Woman's Hour - Women and protests in the Sudan

Episode Date: April 16, 2019

The photo of a young Sudanese woman chanting on top of a car has gone viral and has become an iconic image in the protests against Omar al-Bashir’s regime/rule. What role have women played in the protests? And what is the current status of women in the country? CNN correspondent Nima Elbagir in Khartoum and Associate Fellow, Chatham House and former British ambassador to Sudan Rosalind Marsden discuss. In the run up to World Earth Day next week on the 22nd April we speak to two women who are using their skills to solve some of our environmental problems. Dr Fanya Ismail has invented a waterproof material that will be used in disposable coffee cups which removes the need to use plastic, and Dr Carmen Hijosa has invented a natural textile made from pineapple leaf fibre which can be used as a leather substitute. Jane asks them how and why they created their products. Dr Joan Malleson ran sexual counselling sessions in the 1950’s. From the Wellcome Foundation archives, historian, Dr Caroline Rusterholz reveals the approach of this birth control activist and family planning doctor. Why was the advice on offer in a period better-known for sexual repression and what does it tell us about current sexual behaviour?Food allergies affect 3 to 6 per cent of children in the developed world and appear to be on the rise. Last week we heard about the diagnosis and management of food allergies in infants and children. This week we focus specifically on how to feed your child well if he or she has food allergies. Clare Thornton-Wood is a paediatric dietician. Presenter: Jane Garvey Producer: Kirsty StarkeyInterviewed Guest: Nima Elbagir Interviewed Guest: Rosalind Marsden Interviewed Guest: Dr Carmen Hijosa Interviewed Guest: Dr Fanya Ismail Interviewed Guest: Dr Caroline Rusterholz Interviewed Guest: Clare Thornton-Wood

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 from Tuesday 16th April 2019. Today on the podcast you'll hear about the birth control activist and sex counsellor in the 1950s, Joan Mallison. We'll talk to two women who are using their skills to solve some environmental problems, recyclable coffee cups and a sustainable leather substitute made from pineapple leaves.

How about that? We'll talk about food allergies in children as well. Is there a so-called right age to have children? As the latest ONS statistics reveal that for the first time in England and Wales, more babies are born to women in their 30s than women in their 20s. And the number of women who've got pregnant in their 40s has doubled in the last two decades. So is there a best age to have a child? Your thoughts on Twitter are sort of throughout the programme, really. And then there's some emails on this

subject at the end of the podcast first though to Sudan where the 30-year rule of the leader Omar al-Bashir came to an end last week now he's been replaced by a military council which is promising a two-year transition period and then elections but not everyone's overwhelmed the protests on the streets have continued and women are still very prominent you might recall images of a 22 year old, Ala Sala, going viral last week. And this is pretty extraordinary in a country where women have very few rights. I talked today to Rosalind Marsden, who was the British ambassador to Sudan between 2007 and 2010. She's now a fellow of Chatham House, the independent foreign policy institute.

And we also heard from Nima El-Bajir, who is Sudanese and a correspondent for CNN. She was in the capital Khartoum. We were at the demonstration site till about three in the morning and the numbers are still pretty significant. No doubt today they'll be boosted by the fact that the country's new military rulers, I should say the country's latest military rulers, have been given two weeks by the African Union to arrange for a civilian transition to power, which is the key, key demand here. And what about the role of women out on the streets? Are they still out there? Absolutely. That's what's been really extraordinary to see.

It's not just that women played such an amazing role. They managed to subvert what is an extraordinarily conservative cultural attitude towards women, which on some levels works for women, because it meant that even though, don't get me wrong, a lot of women were beaten, a lot of women were abused, tortured and threatened with rape by the National Intelligence Services, by the organs of the state it is still in this country very difficult to comprehend seeing women being publicly abused being hit in the streets even the worst of the worst have found that somehow to be this kind of difficult thing to overcome even within their own psyches and these these young women use that to

their credit and to their benefit and stood up. In a way, they're almost being mythologized. You can hear it in the poetry and the songs that are being sung about them at the demonstration sites. They led this demonstration, but they're still there. Again, this is a really conservative culture, so I can't understate what it means to be at the demo site at two in the morning and have young, unmarried women manning the barricades it's really amazing we we mustn't forget um the name that has come very much to the fore that's Allah Salah who is the woman of 22 dressed in in in white robes who I think she was on the roof of a car, wasn't she? And her image just went everywhere.

