One of the most emphasised points the antenatal class (both the hospital one and the more woo-woo one) was not to listen to other people's birth stories. I think I understand why. So let me tell you about ours.
We planned to induce and when the hospital asked the obstetrician why she replied "Patient sick of being pregnant". The pregnancy had gone full term, it just wasn't looking like it was going to end. So we booked in, arrived and kicked it off with some synthetic hormones to simulate the process of labour. After a night of waiting the labour finally came and we started off with our carefully practised pain management breathing techniques, then started the massage, went with the water and then the gas. The nursing staff assured us that the gas isn't really considered a drug and given we managed to go several hours that was a pretty good effort. I say "we" but really I mean "her". At any rate whomever we were trying to impress would really have been.
Things escalated quickly from there. After making the request for the epidural the on duty nurse said something that I'm pretty sure would have meant the birth would have been a zero-sum change to the population. She suggested that perhaps it was too late to administer, we explicitly stated we wanted a window of opportunity to be communicated to us before there was no more epidural option.
Thankfully the midwife was a bit more understanding and the call went out to all the anaesthetists and administered some pethidine as a stop gap measure because the gap was widening faster than the divide between rich and poor. The call was answered remarkably quickly and much to mother-in-laws delight there was a handsome young man with a ready smile and the power to ease her daughters suffering at the door very quickly.
I like to think I am relatively self-confident and while I know I am very far from perfect I'm not particularly bothered by stronger, smarter or better looking men. Even in combination those qualities are still just nature's way of reminding you that there's always a new model coming and it has more horsepower, gets more mileage, is more reliable and generally nicer to drive. However if a man is all those things and on top of that can stick a needle into your wife's spine, feed a tube through and then wash fentanyl into it to make all the speaking-in-tongues-inducing pain go away while you're pathetically rubbing shoulders and incanting assurance statements... well I felt like less of a man at that moment.
On the bright side the wife had her back to him for most of the time.
I'd like to end the story here and say it was all smooth sailing from there on in. It wasn't.
While the pain was now eminently manageable and the contractions continuing on their merry way NotHeidi was not enjoying the ride and after an assessment by the obstetrician the call was made to go for the cesarean to prevent any further distress or complications. This was not part of the plan. I am infact now firmly convinced the making of a birth plan serves mainly as a means to have you research and understand the process, but not to affect it in any way. It's as if there is a midwife at the door as you enter who Z-snaps you as she says "you in my world now bi-atch" and proceeds to tear up your plan while unblinkingly staring at you, daring you to react.
In many ways the neck snapping speed at which the events hereafter unfolded were a blessing as overthinking the process would certainly just have served to raise anxiety levels for no real benefit. Turns out while an epidural takes away most of the pain it does nothing to remove fear.
So after 8pm in a theatre staffed by enough people to fill the other kind of theatre we listened to our wedding playlist as a doctor cut open my wife and took out a child. If that wasn't enough the doctor was standing on a footstool. There were people pushing on wifes stomach to make the baby pop out and finally the forceps came out to complete the task. It appears the parallels to his father include not just a passable resemblance but NotHeidi has the same forceps bruises almost half a century later.
The whole thing was quite a growing-up exercise. I survived my squeamishness, and I have to say I needed to. I didn't look over the curtain but there was ample blood on the floor and the gowns that made me wonder if, infact, this was Rosemary's baby. However I'm not quite rid of the juvenile in me yet as I looked at my son and may or may not have said out loud "his junk is bigger than mine!".
However I am glossing over the most powerful part. That is the moment the baby is alive and breathing of his own accord and shown to you and you hold him. Made of the very essence of yourself and the person you love and imbued with life, yours to pass on your wisdom and foibles but also a stranger you will spend the next few years meeting. The moment you join the most inner workings of nature itself and replicate and, hopefully, improve the human race. You feel utterly insignificant and at the same time inconquerably powerful. I can make my own people.
Before you know it everyone files out of the room, surgical masks are removed, colleagues quiz each other on plans for the rest of the night and you've forgotten to pass on the message from the retired anaesthetist you met while getting changed as he tells you girls destroy your brain and boys destroy your house. He has 3 girls, so I guess he has no need for alcohol... and a nice house to not keep it in.
Wife and I spend just under an hour in the eerily dark and empty recovery ward making sure she doesn't suddenly explode and that NotHeidi has recovered from his rude entrance to the world. The wife is parched and downs ice water like it's a race to save the oceans. We eventually return, spent, to the waiting grandmothers who have endured a too-long day to be a part of the process but sadly missed out on the money moment. There's a lot of love in the room but there is very little energy in the tank. The goodbyes said the machine swings into action and observation checks and weighings and immunisations all replace one another in turn until finally we get our first chance at sleep well into the small hours of the new day.
Wife has a bed she is confined to until at least the next morning. I get a recliner that does not live up to its name and endure the most uncomfortable nights sleep I've had since I slept on a table by an open window after a day of 46C in a house with no air conditioning.
All in all the process of becoming a father has its benefits and drawbacks, it's not for everyone and I was convinced for many years it was also not for me. Now comes the hard part... because as the coffee mug I once gifted to a man who proved the point said
"Any man can become a father, it takes someone special to be a Dad"
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