is a big issue I love

going for a coffee with sober friends and getting a reassuring hug or a handhold or just you know a squeeze when you're having a bad day you can't really replace that with a Zoom call. But I'm really lucky that there are lots of sober communities online that are helping out at this time. But, you know, they're stretched because there's a lot of people are finding it difficult to cope with their feelings without seeing a professional in person. Julia, one last question to you.

At what point do you recognise you have a problem and you have to do something about it? Oh, that's the million dollar question. It's different for all of us. And I think, you know, I would always encourage everybody to just monitor how much alcohol they're drinking. That starts to give you where you are on a, you know, on a spectrum. You know, if you're drinking, you know, more than 14 units of alcohol a week, you need to keep an eye on it. And if you're drinking 50, 60 units of alcohol a week, you probably, you know, you are doing yourself harm. Not probably, you're definitely doing yourself harm. So for everybody within that, it will start to be kind of the things that impact on their lives when their health is going, their decision making is changing, their relationships are being damaged.

All of those things, everybody reaches a different tipping point. And for some people, it's not a single thing, but it's just a drip drip that they think, you know what, I don't like the person I've become or I'm becoming and I need to change that. if you do have any concerns about your own drinking or that of somebody close to you. That's bbc.co.uk slash womanshour. Now, for a long time, Michelle Roberts was a prolific and popular and highly regarded writer. She came up with novels and short stories and poetry and works of non-fiction as well. Then she wrote a novel and it was rejected and she had to deal with the hurt and depression that came as a result of that rejection.

She wrote down everything that happened for a year after the shock of it all and now she's published a memoir about that. It's called Negative Capability, A Diary of Surviving. Why did she find that rejection so tough? I've faced rejection very often in professional terms. I think this time it was partly because the stakes get higher the older you get, the more books you publish, perhaps you feel there's more invested, more at risk. And partly because this particular professional rejection

coincided with various personal crises. So the whole thing blew up inside me. What were the other things that may have contributed to the hurt and the depression? There was a great fear about not being able to earn my living anymore and becoming destitute. There was a personal crisis to do with the end of a love affair that was tremendously painful. I think also, yes, I was having a bit of a spat with a very old and cherished woman friend.

The whole lot seemed to just come together in a kind of explosion. So at what point did you say, right, I've got to do something about this. And the only way to get through this is to think every day about what I'm doing and become more positive. It was a crisis that happened late at night. After a very difficult day, I suddenly felt I'd come adrift and cut loose and lost myself. It was a very frightening experience of lying in a bed in a room I didn't recognise as my own

and feeling that I'd completely disintegrated and fallen to pieces. And those are metaphors that we use for psychological conditions. But it felt real, as though I was a boat that had smashed onto the rocks and was just a mess of timber bobbing in a very rough sea. And it was so frightening that I thought, what can I do? What can I do? The only thing I could do was reach for words, and they were kind of bobbing about me like bits of my shattered boat. There wasn't even an eye thinking that.

And I said to myself, right, tomorrow morning I'm going to get up and write. If I could put words together, perhaps I can put myself back together. And indeed that's what happened. But I was so terrified that this experience would happen again that I went on writing the diary for a whole year. And then at the end of the year, I realised I had a story, I had told a story that existed in time. And therefore I did have a self again. The title, Negative Capability. That came from Keats originally, didn't it?

Yes. And it's a wonderful concept that he invented. I think back in 1816, he writes to a friend saying that he was coming, or to his brother, I forget, saying that he was coming back from the pantomime one crisp winter night, and he suddenly started thinking about Shakespeare and other men of genius, and thinking that they existed in a state of negative capability. They didn't have very strong, very powerful personalities, Keith thought. They were very open and very receptive to the world about them and to people and to ideas. And they just let themselves receive. And then he went on to say they didn't have any anxious or irritable striving after reason and facts and making decisions. and I really hung on to this idea when I came across it by