Yes, the image, I think, captured the world, but also captured people's imaginations here because it mirrors a lot of the iconography of the Nubian queens, the Kandakis, that have been used again and again to describe these women. The beautiful moon gold earrings, the white dog, which was used by the women's movement here in the 60s

when women first pushed for full voting rights. And Sudan was the first country in the Arab League to give women full voting rights. So it gives you a sense of how far back they have been forced by the former regime, by the Islamist movement. So it harkened back to that, even for the older generation of women here, to see this woman dressed in the white robes of the women's movement in the 60s,

wearing the gold earrings and looking essentially like a Nubian queen. But when you see these women in the streets, that's what they're being called. They're being called the gandakas, the pharaonic Nubian queens. And it's harkening back to this kind of matrilineal mythology of the pharaohs here in Sudan. I mean, I'm 40, so this is not my generation. But even for me, it's beautiful to see. Rosalind, this is evocative stuff, isn't it? What do you think about what you've heard from Nima there?

It is absolutely extraordinary, the scale of female participation in these protests, which was absolutely unprecedented. Sudanese women have become now very aware of their power and their role as agents of change, and they feel very much empowered. And of course, the emergence of women and also young people as a new powerful social and political force on the streets, you know, this has really changed the whole political landscape. It's also been part of a wider social revolution during the last four months of protests. So, you know, whatever happens now, nothing's ever going to go back to how it was before. Well, take us back to your time as ambassador to Sudan. This is in, well, between the years 2007 and 2010.

And you used to have quite regular meetings, didn't you, with groups of women? Yes, I did. I discovered initially when I arrived in Khartoum as ambassador that many of my meetings in the ministries and with politicians and with officials were largely with men. So I made a conscious decision to set up a sort of women's forum. So every few weeks I had a meeting in the residence with women from all sorts of political parties to discuss the issues that were of concern to them. And they included women from the ruling National Congress Party as well as all the opposition parties. of the issues of most concern to all of them was the arbitrary application of Sudan's very repressive public order law, which enables the so-called public order police, who are a kind of morality police, to go around harassing women, for example, for the clothes they're wearing. If they're wearing trousers, they're liable to be detained and even lashed and fined. Which makes what Nima says all the more impressive, the fact that, as she said, young unmarried women are out on the streets of Khartoum at two in the morning,

just a bit, just about unthinkable, presumably. It is just about unthinkable. And I think women's rights in Sudan have deteriorated significantly during the 30 years of Bashir's regime. The regime manipulated its religion to undermine women's position and to exclude women in particular from the public space. So for many years, women have fought against this kind of oppression. And this is one of the reasons why they must have come out in the streets in such large numbers. We've got to be realistic about this. Is it fair to say that Britain was doing business with Bashir? I think it's fair to say that Britain was doing business with Bashir? I think it's fair to say that everyone was doing business with al-Bashir. The European Union invested heavily in al-Bashir's promise to block illegal migration. The United States continued

normalization talks until literally the day he was deposed. Everybody did business with al-Bashir. And even now, number two in the Military Transitional Council is somebody whose forces are essentially a reimagined gender-weak militia, the rapid support forces. As you said, we do have to be realistic. But at the same time, I think it's really important to point out that everything about this movement has been a rebuke to everything, not just the international community's stances, but also the conservative attitudes that have been given new life under the Islamist

regime, whether that's the conscious use of music publicly, which was banned in the early years of the regime, whether that's use of poetry, or the very, very clear leadership role of women. Based, Nimma, on what you've seen and heard, are you fearful or genuinely optimistic? I'm incredibly optimistic, I would say, because the fact that they did not step down immediately, the fact that they knew enough to know that this was not good enough, that al-Bashir stepping down was not good enough, that even al-Awardin al al-Narof, the military ruler who succeeded him as the head of the Transitional Military Council, was not good enough.

That nothing short of a clear timetable transition to civilian rule would be enough. But of course, you know, there are so many steps between now and actually solidifying a democratic transition. So we are going to have to wait and see. But spending time with these kids, perhaps I'm a little bit revolution drunk or whatever you call it but they are very clear about what needs to happen and hopefully they will be able to achieve it and and rosalind mentioned the the effectively the morality police are they anywhere to be seen it's very confusing because um the transitional council has said that any laws that in any way repress personal freedoms have been suspended.

