Birth

INT: Bedroom, 4.18AM

A man is lying, asleep in his bed when his phone rings.

Blearily he searches around for his mobile until it rings off. In his tired state, he wonders why someone is ringing at this hour even though in the back of his head he knows why. Then the house phone rings. He jumps out of bed, picks up the receiver, and groggily says ‘hello?’

On the other end of the line, his wife - sounding somewhat like she is in pain - says just four words:

“Get up here. Now!”

And so begins the longest, most amazing day of his life.

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The man is me.

In case you hadn’t worked that out.

I quickly got dressed, brushed my teeth, and was out the door within five minutes, motoring up to the hospital with all the speed I could muster at this ungodly hour. Jenny had been admitted to the hospital the day before for induction as we were 12 days overdue, and I had returned home only 5 hours previously after spending most of the day by her side at the hospital. I should have known that not long after I left things would start moving. And as I drove towards the Ulster hospital I, somehow, managed to keep all the fear I’d been feeling in the weeks prior at bay and just concentrated on being there for my wife as she is in labour.

I reach the maternity unit and go through the side doors (the main doors not being open at this time) and run up to the induction ward. My wife isn’t there. I begin to panic. Then a midwife tells me she’s been transferred to the home from home ward, a sort of hotel suite-like room that supposedly more comfortable to give birth in, and I panic even more. This is actually happening. Right now. Point of no return. I run to the home from home ward, and ask the nurse what room Jenny is in. Before she can answer I hear a familiar voice, only it’s not a voice at all; more of a noise that’s been twisted into something halfway between a guttural moan and a scream. It’s a noise I’ve never heard my wife make before, but still unmistakably her dulcet tones.

“She’s in room 2.”

“Thanks.”

I enter the room and see my wife, splayed out on the bed, legs akimbo, with a midwife walking around the room taking notes. At this stage I’ve no idea how long my wife has been in this position, and throughout the labour I don’t learn much more as it’s hard to get meaningful answers from someone in between the painful contractions. My main function for the next few hours was basically to stand next to the bed, hold my wife’s hand if and when she required some hand holding, dab her forehead with a wet, cold facecloth every so often and provide her with liquid refreshment whenever it was needed.

And most importantly to not, under any circumstances, go south of the border. I feared that if I looked at it my face would melt like yer man in Raiders of the Lost Ark. 

But the biggest thing that struck me about the whole labour bit is the length of it. I mean, it takes AGES. Literally hours. Hours during which nothing much of note happens, to the lay person, ie. me. According to the various midwives and nurses that came in and out, things were progressing nicely, a fact they could tell by looking at my wife’s hoo-hah for less than a second but for me, the hours passed so very very slowly. So much so, that after a while you sort of tune out the noises that occur simultaneously with the contractions. [FYI, and this may not be the case for all women but the noises my wife made varied from sounding like good, if painful, sex moans, gut wrenching yells and a few – though not many – honest-to-God ‘Ow’s’ at which I had to stifle my laughter at various points of the labour.] You become so used to these noises though that they no longer faze you – “Look, I know you’re in unimaginable pain but I’m trying to read the paper here.”

Because that’s another thing I took away from the labour; once you experience it and see everything that there is to see during the long drawn out process there’s very little that can faze you afterwards. I remember sitting in one of the first appointments we had, one where Jenny was getting the first of many internal examinations, and being embarrassed beyond belief at the fact that someone was sticking their hand up my wife. Now? I was thinking of selling tickets. If I’d charged a fiver for everyone that had a gawp down below during labour (and the days afterwards) I’d probably have about £100. Well, £95 actually. As there was one time, despite promising my wife that I wouldn’t look, I caught a glimpse of the…area in an unfortunately placed mirror. And while those things aren’t particularly attractive at the best of times, they’re much much much worse during labour. All angry and red, like a Cornish pasty someone’s trying to force open from the inside. Sorry for that image.

As the hours went by and there wasn’t much movement the midwife suggested we get into the pool. Well, just Jenny. It’d be a bit weird if all three of us got in. Although apparently some partners do. I was not going to be one of them. If you saw the colour the water in the pool ends up as (like weak Ribena), you wouldn’t want to get in it. And so we moved on to another really weird moment where Jenny, naked but for a bra, was in the birthing pool on all fours, yelling and screaming as the contractions came and went with me just standing there not knowing where to look. The midwife, however, did not have that problem and every so often whipped out a mirror on a stick and look between my wife’s legs. In an effort to move things along the midwife advised Jenny to sort of make a figure of 8 with her bum while moving back and forth. I couldn’t help but think this is what got us into this mess in the first place, Jenny wiggling her arse at me, but I didn’t share that particular thought at this time.

But still, nothing. So the midwife said that we would be taken up to the ward and that baby Isaac would have to be a forceps delivery due to him being in an awkward position and not really wanting to come out naturally despite being fully cooked. We hadn’t planned for this, and while we did have a preferred birth plan it was very much a ‘go with the flow’ situation. If we’d needed to have a C-section, we would have, so if forceps is what the midwife thinks is best, forceps it is. Jenny gets carted up to the ward on the bed, yelling as she goes, while I make awkward, embarrassed ‘Women, eh?’ faces to anyone we happen to pass despite this being the maternity ward where everyone is used to this kind of thing. They raise Jenny up on the bed, take away the bottom part of the bed so her legs dangle, and then a doctor that we’ve never met before comes in and basically comes face to uh, face with my wife’s business. What? No introductions?

She begins to unwrap the forceps, which are instruments I’ve never seen before and good god, they are terrifying looking machines of torture. You know that bit in Batman when the Joker is at the surgery getting his face reconstructed having fallen into the vat of chemicals? They’re like that. She puts together the forceps which are basically giant, sterile salad tongs, asks Jenny if she’d like any gas and air (Jenny, wisely, says yes) and goes to work. At this stage this labour and birth lark is beginning to resemble something that I recognise from TV and film; lady on the bed, doctor between her legs, and partner by the side of the bed holding her hand as she pushes. This is what I expected. What I hadn’t expected though was the doctor basically playing tug of war with my son’s head, as she tries to bring him into this world. I think she may have had her foot on the edge of the bed to give herself more purchase.

So there I am, holding my wife’s hand as she pushes, with the doctor working the forceps, and after three or four big pushes, a lot of yelling and even more gas and air I can see the head. I feel myself start to well up, so I blink away the tears and focus on my wife. One final push and I hear a little cry. I vaguely remember my eyes going super wide for a split second and I look round to see a little baby, covered in goo and blood, all red and squidgy. I look a bit closer and the midwife moves her hand to show me whether it’s a boy or a girl. I can see his little willy but I can’t speak right now. I think the midwife thought that I wasn’t sure what I was looking at, despite having a willy of my own for most, if not all, of my life, and said “it’s a boy.” I turn to Jenny, and in the time it takes for me to turn my head from the midwife to my beautiful wife I’ve started full on crying, and say to her ‘it’s a wee boy.’

Little Isaac.

All the assembled nurses, midwives and doctors take him away for a minute to do something – I honestly can’t remember – then bring him back and set him on top of Jenny.

Where he promptly does his first poo.

Jenny doesn’t care. Partly because she’s so high on gas and air at this point, but probably more because she has her baby boy in her arms.

Another nurse comes in and stitches Jenny up, and then another comes in and gives her a bed bath. Both of which were pretty weird, but I can’t really comment on those because by that stage I was holding my son and the whole world melted away.

Jenny had just done the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen, and I’d been standing next to her all day just marvelling at this miracle of life.

It had been a long day of standing.

My feet were bloody killing me.

I didn’t tell Jenny that though.