chance and thought that is the answer is to not be in control not feel I've got to be successful and powerful I'm allowed to be what I think of as a failure and just live. But how difficult was it to adopt it for yourself when you've had so many years of fame and respect and people saying nobody writes like Michelle Roberts? Well, Jenny, if only that were true every day of my life until now. thing about the kind of space I entered into with these various rejections was that I lost all memory of previous success or respect or the affection of readers. That was the dreadful thing about it. That just all vanished and there was nothing but feeling like a smashed, empty eggshell. That was the problem. But I got my memory back as I wrote. And I think I emerged humbler and wiser and less bothered, perhaps, about public opinion or editors' opinions or agents' opinions. And of course, I've had loads of rejections in my life. Any woman who's ever

had a spat with her best friend knows that these things happen or you fall out with a lover or you fall out with your mother i mean it's not as though my life hadn't always had a current of those kinds of things alongside the professional success what happened to to that novel you you did rewrite it. Have you abandoned it? No, I did in the end rewrite it so completely that it found favour with a publisher and it did get published. So there was a very happy ending to that story. And the friend you were falling out with? We made it up. She was absolutely magnificent. She came through. She listened to me express hurt and bewilderment and pain. She was wonderful. We had supper together and she said sorry.

And I just thought she was amazing. And we are very close now, I think much closer than we ever were. How has the adoption of negative capabilities served you during lockdown? I mean, you love food. There's food all the way through this book, but you can't share it with your friends. You can't cook for friends. You're on your own. That's it exactly. One thing I do is I read what a friend of mine calls gatterdrop horn. So I read late at at night old french cookery books that's very soothing i cook for myself i cook the nicest possible meals the most delicious meals i can possibly think of that i can afford i ring friends and talk about food and yearn for them and i also use negative capability to say to myself yes i am powerless yes i can't do what I want. Yes, I'm unable to see the people I love

and ask them round for tea or lunch or dinner. And there's a kind of consolation in just yielding to powerlessness when you have to, rather than fighting it and feeling in a state of fraughtness all the time and a state of rage all the time, which I do sometimes, of course. And how helpful are friends now? I mean

I know we kind of share that period of early feminism when our women friends were so important and so close. Does that continue for me for you during this lockdown? Yes and it's intensified Jenny because I've always loved the telephone as a method of communication. I use email more for chit-chat or business. I don't really do social media. And the telephone is a lifeline, a landline. And every night I'm on the phone to different women friends. And I feel that we've constructed a net of mutual support between countries, between cities, between streets. And I feel close to my women friends, even more than usual and very connected to them, by the power of just talking about the day over the phone at night.

Michelle Roberts, her memoir is called Negative Capability, A Diary of Surviving. Now, some schools, some pupils do go back in England on Monday and on Monday morning's edition of Woman's Hour, we're going to be talking about what it's like to be at home shielding a child. It can't be easy at the best of times. Now, the notion that some of their friends might be going back to school must be quite hurtful and quite difficult to handle. So we'll talk about that on Monday morning. And if this is you, if you've got something to add, please do feel free to email the programme via our website.

Last Monday, Bank Holiday Monday's programme was all about pregnancy and birth and life with a newborn at this peculiar time. And we had some fantastic contributions and guests, including the obstetrician Kenga Sivarajah from King's College Hospital, London, and a midwife from Glasgow, Leah Hazard. If you want to hear the whole programme, and I do recommend it, particularly if you are pregnant right now or somebody close to you is, you can obviously get that edition of Woman's Hour from BBC Sounds. So the edition you want is Monday, Bank Holiday Monday's programme. I just wanted to feature this afternoon Lizzie's story. Lizzie gave birth on her own at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London. I have a toddler at home and my husband

and I had talked extensively about what we were going to do when it became clear that I would be having our second daughter under lockdown and although we knew that during active labour obviously partners were permitted what was quite clear was that those on whom we'd normally rely a'r ail-dau oedd yn ogystal â'r cyfnod oedd yn ystod y gwaith arferol. Ac er bod yn gwybod bod partneriaid yn cael eu cymryd yn ystod y gwaith arferol, roedd yn glir bod y rhai ar gyfer y rhai ar gyfer y rhai ar gyfer y rhai ar gyfer ein tywlid yn dweud y gwir, nad oedd yn mynd i fod yn ddigon llaw. Felly, rydych chi'n gwybod, rhieni, ac ati. Felly, rydyn ni wedi penderfynu bod y peth mwyaf ddifrifol i'w wneud yn ystod y gwaith arferol oedd i mi fynd i mewn ar y pwynt y byddwn i'n ystod y gwaith arferol os oedd yn amlwg oedd y gallwn ni eich cysylltu â ffrind i ddod i mewn am gyfnod neu ddwy i edrych ar ein gwaith, mae'r pwysigrwydd A yn fwy na'r pwysigrwydd A