But then they separately released a statement saying, and we are looking into the Public Order Act, which is what the morality police derive their power from. So you can see all of this kind of slightly teetering. I did a couple of live broadcasts from the street, not really knowing, should my headscarf be up, should it be down? A few brave souls have had their headscarves down they have in some ways gotten into the soul of us it will probably take a little while for people to make their own personal choices about whether they are or are not going to cover their heads which of course is as it should be because there's no clear delineation whether it's legal or not. But even just the very fact that women are out in the numbers that they're out at night singing, dancing publicly shows that their grip is already beginning to loosen.

Rosalind, what do you think is going to happen over the next couple of days and weeks? Well, I think the situation right now is clearly at a very critical and delicate stage, potentially dangerous stage even. They're up against a transitional military council, which is still composed of senior military officers who served under the Bashir regime. And they're all men, presumably. They're certainly all men in the military council. And they are part of what's been called a deep state, a patronage network built up over 30 years by Bashir, that's not going to be easy to dislodge and dismantle in the short term. And of course, the opposition and the protest movement are very keen that that is indeed what needs to happen.

I think whether everything moves forward in a positive direction will also depend to some extent on whether the international community continues to keep up the pressure. And as Nima described, for the last few years, the Western governments have been trying to improve relations with previous regime, but they have now come out very clearly saying there has to be a swift and credible transition to civilian rule. And I think the African Union statement of yesterday, giving the Transitional Military Council 15 days to transition is very important. So, you know, there's going to be a big struggle still to come. But I think there are some reasons for cautious optimism. Rosalind Marsden, British ambassador to Sudan between 2007

and 2010. And you also heard from Nima Al-Bajir, who is a CNN correspondent. Nima is herself Sudanese. And as she said, she was at those latest protests overnight in the capital Khartoum. Some quite incredible scenes she was describing there. Now, to your thoughts on having babies at various ages. Carly Emma on Twitter, I just had my fourth child at 36, having had my first at 20. It's hard work no matter what age, but I definitely had more energy and physical resilience at 20. As a maternity historian, I think the modern obsession with maternal age is unhealthy and it smacks of patriarchal control. Interesting. Thank you, Carly Emma. And from a listener called Helen, I have my daughter at 33.

Sorry, I'm just losing. I'm just going to move the mouse there. God, I'm multi-skilling here. Helen says, I have my daughter at 33, probably too late to enjoy the fourth and fifth generations to come and not late enough to reduce population increase. But the right time for my body and life

and before 34, the age my mum died and when I would run out of maternal route map now that's something I'd never thought of but clearly it was a factor for Helen and we welcome your thoughts on this at BBC Women's Hour on social media now you probably know that there are protests climate change activists out on the streets of London they are out there today. They were there yesterday as well and overnight. Thousands have joined in. Oxford Street's blocked.

Marble Arch, Piccadilly Circus, Rhodes Amount, Roundup, Parliament Square are closed off. It is World Earth Day next week on the 22nd of April. And we have already had a series of conversations about climate change and the environment and what you can do on Women's Hour. And on Good Friday, this Friday, we've got tips really on what you can do in the home to do your bit in the name of climate change and the environment. But I thought you'd be interested in this. Two women who have used their ingenuity to come up with possible solutions for environmental problems. Dr Fania Ismail is one of our guests.

She's invented a waterproof material that will be used in disposable coffee cups. And Dr Carmen Ijoza has come up with a natural textile made from pineapple leaf fibre, which could be used as a leather substitute. Fania, good morning, first of all. How are you? Hi, good morning. Thank you so much. How are you? Well, it's really interesting to talk to you very well thank you um this material you've invented for coffee cups i've got a disposable coffee cup in front of me now to my shame uh what difference is your invention going to make um the one you've got in front of you is um consists of two layers um the outer layer is paper but inside you've got a plastic layer.

And they're hot pressed against each other so water doesn't leak from your cup. Right. And that plastic has a problem because you can't get rid of them. And as we speak now, every single minute in the UK alone, 5,000 of these cups make their way into the landfill and only 1% gets recycled. That's about 2.5 billion cups a year in the UK alone. And rough figures are saying there is a minimum of 250 billion a year globally. So this is a massive problem.

Massive. Your material is called Sol-Gel. What is it? Well, the Sol-Gel process is well known. It's, you know, scientists in academia and industry worldwide use it for different purposes. The difference we have made to the process is we have added additional materials on a molecular level, which makes the end product unique. So what this product does is once applied to paper and cardboard, it makes it completely water impermeable. So therefore, you don't need any plastic layer anymore. Now, one of the chief ingredients, I think, is glass.

