British novelist Sarah Dunant opened up about her decision to give birth without pain relief — a choice she made to experience firsthand what women endured centuries ago.
Dunant, 75, gave birth to her two children in 1987 and 1990, and the experience deeply influenced her 2003 novel The Birth of Venus. The book follows an 18-year-old woman navigating love and motherhood in Renaissance Italy, as reported by The Times in the U.K.
The author explained that, as a writer, she uses fiction to transport readers into the past. Yet, she’s always been aware of how hard it is to truly imagine life — and death — before modern medicine and anesthesia. “Particularly the whole role of childbirth in women’s lives,” she said.
Dunant’s latest book, The Marchesa, also explores Renaissance Italy, focusing on Isabella d’Este, the pioneering female art patron of her time. It includes vivid depictions of childbirth — both successful and tragic.
“Even the most privileged women, like Isabella d’Este, had eight pregnancies, always in search of those few healthy boys to continue the family line,” Dunant said. “How she coped with sex and labor was important for me to bring to life.”
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She added that her own decision to forgo pain relief came from a mix of curiosity and discipline. “I made the decision to try and do it without pain relief. I did a lot of work on breathing exercises to help with the waves of pain that come with contractions, and looking back, I think that helped me a lot.”
“Was it excruciating? Most certainly,” she admitted. “But strangely, the fact that so many women had gone through it before helped. I knew a lot about the process, so I could think as well as feel my way through it — though one doesn’t do much thinking in the final stages! You’re too busy trying to expel what feels like a watermelon and wondering how the continuation of human history depends on such a cruel, agonizing process.”
Dunant said she was “lucky,” with labors lasting nine and seven hours. “Bearable in terms of exhaustion and time,” she recalled. “And I had medical staff on hand should anything have gone wrong.”
Having no medication, she was alert afterward — alert enough to write about it almost immediately. “That allowed me to record each stage and the different levels of pain,” she said. “I’ve used that memory many times in my writing.”
Dunant discussed her experience again while appearing at the Cheltenham Literature Festival in Gloucestershire, England, on Oct. 13. She told The Times that she has always been fascinated by how pain shapes human experience.
“When I got pregnant some 30 years ago, I thought this was the one chance I’d have to understand what it must have been like,” she explained. “I had a lot of pain, but no complications. The only wisdom I got was that I was bloody lucky to be living now.”
At the festival, she described the ordeal vividly: “It’s hard to imagine how much physical pain and discomfort women endured throughout their lives, let alone during childbirth with no help. It was agonizing. Doing it, I couldn’t possibly replicate their experience — the smells, the horror — but in the end, I had a live child.”
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Her partner supported her decision, she said, because “he realized he had a stroppy partner who would want to do this like women in the past.” Unlike in history, however, he was by her side. “That simply would never have been the case back then, when birth was a nasty, necessary, and gory thing best left to the women — or later, to doctors.”
After her first birth, Dunant wrote a diary describing each stage. “I made a point the night after my daughter was born to write it all down,” she said. “That account helped me capture the experience in The Birth of Venus through the eyes of my character Alessandra Cecchi.”
Dunant has since written 13 novels, six of them set in Renaissance Italy. Her works, according to her website, blend cutting-edge historical research with fiction and have been translated into 30 languages.
Before her literary career, she also spent years working for the BBC, contributing to both radio and television programs, including the arts show The Late Show on BBC Two.