yw bod fy mab yn mynd i fyw yn y tŷ, ac yn gwirioneddol yn bwysig amdano. Fel y dywedodd, fe wnaeth fy ngwyddoedd ddod yn gyntaf, ac felly fe wnaeth hynny ddod yn fwy i'r penderfyniad. Nid yw fy gweithio wedi cynnyrchu gyda phwysigrwydd, felly fe wnaethon i fy ymgyrchu i'r sefydliad. even more and my labour didn't progress with sufficient pace so I was admitted to hospital and given obviously with an induction you don't quite know when you're going to go into active labour again it was just it didn't seem particularly logical at the time for my husband to be with me and given that I had an uncomplicated history then I just possibly thought I'd be in and out basically. We should congratulate baby Bebe on making her national radio debut she is very very young but that was that was brilliant and indescribably cute so the nation will have

enjoyed that i can assure you make sure someone gives this to her when she's 21 um but we should say that you actually ended up um well it was pretty terrifying actually wasn't it you gave birth and then what happened so i gave birth and and I should say that the staff, midwives, obstetricians were amazing throughout the delivery to the extent they allowed me to FaceTime my husband and indeed my mother, godmothers of my daughters, to give me encouragement before I started going into stage two of labour, so the active pushing. I called my husband straight after delivery, FaceTimed the site of his newborn daughter, and then things started to go a bit wrong. I didn't quite appreciate at the time, I think, how serious it was. But in short, I had

an undiagnosed pulmonary embolism, so a blood clot in my lung. And it had put pressure on my heart, obviously, during the pushing stage of delivery, such that my heart had gone into distress. And what became apparent afterwards is that I'd had what they call a cardiac event so effectively a sort of mini heart attack during delivery. I just want to own and I want you to own the fact that you've been in labour on your own in hospital for a number any number of hours and then this happened and you contacted I think your best friend and your mum because you thought you were going to die yes so this was actually i should say i didn't want to worry my husband who has oh sorry i think this is just this is bb it's absolutely

fine please don't worry about that um so i had actually i'd said to my husband everything was fine um and you should go to bed because by this point it was midnight and he'd been looking after our daughter all day and it got to about half past two in the morning it was quite clear they'd asked oherwydd, ar hyn o bryd, roedd hi'n ddyfodol ac roedd yn edrych ar ein gilydd ymlaen. Ac fe wnaethon nhw ddweud wrth fy modd, ar hanner i ddau o'r gwaith, roedd yn eithaf glir, roeddent wedi gofyn am fy nysgu i roi scan CAT, neu scan CT yn yr un scan y gwnaethon nhw ei ddefnyddio ar gyfer fuddoedd Covid. Ond yn amlwg mae risgiau yn ymwneud â hynny, felly roedd angen fy nysgu. Ac roedd yn glir o'r ffordd ddiddorol y roedd yr obstetricwr yn ceisio ddysgu i mi bodwn yn di-dwyddiant ac roedd angen i ni ddweud pam.

Ac roedd yn y pwynt hwnnw nad oeddwn i'n gwybod beth i'w wneud, ac roeddwn i eisiau clywed sôr fy mab. Felly, fe wnes i ymateb ar eich text i ofyn os oedd hi'n awyddus, roedd hi'n gwybod bod hi'n ymwneud â'r gweithred, ac roedd hi'n mynd yn ôl i fynd i mewn i'r llaw. Ac fe wnes i'i ddynnu ac fe ddweud, oeddwn i eisiau sgwrs cyflym, roeddwn i eisiau siarad â chi, ac fe clocodd yn gyflym bod gen i ddim yn ymgyrch oedol, bod rhywbeth yn digwydd. Ac, chi'n gwybod, ar y pwynt hwn, fe wnes i ddweud a postnatal ward that there was something going on and you know at that point I sort of told her what was happening and I she was very reassuring um and again um you know first thing the next morning I um called my husband and tried calmly to tell him what was happening um and he was incredibly reassuring but I would say that I think it was utterly terrifying for him for my mother