Is that right? Well, it's a glass-like material. Sol-gel is a process where you make glass-like material at room temperature. So the raw materials are extracted from sand and silica is a major component of sand. So the silica part is the raw materials that you can make Sol-gel based products from. And is the process of manufacturing it, is that environmentally friendly? Yes, it is. Sol-gel, if you speak to anybody in any industry,

you will find that that's their favourable technology. If it works for them, they will all go for Sol-gel as a coating because you can do different things from it. And also the process doesn't require capital investment, so you don't need a lot of energy consumption. It is really the best technology out there that you can use in terms of being less toxic. In that case, how close are you to supplying the leading manufacturers of these coffee cups?

We are currently working with leading industry partners. So we have at least, you know, three key partners that we are working with and they are entering into a joint partnership with us, joint development partnership. So we can apply it on industrial scale. So kind of we finished all the initial testing and we are entering into the industrial scale testing. And once this is done, then we are predicting our product to be out there within the next six to 18 months. I mean, roughly speaking, another three months,

we will have our first range of products. Thank you very much. So Carmen, yours is this natural textile, sounds fascinating, pineapple leaf fibre, which you get hold of from where? Good morning, everyone. Pinatex is indeed, as you say, a natural material made from pineapple leaf fibre.

And these fibres come today from the Philippines, where I was working, started work in the 90s and discovered that the whole range of natural fibers okay comes from the philippines um it has to be shipped over what to europe um no it's processed in the philippines we work from the farming communities up to the first stage of the material. The material goes from farming communities where they take the waste leaves, they extract the fibers, wash dry, then it goes to a factory where it's degummed, which means we take all the gum out of these fibers, also in the Philippines, and then it goes into a non-woven process also in the Philippines.

So it leaves the Philippines as a non-woven textile material already. So half of the added value remains in the Philippines. And there are no places in the Philippines today to fully develop piñatex. So what we do is we ship it and we bring it to Spain where we've got two companies, two partner companies where they do finishings. Okay, I mean it's interesting, it's important isn't it that some of the success of this product is shared with the Philippines which is a developing country. Totally and that was the reason and it is the reason

where we will always work like that. Obviously we don't have pineapples in England or in Europe so it makes a lot of sense as well but the reality is that that is really a very important part of what Pinatex is. And it's a replacement for pleather or leather or both? Both in fact. Leather replaces leather and that was my idea because I worked with leather before inventing this new material. And pleather, which is basically plastic leather. So it can replace any plastic petroleum-based textiles as well.

Lots of people, of course, feel very strongly about leather and would therefore go for pleather. But it's just one of the many illustrations of how complicated this world is. The manufacture of pleather is not very environmentally friendly, is it? Absolutely not. I mean, pleather is basically a plastic material which is polyurethane or PVC.

PVC is the most damaging plastic in the planet, really. So it is not really very sustainable. It takes forever to... And, yeah, carry on, Carmen, go on. ..to disintegrate. If ever it does disintegrate, it's really not something that we would like to use. It's not very good for the skin, it's not breathable, etc.

The fact is, though, that cows exist. So what do you think about leather? Leather is a different story, you know. I mean, I was working with leather for many years. As you say, exactly, cows exist. And leather is a by-product of the meat industry. So the reality is that we've got too many cows in the world, 1.5 billion cattle in the world, causing a huge amount of damage, environmental damage.

And the reality is that we have to see what can we do not to have so many animals, which is simply, please, stop eating so much meat, and then we will not have this problem. Are you someone, Carmen, who lies awake at night worrying about all this? I'm very aware that I'm speaking at the moment only, I don't know, 500 metres or so away from the climate change protesters, and whatever you think about the disruption they're causing, many people feel very passionately about these issues, don't well of course i think we really need to um i don't

stay awake at night because i i'm happy with what i'm doing i passionately believe in in what i'm doing is good for the earth and good for people so i don't have that worry maybe a bit tired but that's that's another story and i think these people that are just basically there and in waterloo bridge where we are in somerset house they're trying to do something that the government or anybody seems to really find a solution to and they're doing their best and i totally sympathize with them thank you. Fania, do you feel the same way? Yes, I mean, it's, I kind of see it as a responsibility of

everyone to step up and do good for our environment, for the society. So it's kind of, people are becoming much, much more aware of it. And, yeah, similar position, really.

