Beyond Words

It has been a while since my last post so I thought I would write something concerning the reason why.
Four months and a bit ago I became a father and this post is for the men out there who, like me, are going to go through the same experience for the first time.

With regards to my own situation, and for a bit of background, my partner opted for a home birth for which we prepared a special room. Gas and air was optional, but not used and the whole event took about 15 minutes. We had two midwives and one trainee present who it has to be said were absolutely fantastic even though they didn’t get a chance to finish their cups of tea. It should be noted therefore that my comments are based on the above personal situation and do not involve hospital births or random location/taxi deliveries.

Now then. Where to begin.

You should be aware that from conception onwards that the women in your life is the centre of all professional/family attention and rightly so. She is the one carrying your child/children and at the end of the day, she is the one who has to deliver it. Do not feel sidelined or left out.
With this in mind, as men there are certain aspects of childbirth that, much like sex education in school, we are not told about. We are reliably educated in what to do in the event of problems, given emergency numbers and informed comprehensively about all the horror stories just to make us feel involved. What will happen on the great day on the other hand is a bit thin on the old info front.
Another point, and my reason for writing this is that most subjects involving men and childbirth do nothing more than take the piss, offering nothing to aid awareness or give us a greater incentive to get involved. In short we are there for something anecdotal to talk about with friends at a later date.

“Oooh and then he threw up. Bless him!”

or

“He passed out and the doctors spent more time with him than they did with me…..”

Followed by hoots of laughter and one single red face. Yours. You catch my drift.
This of course omits the jokes, books and other media that portray the man's part as comical or farcical.

Anyway, back to the matter at hand.

Before the main event I was fortunate to hear one of my partners friends extracting the urine out of her husband because he was telling her when to push and when to breathe. Apparently his timing was off. Her statement ended with ‘bless him.’ This was followed by great merriment from all within earshot. Being part of the audience I took it as valuable advice to ‘shut up.’ The women giving birth knows what is going on in her body. Leave her to it. Offering support, comfort, whatever, is a good thing but I personally found it better to be quiet, relying on touch more than anything else.

Blood! This one I wish I had been informed about earlier. It is one of those things that, unless you have sat through a documentary on childbirth which shows the delivery in full, takes you by surprise. It is not the blood itself which is the problem, but the quantity. I swear that when it all started I though she had ruptured an artery. This leads to the 3rd point.

Pay attention to the medical staff. In my case I found this the best bit of advice I could give myself. My partner was making noises I found distressing. There was to my mind a massive amount of blood everywhere, and all I could do was massage her neck or hold her hand. In short, a very stressed and concerned spare prick in a bottle. Then I looked at the midwives. They were relaxed and behaving in their usual professional manner at which point I was able to relax if only a little bit. In short, I found keeping one eye on the midwives through the whole process helped a lot.

Another one that got me was vomiting. A minor thing some might say, but when junior does their impression of the exorcist after feeding, it can scare the hell out of you. Apparently it is in the main, normal. Messy but normal. I would say though that if it wasn't for my partners previous experience I would have phoned a doctor. It pays to be safe at the end of the day.

Baby pooh and wee will not bother you. Trust me on this. Other babies doings might, but your own for some reason doesn't. My daughter explodes like an Iraqi IED. She craps with a blast radius. Once when my partner was changing her, my daughter coughed. I would say the potential range was about three feet. Suffice to say a change of clothes was in order.

Change a baby side on in case the above threatens.

You will think about them every hour of the day and put them above all others. This is not a bad thing. You will also develop a propensity for mindless physical, brutal violence towards anything that threatens their safety. This too I consider normal.

A real biggy this. As long as everything has gone well prepare yourself for a massive mind job.

• Firstly, the fact that my daughter was okay was a huge weight off my mind. It was shall we say almost externally perceivable. For months all that went through my head was ‘what if.’ I couldn’t help it.
  
• Secondly, from this point on every child tragedy, every cot death reported, every story of abuse will relate to your son or daughter and it WILL affect you deeply. You will mentally put your child’s face in all these situations every time you encounter them and it WILL be upsetting. Personally I would be more worried if it wasn’t.
  
• Finally, cot death and every other horrible possibility will now be on your mind. If you’re like me you will scour the Internet for information as well as talk to friends and relatives. Once you discover the MMR/vaccination controversies and other such worrying topics you will become a man possessed. On that point I would have to say you’re on your own. Depending on the people around you, you could find yourself swimming against the tide with your hair turning grey over night.

Baby Gurus. Doctor Spock, The Continuum Concept, Truby King etc. My personal opinion is ‘FUCK THEM.’ We had the misfortune of sitting through Bringing Up Baby by Channel 4, a four part pile of visual excrement that turned potential child abuse into entertainment (edutainment). If you want an example of the damage a so called baby guru can do look up Claire Verity on Google. She was one of the experts on the programme. With no children of her own and now it seems false qualifications, she preached that from birth there was to be no eye contact, no cuddles, the child (referred to as it,) left to cry untended in its own room until feeding time which takes place once every four hours, left outside untended for hours etc etc. This women based her methods on the teachings of Truby King who based his methods on observations of cattle in New Zealand. My personal view is that where advice/help is concerned, this is what grand parents, cousins, aunts, friends, and community are there for. It is not that these so called experts give bad advice, it is the tendency to put their teachings on a pedestal and not trust our own instincts that bothers me.

Finally, if you think you are going back to the life you had before, forget it.