for um my best friend it was probably more scary for them than it necessarily was for me on the whole during the experience yes um well you say that I'm not sure whether anybody listening will necessarily um you've been through such a lot Lizzie and I want to congratulate you obviously for coming through all this you are all right and if you just just stay with us I just want to bring Kenga in our obstetrician what happened to Lizzie it was unusual wasn't it yes yeah it's very unusual um and you know it's a good thing that they picked it up very quickly and found the underlying cause so they were able to treat it properly but yes um I agree it must be completely terrifying for her. And she sounds very, very brave and to go through all that alone.

And her poor husband as well, you know, family at home who then can't be there with her. Lizzie, how is life now in terms of previous contributors have mentioned that idea of a cocoon? Have you been able to establish that? Yes, absolutely. Ie, yn sicr. Rwyf am ychwanegu, er bod fy mhrofiad yn ddifrifaethu â'r ymddiriedaeth, roedd y staff y GIG yn ddifrifaethol yn y ffordd y maen nhw wedi gofalu amdano i mi ac yn hynod o ddynol. Nid oeddwn i'n teimlo'n unig ar unrhyw bwynt yn ystod y cyfnod oeddwn yn ysbytio heb fy mab, sy'n dweud llawer. Felly byddwn i'n dweud i unrhyw ddyn sy'n edrych ymlaen at ddod o hyd i'w plant, nad yw'r pethau'n dod yn ddifrifaethol, n dod yn gyfranogol, ac yn cael dim peth i'w gofio

o ran y math o gofal y byddant yn ei gael. Ond o ran y tu heno, yn sicr, mae wedi bod yn ddifrifol iawn. Mae'n amser yn ddifrifol iawn bod fy mab, fy mab a'r mab-y-mab, a'n teulu a'n ffrindiau yn gallu dod i weld ein gilydd ac yn sicr ein gilydd.

Ond rwyf wedi gallu, er enghraifft, gael ysgrifennu'n dda iawn pan nid oeddwn i'n ddigwydd yn dda iawn our daughter and certainly us but um i have been able to for example breastfeed quite successfully when i wasn't so successful first time around with my daughter and that's down to just time and being able to be at home yeah but without over egging it we need to make the point that that mother the mother you rang when you thought you were dying has still not seen you since she i have to say she came to she said she didn't want to see us because she'd get too upset because she wouldn't be able to come anywhere near us. But she did drop over a few essential items last week and she saw her from the gate, but literally fleetingly and found it very, very distressing.

But certainly my mother and father-in-law haven't seen her yet. So all of that is yet to come. But we're trying to be positive about it. And if anything, it's something for people to look forward to, if anything. That was Lizzie talking on Bank Holiday Monday's edition of the programme. And a lot of you made that link between Lizzie and, what can I say, other news events of the last few days. Don't need to say any more, really.

Linda says, my daughter-in-law gave birth two weeks ago, currently only seeing the family via Zoom. Still beautiful, though, and amazed at the miracle of life. Well, congratulations to you, Linda, and of course to your son and daughter-in-law. Amy says, my new baby is 11 weeks old. It's strange that no one has really met her. But the silver lining has been having my husband around even more.

He is hands-on. He just wasn't there as much with our first baby. I feel like it's giving him a much better insight into what I do all day. And she then used the emoji winking face, which because I can't wink, I cannot do justice to on the radio. But trust I know we all know what you mean, Amy. And I'm glad that he's been there to observe and to pitch in as well, which I know he's been doing. There are links which might help you on the Monday page of the Woman's Hour website. Now, it isn't your imagination. There aren't as many public toilets around as there used to be.

In fact, we are told that because of cuts to councils, there are 50 percent fewer toilets than there used to be. And the coronavirus has meant that public toilets are even less available and cafes, of course, and pubs and everything else not open, so you can't go there either. So where does that leave people who might need to go urgently? I talked on Friday to Raymond Martin from the British Toilet Association and first to Jo Umbers from the bladder and bowel community. More women than men of course say they do need occasionally urgent access to a toilet.