Thank you very much. That's Fania Ismail. You also heard from Carmen Hijoza. And on Good Friday, as I say, there'll be more on what you can do, what we can all do in our everyday lives to make this situation slightly better. Lucy Siegel is one of my guests

on Good Friday Morning on the programme. Now, next week, how mental health can impact on a relationship. If you have depression or anxiety, how much can you, how much should you expect from a partner? What if your partner is the one with the mental health issue? What is the right way?

What is the best way to try to support them? We'd love your experiences. You can email us of course via the website or contact us on social media at BBC Women's Hour. We do welcome your experiences there. I suspect many people listening will have something to say on that topic.

It's really, really interesting and important. Now to someone I bet you've never heard or I certainly had never heard of her but this is a fascinating little chunk of a life experience. The name Dr. Joan Mallison might not mean a great deal but she was big news in the 30s, 40s and 50s. She was a birth control activist, a family planning doctor, and she wrote a book called Any Wife or Any Husband, described as for couples who've met sexual difficulties and for doctors.

She wasn't trained as one, but she did work as a therapist. And historian Dr. Carolyn Rustleholtz has come across some recordings of her sexual counselling sessions in the archives of the Wellcome Library. Carolyn, good morning to you. Good morning. We should say, of course, that the people she was counselling did not know these recordings had been made, which these days sets your nerve endings jangling a bit, doesn't it? Yes, exactly. But at that time, we had different ethical guidelines. And basically, Malazan, I think, wanted to preserve the spontaneity of the patient's narrative. And also, she withdraw any personal information and she edited these tapes. Right. Who was she for people who've never heard of her?

John Madison. She was a birth control activist, a family planning doctor, committed family planning doctor, one of the first women doctors to provide contraceptive advice to married women in family planning clinics. She was also very committed to make abortion legal. She was part of the Law Reform Association for Abortion. And she was also one of the first sexual therapists in the 40s and 50s in London. So what do you think, listening to the recordings, what's your overriding impression? She tried to be as helpful as she could towards her patient. And basically, the heterosexual married women who came to her were presenting some form of sexual difficulties, and they wanted to have an enjoyable sexual life. And Malazan provided practical advice, but also she did a talkative

cure to try to find the reasons behind sexual difficulties. Now, I imagine that back then, actually, let's be honest now, most women would find talking about these issues really difficult. So who were the women that felt able to talk to her? Well, some of the women were referred by their own psychologist and other doctors. And otherwise, there were women that came to the family planning centre Some of the women were referred by their own psychologist and other doctors. And otherwise, there were women that came to the family planning center because Malazan realized when she was providing contraceptive advice to married women that their difficulties were not limited to contraception,

but expanded to marital difficulties. So she would ask whether she enjoyed sexual life for instance so these women were coming from the middle class I would say some of them might have come from the working class because Malazan might have recording recorded those sessions in three different locations in London at the North Kensington Women Welfare Centre which was a family planning clinic at her private practice and at the University Kensington Women's Welfare Centre, which was a family planning clinic, at her private practice and at the University College Hospital, where she was head of a contraceptive clinic. Did she speak to any men? Were there any men at these sessions?

Yes, three husbands came along, which show how actually youth husbands started to feel that having a pleased wife in terms of sexuality was very important for their sexual life. Yeah, and what's the dynamic like in the conversations where men are there? Can you tell the difference? Well, she didn't interview the couple together, so she had private session with the men, but she was still in charge. Malazan was in charge of the session. She would ask questions and then let the patient answer. But she would also provide her own interpretation of the feeling of the patient, which today might seem a bit weird. Yeah, well, it would. But I suppose we can't look at it too

much through our 21st century lens, can we? But the advice she was giving, how much of that would be all right today or acceptable i think she still have um i mean she was encouraging women to have sexual pleasure through the clitoris when those women couldn't achieve vaginal orgasm because basically the main reason for these women to consult malazan was where either a vaginismus which is the contraction of... Yeah, just define that for anybody that's not certain. So it is the contraction of the muscles at the entrance of the vagina. Which makes penetration difficult or painful. Yeah, okay. Oh, just painful.

Exactly. Or just painful, I don't mean that, but yeah, carry on. Otherwise was inhibition of orgasm. So women having the ability to enjoy sex, but who couldn't achieve orgasm. Or frigidity, which is a lack of sensations and lack of sexual feelings. And Malazan provided advice and pushed the patient to reflect on their traumatic events that happened during their childhood.

