The helpless blog of a first time dad: No pain, no gain, but Sophia’s birth was no joke

I’VE never been one for heroes.

I have many sportsmen and women I love to watch. Musicians I listen to and actors whose films I will always go to see. And then there are people like firefighters, paramedics and charity volunteers whose selflessness I admire.

But I’ve never been one to have a poster of someone on my wall, not fully clothed anyway, or who needs to follow someone else’s example in the way I live my life.

It’s also the case that I’ve never been great at paying people, especially my wife, a compliment. I’ll say something like “you look nice today,” and then get uncomfortable at my own kindness and add “compared to the dog’s dinner you looked yesterday.”

It’s important you bear that in mind.

Looking back on the day of our daughter’s birth, it was just after midwife Hannah told us that we could be one of the “lucky ones” that things started to go wrong.

At 4.30pm she was close enough for my wife to touch, the top of her head sitting between my wife’s legs so low that she was able to touch her head with her finger.

At that time she was still in her amniotic sac and midwife Hannah asked me to get a photo of it if she came out that way as it’s quite rare – and considered lucky.

As an aside, my wife thought her waters had broken much earlier that day but it turned out not to be the membrane giving way but all down to my mum’s clumsiness.

She had turned up at our house that morning 12 minutes after I’d text her to say Hannah had started having contractions. As she lives 15 minutes away, this leads me to believe she is either due a speeding fine or had been circling our house in her car from the due date onwards waiting for this moment (which is quite possible, if you know my mum).

Actually my mum is not alone it would seem. Amusingly, there had been a whole section of our NCT class devoted to keeping mother-in-laws away. Those that live within interfering distance seem genetically inclined to turn up uninvited during labour and they told us the best way to approach them to say your wife wanted to be left alone.

Because no matter how well your wife and mum get along (and my wife likes spending time with all my family) there are a select few people who pregnant women are comfortable having with them when contractions kick in, which roughly translates to all the people they’d be happy seeing them naked.

So she could say “don’t be silly” as many times as she liked but my mum was never going to be added to that list in Hannah’s case (who is naturally shy) and after offering to make a hot water bottle, screwing the top on wrong and having the water leak all over Hannah’s trousers – temporarily making her believe her waters had broken – I thought it best to stand by the front door until she got the message to leave. It wasn’t quite the NCT way but she was in and out in 15 minutes.

If only it had been that easy to get Sophia to leave my wife’s womb.

For an hour or so after the head’s initial appearance she pushed in the pool in a futile attempt to get something the size of a mango through the middle of a ring donut. The longer we went on, the less effective the gas and air and the more fruity my not-quite-so-shy-now wife’s language became.

This situation was made worse by the fact that, as she thought arrival was imminent, midwife Hannah had filled the pool up to get it to 37oC. And as the contractions got more acute so my wife began to squirm in pain more and I had to hold her underneath her arms each time to stop her head from going under the water.

Having been in this position for 60 minutes I got cramp in my right leg but I thought it was prudent of me not to complain.

If I hadn’t already realised, Hannah’s waters finally breaking also signified that our luck had taken a turn for the worse.

Midwife Hannah took the decision to abandon the water birth idea and get my wife on a bed. But my wife’s contractions had now subsided so she called in a doctor and the decision was made to switch us to a delivery suite and put her on a hormone drip to stimulate more contractions.

In the new room, we were handed over to the care of midwives Deb and Alexandra (“call me Ali”). There was also a doctor present briefly and an obstetrician. One medical professional for each letter of the word Hannah was now communicating almost exclusively in.

The word “off” was added to her vocabulary when midwife Deb told her that the situation was such that she would now have to go without gas and air as she had to be able to carry out their instructions to the letter (baby’s heartbeat was beginning to dip and so my wife’s breathing in between contractions had to slow and deep to make sure baby received the required oxygen through the placenta). Just to stress us out further, the heartbeat was put on a permanent monitor for us to listen to.

After a few pain relief-free contractions Hannah said “Give me an epidural,” – well actually she screamed it into my face – but I knew from our NCT classes it was too late for that (if the head is anything above 6cm dilated than they won’t administer an epidural as it can affect the baby). To save Deb being to constant bearer of bad news I took it upon myself to tell Hannah that we were stuck with the situation we were in until our baby was delivered.

“Are you mad?” she exclaimed.

“We’re almost there,” I pleaded for about the 20^th time that day. “Just a few more pushes and it will be…”

“FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUDDDGGGGEEE.”

It was so excruciating watching her go through this pain without any way of alleviating it that at one point I just decided I’d had enough and wanted to get out of the room and ask for someone to come and find me when it was all over.

I remembered I’d left some duck wraps with hoisin sauce that I’d prepared in the fridge in the birthing pool room and thought that could be my excuse for getting out of there.

Then I came to my senses. There was no ducking out of the pain for Hannah so the least I could do was stay there and watch her go through it.

At some point during the next three hours of my wife screaming something similar to “fudge,” telling me she didn’t want to die, crying, and at the same time breathing as she should and showing incredible determination to deliver Sophia safely, she responded to midwife Deb telling her to push as if she was trying to do a poo by doing just that.

Despite all the trauma she was suffering, my wife suddenly regained her fear of ignominy and pulled my head in close and whispered, “I think I’ve done a poo.”

“That’s OK I said.”

“No, you need to try and get rid of it before they see it. It’s embarrassing.”

I looked down to the business end and there were three women (two midwives and a doctor) carrying out their professional duties. My wife wasn’t in her right mind but I couldn’t see how in any state she expected me to walk casually down there, rummage around under her bum and remove the small stool that had seeped out of her without any of them seeing it.

“It’s OK,” I repeated. “S**t happens.”

This wasn’t meant as an inappropriate joke when I said it. That’s how traumatised I was.

The obstetrician returned and gave the midwives an hour to “get the baby out” or he’d come back with a suction cup and forceps.

Fifty-five minutes later, at 9.49pm, Sophia was born, helped by midwife Deb making a cut to the side of the “donut ring” to ease all 9lb 5oz of her through the hole.

My initial reaction was “look at the bloody size of her,” followed by relief that my wife’s pain was over. There was no rush of joy or outpouring of love that people tell you about when they have a baby.

Sophia was placed on my wife’s chest for some skin to skin and largely left to have a scream and a wriggle for the first few hours of her life while the midwives saw to my wife. Her first name tag reads “Baby Smith.” Naming her could wait for later.

Told she was now able to take some gas to free her of the placenta (which she delivered with one cough), Hannah almost ripped the tube out of the wall. This meant she can’t remember much about what happened next so it may come as unwelcome news to her that when midwife Deb asked her if she wanted to try breastfeeding her baby she waved her arm in a dismissive manner and said “It’s no good, they’re arid. I have arid breasts.”

“She‘s worried she hasn’t had any leakage yet,” I tried to interject.

“They’re arid,” slurred Hannah.

“Well don’t worry, baby has a lot of stored goodness from your placenta until the milk comes through,” offered Deb.

“Like a camel?” enquired Hannah.

What’s with all the desert references?

We stayed in the delivery suite until 2pm the next day while they continued to monitor Hannah and then she was switched to a postnatal ward. Once she was settled there I went home to get some sleep and a change of clothes.

As soon as I shut the door and no one needed me for support any more I broke down.

I’ve never been one for heroes, you see, but now I have one and seeing her in so much pain brought a flood of tears to my usually arid ducts.

My wife is my hero. No joke.

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