We have 1.7 million people each year that actually come onto the bladder and bowel organisation and in terms of the sort of the female male split we have almost 70% to 30% female to male. So, you know, there's a number of reasons for that, really. Sort of females are five times more likely to have a urinary problem. You know, there is childbirth, there is menopause, there's many reasons for that. But we see that through all our stats. I mean, we have three and a half million people each year that actually come on. It gives you some sort of indication of the amount of issues that probably people don't talk about because it's

embarrassing. Well, we have an honourable history here of talking about all the things that really do matter. Excellent. It's so important because this is stopping people going out. It absolutely is. And that's what we're hearing from the community. The big thing that comes back is it's about confidence. People need confidence so they don't feel a prisoner in their own home. Sure now we know because of the coronavirus that cafes are obviously shut, you can't nip in anywhere to go to the loo. Absolutely.

And I guess you're hearing that people are simply too frightened to leave their home that's exactly what's happened yes that's exactly what they're saying they're saying they're feeling housebound and we're not talking about the one million that have been shielded we're talking about millions of people yeah that feel that they actually need to have a plan to go out and um it's becoming impossible because um the you know i mean clearly it's not done purposely sometimes it's the most basic of things to actually slip through the cracks i think and that's the that is the issue then because we can open up society but um you know we have 60 000 pubs in the uk so we have a society where they they were all open to us and that's

that's not there anymore so no they don't feel confident and they feel they feel trapped and a lot of them are saying as even as a basic if they could even have the disabled toilets open via the radar key or retailers would accept the just can't wait card so they could open the staff toilets things like that would you know in no cost to society really and would really would really help so many people roman what's going to happen to the average british toilets in the future do you think post covid well first of all we've got to get them cleaned and get them open uh then we have to sit and uh with some experts we need to look at hygiene because this covid thing's going to be with us for some time so we need to look at some of the things like surfaces and handrails and flushes and taps and all the equipment that you expect to find in there.

And we need to bring the toilets up from the 70s or 80s when they were first produced, these old toilet blocks. We need to refurbish and we need to upgrade them to get them into the 21st century. And that's where we need government to step in, put some funding down to the councils, give the local authorities that start. Yeah, I mean, quite simply, it was council cuts that led to so many public toilets closing in the first place. Yeah. Maybe those of us who go out and about,

we're going to have to start paying again for them, aren't we? That's really the only logical answer. I'm glad you said it again, Jane, because, you know, when toilets were introduced back in the 1900s, we did spend a penny or they did cost a penny at a time and if you relate that to today, we should be paying 60, 80 pence for the toilets type of stuff. So, yes,

we're seeing charging being introduced up and down the country. But people don't want to pay for toilets. They think they should be free and we think they should be free as well. We think this is a health issue. And government should step in here and put some substantial funding in. It's about health and well-being, social inclusion, equality for people with disabled and inaccessible issues. It's about public dignity and public decency.

So we believe they should. Right. I was saying we ought to pay. You're saying, no, we shouldn't. This is a health issue. If you have a sick populace you you can your whole economy goes your all your commercial businesses struggle tourism's gone whatever so what we're saying is we need toilets if we have to pay for them we need to pay but they need to be clean hygienically

clean attended looked after and well maintained because people will pay if you if you have a good toilet i don't think anybody has a problem going in spending 20p 30p 50p whatever yeah but if. But if they're going to be maintained at the level they have been, Jane, over the last while, then people will kick back almost automatically. Well, here's a quick tweet from Helen who says, hand dryers should be turned off before reopening. Hot air circulating asymptomatic coronavirus in enclosed space would be a disaster. I'd never feel desperate enough to use a public loo at the moment, so I'm keeping within 10 minutes of home. Well, briefly, that's the issue, isn't it, Jo? People like Helen shouldn't be staying 10 minutes from home. They should be able to get out.