And I think that's still something that is going on today. And she also tried to reassure them towards the pressure they felt to have a performative and enjoyable sex life by telling them that everyone is different and clitoral orgasm is as valuable than a vaginal orgasm. Yeah. Was she, I mean, she wasn't quite the first person to put a person's attitude to sex into the context of the rest of their life. But I don't know how many other people around that time would be having such direct conversations with women in particular. What do you think?

Yes, I mean, it could be quite hard to tell, but she was definitely part of a broader movement which aimed at helping couples overcome their sexual difficulties. And this movement started from the 1920s with Mary Stokes' very famous manual, Married Wife. And then other sexual reformists were publishing sexual manuals and medical manuals. But she was one of the first to provide practical exercise and practical advice to married women. And I underline the fact that most of the women were married because at that time, family planning associations were targeting married women. And of course, this is all pre the Abortion Act of 1967. So there was no...

And the Family Planning Act. Yes, and the Family Planning Act. So women were pretty vulnerable, actually, weren't they, in many, many cases? Yes, exactly. But there was this new discourse coming from the interwar years have a beautiful and enjoyable sexual life. And when they couldn't, they experienced anxiety. And today, how much has changed? I think we still are in the society where having a performative and very enjoyable sexual life. Well, pornography plays a part in that, doesn't it? What would Joan have made of that, do you think? Well, I remember hearing her saying that that was a fallacy of her generation,

this emphasis that everyone should have an orgasm. So she was very aware of the pressure that people felt around having an orgasm. So I think she might have been quite critical too. Yes, it's interesting. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. Everything changes and nothing does, basically. Dr. Carolyn Rosterholtz, and actually you, much. Thank you for having me. Everything changes and nothing does basically. Dr Carolyn Rusterholtz and actually you, I hope you don't mind me saying, you are about to

have your first child aren't you? Yes I do. And I know we've discussed this so I'm not being too intrusive. You are 33. You weren't sure but you're 34 on? No 33 on Thursday. In the latter stages of pregnancy it's quite easy to forget how old you are.

So don't worry about that. Thank you. And I've got no excuse and I can very rarely remember how old I am. Well, I hope that goes well for you. I only ask because we are just discussing or making reference on this morning's programme to the fact the ONS figures are now suggesting

it is more common in England and Wales to have a baby in your 30s than in your 20s. And you've been telling us your thoughts on this. Jan says, I had my first baby at 39, second at 41, after being told I could never have children. Hard work no matter what age you have your babies, but indescribable joy, she says. We've got others on this subject.

Colette, I'm 34, currently expecting my first child. I'm also one of the first among my female friends to have a child. I agree that focus on the so-called female friends to have a child. I agree that focus on the so-called right age is a patriarchal, patriarchal obsession. Surely more important for the mother to be physically and mentally healthy. Age no longer dictates this. Samantha, I've just had my first at 31. I am far more rational, empathetic and calm than I would have been in my 20s. I've got the emotional intelligence to take a breath before reacting or panicking.

My career's in great shape for me to return to. I'm glad we waited, says Samantha. Congratulations to you and thank you very much, Carolyn. Thank you. Now, food allergies. Here's another one that Carolyn's now obliged to pay attention to. In children, it affects up to 6% of children in the developed world. These allergies do appear to be on the rise.

Last week, we talked about diagnosis and management of food allergies. It affects up to 6% of children in the developed world. These allergies do appear to be on the rise. Last week we talked about diagnosis and management of food allergies. This week, how to feed your child well if they have an allergy. Claire Thornton-Wood is a paediatric dietician. Welcome to the programme, Claire. So where do we start with this? What are the most common food groups that children can be allergic to? What are they? So the most common food group is milk, that's the most common one,

and then following that it's eggs, and then it becomes peanuts, tree nuts, fish, a bit less common, wheat. Right, let's start with milk, obviously. Can you be allergic to breast milk? You can be allergic to breast milk, and the reason for that is because um the foods that the mother eat then pass through the breast milk and are consumed by the baby so yes if we have a child that um has an allergy to a particular food we would ask the mother to remove that food

from from her diet right okay but not easy to do to put it mildly it depends what it is but no possibly not easy to do how would you know actually if a very young baby was allergic to breast milk i mean you would be looking at the kind of symptoms that they would have i think it's probably first of all important to say there are two types of allergy there's what we call an IgE allergy so that is the allergy most people would think of the anaphylaxis the potential swelling of the lips hives all over the body that's very sudden and happens within often within minutes but certainly within a couple of hours of eating a particular food the other type of allergy is called a non-IgE allergy and that's a kind of slow burning allergy that sometimes can take days even weeks to appear and tends to manifest itself in things

more like chronic eczema, constipation, faltering growth, abdominal pain that kind of thing. So clearly if you have the more immediate type of reaction, it's often quite easy to pinpoint what has caused it. So you can then quite easily. But the other type is actually no less difficult, is it? The other type is more difficult. So with an IgE allergy, you would actually, you can have tests for that. You can have a skin prick test. You can have IgE blood tests.

