by Tony Hawks
I set off on a mission to find a suitable mirror and scoured the bathroom with no success. Fran never bothered with make-up and thus no pocket mirror was to be found. I lifted the mirror off its hinges on the wall and carried it through to the bedroom. It was greeted with hoots of laughter.
‘Way too big!’ said Fiona.
‘That’s all I can find,’ I replied.
‘How about the one in the porch? That one looks to be smaller,’ suggested Patricia.
‘Right.’
Off I set, with a growing suspicion that the mirror I’d been sent to fetch was not significantly smaller than the previous one. And I was right. Nevertheless, I took it off the wall and brought it up to the midwives for their perusal. Somehow I figured that it might be a better shape for what they had in mind. Simply coming back and explaining that we had no suitable mirrors in the house might look like I hadn’t really been trying.
Of course, the response was as before – with the addition of a hint of disbelief. Did this guy just bring in an identically sized mirror? How bright is he? What kind of a father is he going to make?
I set it down with the other mirror and rushed to assist Fran in another contraction. As I held her, frustratingly powerless to help beyond this simple act of compassion, the two mirrors were propped against the wall behind her, directly in my eyeline. I looked at myself. I didn’t look well at all. It looked like it was me, not Fran, who had gone into the transition stage.
Odette returned from her phone call and asked if they could try some things to get the labour moving again. There was some concern that, in spite of all the water that Fran had been drinking, she’d not passed any urine. Perhaps the baby was in such a position that a blockage had been created. They wanted to use a urinary catheter to drain the bladder, and then for Fran to really try and consciously push the baby out, as they orchestrated some coached pushing.
‘What do you think, Fran?’ asked a concerned Odette.
‘Can we talk it though?’ replied an even more concerned Fran.
My heart sank. This had been one of my fears – that we would come into conflict with the approach of the midwives, and the natural birth that Fran so desperately wanted would be thwarted.
‘Of course, you talk it through,’ said Odette. ‘We’ll wait outside.’
What followed bordered on conspiratorial. Here we were – me, Fran and Patricia – huddled and whispering on the floor, like plotters against a government. Outside the door, our two house guests were probably trying to second-guess what we would say and were readying their arguments. These felt more like scenes from a Second World War spy drama than a Devon home birth. In hushed tones, the plotters discussed their options. Patricia felt that given enough time this baby would arrive naturally, but she also knew that something was amiss, and that the midwives’ supervisor was almost certainly placing them under huge pressure to intervene in order to kick-start this stalled labour.
‘Once they start the coached pushing,’ explained Patricia, ‘it really does become a race against the clock. If the baby doesn’t come within a certain period, then they’ll want to take you into hospital.’
‘I don’t want to have this baby in hospital,’ announced Fran, whose position could not be clearer.
‘But then the same applies if we don’t do any of the things they’re suggesting, right?’ I asked. ‘They’ll still be pressing for us to go into hospital, if the baby doesn’t arrive soon?’
‘Yes. The only reason they haven’t pressed for a hospital transfer already is because they’ve taken readings and checked that the baby’s heartbeat is still fine, and there’s no foetal distress. Basically, they see Fran’s second stage of labour as having stalled and, according to protocol, they have to be seen to be doing something about that.’
‘Shall I have a go at the pushing?’ said Fran. ‘I think I can get this baby out.’
‘I think they will be very pleased if you say that,’ said Patricia.
‘OK. Let’s do it.’
It was very generous of Fran to have used the term ‘let’s’. There was no ‘let’s’ about this at all. It was very much ‘her’ that was going to do this pushing.
When I broke the news to Fiona and Odette, they seemed relieved. They wanted this home birth to happen, too, but their jobs were on the line if they didn’t follow the codes of practice expected of them.
The fresh approach coincided with a change in the team, as Odette’s shift finished and a new midwife arrived. Gwyneth. She was a no-nonsense woman whose direct and honest approach would prove invaluable in the next hour or so.