Yes, that's exactly it. So we're hearing the same sort of things coming through the community where there's a call for bringing back the toilet attendants. You know, it's a very interesting debate about whether people would pay because obviously there's a higher cost of bringing things like toilet attendants and the same, the same things about the hand dryers and the blue towels and sanitized surfaces. And, you know, it's the big thing about the front door, isn't it, that you have to touch and you can't see how many people when you come in. So they're all worried about those things but the main thing is is a case of you know there aren't any toilets there aren't any public toilets but there are but but the retailers aren't opening their toilets either so i think it's a bigger

female thing because there's no yeah sensitive way of saying it well no we can mention our anatomy is not perfectly all right there's there's there's, but also our anatomy is not set up for a quick release, if you like, or a discrete release, whereas men's is more set up for that. And that's something that comes out as well. A topic for another day. Was it you said a quick release? A quick release, yes. What Jo actually said, of course, was a discrete release. And we thank her for taking part in that conversation. Jo Umbers from the Bladder and Bowel Community and

Raymond Martin from the British Toilet Association. So many people were just livid after that, during it because they totally agree with everything that was said and their lives are generally really negatively

impacted by the lack of public toilets. Here's one listener. I'm one of those women who can't go far from a toilet. I have got used to restricting my life. So no long walks with the dogs and broken nights going to the loo. However, if using public toilets is going to mean a charge, as I need to go at least every hour, it's going to be too expensive for me to go out for the whole day anymore. I guess I'll just have to learn to love my home even more. Becky says, I'm a

self-employed gardener and I've been able to do some work for the last couple of weeks, but I can't go into people's houses and obviously all the coffee shop toilets are shut. I also can't wee in their gardens. So in lockdown, and this is the really awful bit, in lockdown, I've given myself two bouts of cystitis and dehydration. The other option is just not drinking enough, of course. I just want public toilets to open up again. In the office on Friday, and obviously there's hardly anybody in the office these days, but I tried to have a conversation about whether we should just make it more normal for women to pee outside like men do.

Now, nobody seemed very willing to join my public campaign to make this a more common occurrence, but that may have been because there weren't many people in the office. I just want to put it out there. Maybe we should just start being like men and pee more freely and more publicly. Let's see how far my campaign to get this going goes. On Thursday night, the National Theatre of Scotland's YouTube channel streamed the third of a festival of poetry and music called Macca to Macca. As literary festivals all over the world were shut down, Jackie Kay,

who is Scotland's Macca, that's the national Poet of course, decided to curate her own online festival with guests famous and not so famous. This week's included poet, actor, director and singer Gerda Stevenson, the singer Claire Brown and Jackie herself. I came up with this idea of passing the baton, MACA to MACacker, home to home, kind of entertainment from our living room to yours. And I've always loved the kind of mixture of poetry and song. I grew up attending party socials in my own house, which were a great mixture of poetry and song. So I wanted to really to recreate that rich mix and also find a way to get writers, artists and performers actually paid because a lot of them fall through the cracks. Now you start each week with one of your poems, Small I think was last week's and I wondered if you would recite it for us now. It's always a small that gets you,

a wee act of kindness, the tiniest detail detail a stranger's caress your heart the way you react when faced with the trials the gift of a blue bell an embrace oh the yellow gorse the small brown foals the crows lined up from the train window. Beauty inches close to sorrow. Not only are you doing your Macca to Macca, but I have noticed on Twitter that every Sunday you do a poem which you read on Twitter. How are you managing to get all this work done? I think it's a writer's imperative to respond to your times.

I mean, whether or not you'll be happy with the poems in sort of two years' time or not, it feels like we're living through such a big crisis, it feels incumbent upon me to respond in some way. Now, how have you chosen the people who will join you on Macca to Macca? I've chosen people that I really love. I mean, I think the thing that's special about Macca to Macca? I've chosen people that I really love. I mean, I think the thing that's special about Macca to Macca is that it's

created by me. Everybody on there are choices of mine and I think that's important rather than just people that happen to be available. Now, Gerda Stevenson this week, why her? Well, Gerda is one of those writers, I think she's

just so multi-talented. She's a writer, she's a director. I love her book, Quines, which draws attention to all of these different Scottish women throughout history that some of us don't know about. I love how she writes in rich Scots. I like her delivery. Her work fills me

with a kind of glee, you know, a kind of excitement. It takes me back to when I was a girl. So, Gerda, a kind of excitement. It takes me back to when I was a girl. So Gerda, that was quite nice things that Jackie just said about you. I'm sure you'll agree. Well, that was very nice indeed. Thank you, Jackie. Now, I know you're planning singing for Jackie.