And that can give you a very good answer. With the other type of allergy, it's more like a trial and error. So you have a look at a health care professional, usually a dietician, would have a look at the diet. Think the mother may even have an idea of what it is. And then you would remove that food from the diet and if the um the symptoms then improve the gold standard is to put the food back into the diet if the symptoms reappear then you know you've hit on the right the right food if you have a family where there are a lot of people with even quite mild eczema should you

be concerned you should you should be concerned um because there is something we we know called the allergic march where people who have eczema i mean i'm not talking about small patches i'm talking about sort of quite you know quite bad eczema yeah are more likely to go on to develop other allergies like food allergies and asthma and hay fever. So it's really important if your child has got eczema to actually really get on top of that because if you think about it your skin is like a barrier. It's like you're sitting in a plastic bag and your plastic bag is designed, it's waterproof really and it's designed to keep everything out. If you've got eczema you've actually got really quite large areas of very exposed skin and then the allergens are actually able to penetrate through and we know

that that then predisposes people to become allergic to particular foods. The milk ladder is something that I honestly had never heard of. what does that mean? Okay so the milk ladder is something that's been developed over many many years and refined and is a way of bringing milk back into a child's diet when they are we think that they're growing out of their allergy so it's really important to say that the milk ladder needs to be done under medical guidance usually a dietician and it should not be used for any child that has an IgE immediate type reaction so the milk ladder is where we use milk in very small amounts going up to larger amounts and we use milk that's very very well cooked like in a biscuit or a cupcake going up to yogurt and then a glass of milk.

And the idea behind it is it's the protein in the milk that causes the difficulty. The protein is a certain shape. Once you heat it or treat it by making it slightly more acidic, the shape of it changes and then the receptors in your body don't recognize it in just the same way. It's a bit like putting a Lego brick. If you've got them, they go really well together. If you were to put one of your Lego bricks in the microwave and change its shape, it then wouldn't fit together. Got you. Okay, that's a really good way of describing it. So to peanut butter or peanuts, which obviously is a big, big area, I've heard the idea, it's people purport to have done,

that you give your child a peanut butter sandwich but in the car park of a hospital with an A&E and then see what happens. Is that a good idea? I do know that mothers do do that. I mean, I... Every A&E in the country is going to be going bonkers now. Of course, I've travelled down in the car parks. I mean, it used to be said that you shouldn't give your children highly allergenic foods at a young age. And certainly when I had my children, it was the mother didn't eat peanuts,

the children didn't have peanuts when they were babies. That advice has now changed and we are saying that children should be given. There's the EAT study and the LEAP study, have shown that we should now be giving children foods that are potentially allergenic at a much younger age. So around six months when you're weaning them, you should start to offer them things like peanuts. Obviously, you mustn't give them whole peanuts, so you use peanut powder,

which you can then mix into things like yogurt or drop it into casseroles things like that yes you you have obviously got to be very careful but at the same time being over cautious won't be a help either will it no i mean that that's that's i think part of the problem we think that perhaps we've been a bit over cautious previously and then that has caused perhaps more children to become allergic do you think that is that what people are saying i think that there are there is some evidence that they they that by excluding a food sometimes it does make a child more likely to um right this isn't a criticism of you but it doesn't help that the advice just keeps changing um and i said we wanted to focus on

eating well i do think that's important if your child for whatever reason allergic reaction or something else can't eat a particular sort of food or chooses not to how do you ensure they are getting all the right nutrients it depends what the food is so obviously if you're not eating eggs or you're not eating peanuts that's not so much of a problem if it's a big food group like um cow's milk you need to take extra care to make sure they get everything so with cow's milk it's calcium that you will be looking at and also taking cow's milk out from the diet excludes quite a lot of fat you know you wouldn't be having cheese you wouldn't be having yogurt yeah but it's perfectly possible to feed a child without those foods.

