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The Guardian
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Lily Phillips: Crying review – laughing through the toxic positivity around childbirth
Expectations and reality don't always align when it comes to childbirth. Lily Phillips (not that one, she assures us, getting good mileage from her porn star namesake) thought she was well informed. She'd gone through a long process of IVF to get there, attended NCT classes, and, when labour started, she was ready for the if not serene then empowering birthing experience and magical moment of immediate love that would follow. Instead, she discovered that 'birth is barbaric and early motherhood is brutal'. Yet even her NCT WhatsApp group, where she turned after a harrowing hospital experience, requested 'no negative birth stories, please'. Crying does a lot to redress the balance and cuts through the 'toxic positivity' surrounding childbirth that left Phillips feeling alone. Phillips is an assured yet irreverent host, breezing through anecdotes of medical examinations, unspeakable pain, and struggles to have her concerns acknowledged by those looking after her. She takes us to the depths of her three-day labour with amusing vignettes of arrogant consultants and undignified poos, and the 'hell' of sleep deprivation that descended into postnatal depression. Most of all, she tells us, there was anger. We feel the righteousness of that, yet Phillips also withholds the raw emotion. She keeps it light, cushioning pain with exasperation that any of this has been normalised. Some of the routines stick to documenting her experience rather than wringing out their full comic potential, and interesting questions about why the expectations from Instagram and antenatal classes don't match most women's reality are raised but not probed. She's not the only show at this festival to note the persisting gender gap in parenting within heterosexual relationships, but she does it with aplomb. Despite a couple's best intentions, 'the baby doesn't give a shit about him', she quips – to the newborn, she's Beyoncé, he's Alan Titchmarsh. Phillips says she never wanted to write a show about her baby, but audiences will be glad she did. At Monkey Barrel, Edinburgh, until 12 August All our Edinburgh festival reviews
The Independent
05-08-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
I felt mad after giving birth – but even I wouldn't do what Calvin Harris has done…
Something weird happens to people when they find out they're having a baby. They do things that they – rational, sensible, grown-up people, people who have kitchen islands and know exactly which day is right for recycling – ever saw themselves doing. Suddenly, they find themselves paying hundreds of pounds to go to NCT classes to make friends with other pregnant people. They attend sessions at the local hospital where they learn how to handle a giant, woolly womb. They listen to hypnobirthing tapes and talk about 'breathing the baby out' or wanting to 'give birth without pain relief'. They even go to gong baths. Then, there are slips into the truly weird – like men who take a shot of their partner's 'natural sweet vanilla milk' (I'm looking at you, Joe Wicks), or Calvin Harris, who caused a bit of a stir this week with his... unorthodox approach to the arrival of his baby boy, Micah, after a home birth in Ibiza. In a photo deemed even too graphic for Instagram (the shot has been slapped with an age restriction by the social media site), the Scottish DJ – who is married to BBC Radio 1 presenter and broadcaster Vick Hope – proudly shows off his wife's placenta and the umbilical cord, positioned in a heart shape. And trust me, you do not want to look at that while eating your breakfast. The other images, in perfect sequence, appear to show the organ being dehydrated in some kind of air fryer contraption and turned into tasty placenta pills. Harris captioned the unusual photo montage with: 'My wife is a superhero and I am in complete awe of her primal wisdom!' To which many have been asking: where was Harris's 'primal wisdom' when posting those shots? Some fans blasted the warts-and-all snapshots as 'unnecessary', while others said simply: 'Placenta pic was not needed bro.' And one commenter wrote: 'Placenta pic is exactly what I needed to remind me to stay single and childless for a few more years.' Snarf. Now, I'm not opposed to lifting the lid on the gory, scary, visceral reality of childbirth – personally, I think it's pretty cool (and important) to show exactly what women go through to bring babies into the world. I find myself eye-rolling when I see images of the royal family, for example, looking pristine on the steps of a posh private hospital after giving birth when I know – we all know – that behind the door of the delivery suite is absolute carnage. There's a lot going on when you give birth, to say the least. There are screams and sweat and tears and swearing and third-degree tears and stitches afterwards and savage, feral declarations that you hate the person who did this to you, that you wish you'd never decided to get pregnant in the first place, that you will never, ever do it again – until you do. There's even mesh underwear. Even those who have elective C-sections don't get away scot-free. There is blood and gore and latex gloves covered in all sorts of fluids; there is fainting and pain from epidurals and (according to friends who have had them) a sensation of 'being pulled apart'. And among the 'natural birthers' who are lucky enough to labour in water, there are sieves handed to husbands and partners to – how shall I put this delicately? – fish out any floaters from the birthing pool. After I gave birth, the placenta dropped out on the floor beneath me and wobbled there, looking menacing – and not a little like a Portuguese man o' war. The only difference between me and Harris is that I didn't take a picture and post it – but after seeing it, believe me there's no way on earth I would have wanted to eat it, even in pill form. Still, I get it. I get the temptation to consume your child, I really do. It's a strange and powerful, atavistic sensation – it's the strange feeling we get when we are in love; when we want to (almost literally) bite or nibble or eat the thing we adore: lovers, children, pets. There's even a term for it: 'cute aggression'. So, it doesn't entirely surprise me that Harris loves his wife and child so much that he wants to devour every single part of them. If you squint (and scroll past the gory shot), it seems quite sweet. Plus, I know for a fact that you're borderline insane after you've brought a child into this world: I buried the stump of my daughter's umbilical cord beneath a rose bush in the garden – at the full moon. I didn't eat her placenta, though. I did not do that. So, why do some do it at all – and do they regret it? Hilary Duff has confessed that she still feels 'repulsed' by the fact that she drank her placenta in a smoothie, shortly after giving birth to her daughter, Banks. 'I saw that thing, it looked gnar,' she said on Whitney Cummings ' podcast Good For You, in 2020. She said that she did it on the guidance of her midwives – and that her sister did the exact same thing (only in pill form, rather than blended with strawberries, berries and bananas). 'They say that it stops your body from haemorrhaging after you have a baby,' Duff said. 'They say that it gives you all kinds of energy and nutrients and [it] helps balance your hormones and stuff like that." She then added: 'And I'm still completely repulsed by it.' Some people – including Harris, presumably – believe that eating the placenta can help prevent postnatal depression (PND) and improve milk supply, or provide important nutrients like iron; whereas others point out that its entire purpose is to filter out waste away from the baby. Like I said, we are all a bit insane after having a baby. Some of us, clearly, more than others.