Can you give us just a quick sample? Yes, yes. This is a song from my album, Night Touches Day. And it's in Scots. and it's um dedicated to women of a certain age who've gained some wisdom oh i hate locked and i hate grat and i hate dream though chances but new i'm old my mind runs free And my lichtum spirit dances Through feathered wood and orchard mains Where bluebells blurred my e'en He led me down by Eddie's lofty The spreading skirts of the gean There you go.

Do you know, I'm learning a lot about Scots because some of Jackie's poems have been coming over in Scots. When you don't know it, you do have to struggle a bit to really get it. What's your experience, Gerda, of the lockdown period? Well, it's been challenging recently because I had appendicitis and I had to go to hospital, which was a choice to make because I didn't know that it was definitely appendicitis and I had to go to hospital, which was a choice to make because I didn't know that it was definitely appendicitis. But I did think, well, if it is, I could die,

even though I'm going into a zone of COVID-19. So I went and it was appendicitis and I was operated upon immediately. And all was good and I'm fine and up and running again. Now for today you're going to read Homework for Evacuee Day. What inspired that poem? This poem arose from some homework that my daughter was given when she was at primary school. They were discussing and learning about the Second World War and they were given an exercise to select some objects that they would take if they were evacuated and leaving their families. And I thought it was a suitable one to read because I think a lot of us are feeling as though we're separated like evacuees were at the moment. Homework for Evacuee Day. We select ten objects, things you'd pack if this were

real and you place them, with all the care you sense they're due from all you've learned on the matter, in a child's old-fashioned suitcase, the one I carried in a play about a war. The kind we'd give you if you were leaving us for safety. If now were then and this were real. A skipping rope, its arc in the air, a last fling before we wind it tight. A yellow mouth organ waiting for your breath. A book whose story will feed you every night, though you'll have to read yourself to sleep. And your tattered, one-eyed mermaid, nocturnal swimmer by your side, soon to be beached on unfamiliar sheets.

Oh Gerda, that's beautiful. Jackie, I think Gerda's right that so many people are finding it really hard to be away from their loved ones and I know that you've had difficulty your father died not very long ago and your mother is alone how are you managing your family relationship? Yeah, I'm finding it the most difficult thing

that I've ever gone through actually even more difficult than my dad dying I'm finding having my mum in a care home in Glasgow and me not being able to visit her just really really hard I mean my heart goes out to to everybody up and down the country that's finding these separations very very hard I got my mum an iPad and I have half her face on the iPad every day. And then she has down days and up days, but at least I can communicate with her. But it's terribly, terribly worrying, especially with all the deaths in care homes in Glasgow. And it's a terrible way for my mum to be grieving for my dad and then be separated from all her family. I think there's just so many hardships in our times and they're kind of unimaginable now i know several singers are going to be taking part

in maca to maca and claire brown is one of them and claire i know you're going to sing wild mountain time which does have special relevance for jackie What is that relevant? I once recorded it for Jackie for her mum for her birthday so I sent a wee video and then actually after Jackie's dad died we had a wee shindig in honour of him and it just feels like a nice song between us all now. And now will you sing it again? I'd be happy to. Away you go. Oh the summer time is coming and the trees are sweetly blooming and the And the wild mountain thyme Grows around the purple heather Will you go, lassie, go?

The fantastic voice of Claire Brown. And this from Serena, who says, I have never emailed you before, but today's episode, listening to that final song, was really emotional. We women cope in the most difficult circumstances. Thank you. Well, thank you, Serena,

and our thanks to everybody who's contacted the programme this week. It's been really busy, so thank you very much for all your emails. We're glad that you're still listening. We're happy to be here, and we'll keep on trucking live on Monday morning, two minutes past 10. I'm Sarah Trelevan, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories

I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions

I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con,

Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story. Settle in. Available now.