Is it? So what do you give them? Well, you can use lots of different milks. If you've got a very small child, they would probably be on a prescribed formula. Older children can have oat milk or some of the other plant-based milks, soya milk, the nut milks. And they're all fortified with calcium to exactly the same level as they are in cow's milk. And if you don't want to eat meat or you,

I suppose some people could be allergic to meat, couldn't they? That is the thing, is it? You don't look very sure. Potentially. Potentially, yes, potentially. Okay, so pulses, lentils, but then you could be allergic to them too. You could. I mean, we do see children that do have multiple allergies. And obviously, the more allergies you have, the more difficult it is to find foods that you can eat. I just want to mention this email from Becky.

My first child was allergic to cow dairy. I gave up dairy as the protein was passing through my breast milk, ended up doing loads of baking and making food from scratch. Four years later and a hundred attempts at the milk ladder we have finally completed it and he's okay with dairy and his diet so that fascinates me i mean very briefly claire why do some people then grow out of allergies a lot a lot of people yes they do they do grow out of allergies it's just um they gradually build up the tolerance which is what the milk ladder does. It gradually builds up your tolerance to the foods that you've previously been allergic to.

Our thanks to Claire Thornton-Wood, paediatric dietician. Now, lots of emails on the subject of the right age, so-called, to have a baby. And obviously, I mean, there is no one. So actually, judging by your emails, there definitely isn't. Here's one listener who says, I'm a Hasidic woman and I was married at 18, pregnant at 19. I was told that contraception causes infertility and cancer by the older women I knew.

And there was pressure to have children immediately. Early marriage and subsequent childbearing is the norm in my community. I think it's to control women and keep them in marriages that they might not otherwise submit to. It's a very particular life experience. And our thanks to the listener for contacting us on that. From C, I had my first children, twins at 34 and my third at 38. I was happy with the timing at the time. However, I now regularly

appreciate that my mum was young, 23 when she had me, as she is fit and well enough to enjoy having grandchildren. Sadly, my dad, who was 37 when I was born, was never well enough to know my children for that long before he died at 76. For that reason, I wish I'd had them younger. Yeah, that's interesting, isn't it? I must admit, I think about that. So I have my children at 35 and 38, nearly 39. And yes, that is a factor. I do wonder whether I'll be any use as a grandparent. Actually, I wonder whether I'll be any use whatever age the children are born, or hopefully born, she says, trying hard not to put pressure on her children, who won't be so that's all right this is from Hannah I was 23 and I found it isolating as none of my friends could imagine what it was like when I had a baby I felt so young and

unresourced compared to other mothers discussing extensions and mortgages and I totally lost my identity made up of friends social life life and travelling. However, our surprise baby changed the course of our lives so much, pushing us to create the life we wanted. I've just had my second at 27 and it was such a different experience being in a better place to have a child. I feel so supported by the community we've found now and really proud of the family life we've made for our daughters. At any age it's hard and the shift to motherhood isn't supported Hannah, thank you very much for that. From Jill, the change in parenting styles advocated, i.e. no smacking etc. with the birth of my second child meant I was a more skilled mother. I can only gauge this by the absolute success of my 24-year-old son

in everything he does. I'm 65 now, says Jill. From Alison, I had my first child at 41, second at 44. My biggest regret is not having had them sooner. I'm not sure why I left it so late. I just never had the urge that friends had spoken of and I was busy doing other things. But now I wish I could be a part of my children's life for longer than I'm likely to be and I wish I'd had them at least a decade earlier.

From Ruth, I had twins at 47, having tried for eight years, 47 and twins. They are amazing and not a moment of joy is missed. Obviously at this age it is physically more demanding but my career is established. I'm a wiser, more mature, settled person. I wish my pregnancies at 39 had survived but of course I feel very lucky to have my babies even at this age. I'm sure you do. And Ruth, congratulations to you for that. And thanks to everybody who took part today. Join Jenny for the programme

and the podcast tomorrow. Her guests include Dame Glenys Stacey, Chief Inspector of Probation. She's just about to step down for that role, but she's got plenty to say to Jenny and that'll be tomorrow. after a data crash that wiped out most records of life. So when she finds an old recording of a rainforest, she has no idea what it is. Forest 404, nine part thriller, nine part talk,

nine part soundscape. Starring Pearl Mackie, Tanya Moody, and Pippa Haywood with theme music by Bonobo. Subscribe now on BBC Sounds. Subscribe now. 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

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