Odette slipped away, and with her so did the period of about two hours of relative calm – a calm, perversely, that had not been calming. Quietly, tension had been building in the room. There was a release now, as once again the bedroom became a place of action. The new team of Fiona and Gwyneth were able to use the catheter to extract a good amount of urine from Fran’s bladder, confirming the theory about the blockage. Fran underwent an internal examination one more time, just to check that the baby was in the right position. Everything seemed fine.
No whistle was blown and there were no formal announcements, like ‘Let pushing begin’, but it felt as though there might have been. Everyone got ready and Fran took up a new position, whereby gravity could help bring the baby closer to taking a peek at the world outside the womb. Patricia sat on the birthing ball, with Fran squatting in front of her and facing away. She then hooked her arms under Fran’s armpits and supported her. Meanwhile Fiona crouched on the floor before her, waiting to do what was necessary ‘down there’. Gwyneth hovered over a seemingly ever-growing pile of paperwork on the bedroom floor.
Quite why a birth needs to be so admin-heavy remains a mystery to me. I can only assume that it stems from the lack of trust we have in our work culture. The assumption is that something hasn’t been done, unless it’s written down. Never mind that the act of writing it down means that some other important assistance in the birth cannot be given; everyone knows that during the act of childbirth, the most important thing is to end up with a decent set of graphs, and a comprehensive list of what happened and when. You don’t want an unhappy boss back at the hospital.
Yes, I know it looks like a photo of a happy mother and her baby, but I’m not sure I can believe you until I see the facts and figures. Go away and come back when you can tell me how much urine was passed.
I crouched to the side of Fran, held her hand, and waited for the first ‘coached’ contraction to begin. The moment Fran tensed up and her breathing intensified, raised voices filled the once meditative space.
‘PUSH, FRAN, PUSH!’
‘COME ON, FRAN, YOU CAN DO IT!’
‘THAT’S IT, THAT’S IT, FRAN. GIVE ME ANOTHER PUSH LIKE THAT!’
‘WELL DONE, FRAN! YES! YES! ONE MORE!’
And then I heard something odd. In a momentary lull in the cacophonous support, I could hear the soft-voiced lady on the hypnobirthing CD gently advising Fran to ‘relax’, because her birth was going to be ‘easy’. Almost immediately she was drowned out again as the shouted instructions kicked back in. Frankly her message was too quiet, too repetitive, and currently, too downright fallacious. What Fran was going through now was anything but easy. As these coached contractions continued, I could only imagine that it was Fran’s fierce determination that was keeping her going, along with the spoon-fed dollops of manuka honey that I was providing. She did not want to be transferred to hospital, and that was giving her the strength for each extra push.
For me, the experience was both distressing and bewildering. It was hard to see someone you love in such a challenging situation, but I was also struggling to come to terms with whether this was actually happening. It all seemed too significant, too important, and too vital to be real. Outside the window, I could hear the occasional van or tractor pass by and I knew that Tuesday afternoon was carrying on as normal. Deliveries (of an altogether different nature) were being made, children were bei
ng collected from school and farmers were tending to their crops. Nobody knew what was happening in our bedroom, except those who were currently in it, and somehow that made it feel less real and more like a dream.
‘COME ON, FRAN, ONE MORE PUSH! YOU CAN DO IT!’
Try to think of a hundred variations on this theme and I’m pretty certain that they were said in that room over the next ninety minutes or so.
Yes, ninety minutes. More probably. Fran gave it her absolute all every few minutes for over an hour and a half, and, despite the manuka honey refuelling, the poor girl was close to exhaustion.
The baby was close to arriving. ‘Down there’ was opening up and we could now see the hair on the baby’s head, but Fran was just not quite able to force the head out.
‘One more go,’ said Fiona.
The contraction began, as did the accompanying chorus of encouragement – sounds not dissimilar in nature to those that might emanate from the stands at some great sporting spectacle:
‘GO, FRAN, PUSH!’
‘COME ON, FRAN, YOU CAN DO IT!’
‘THAT’S IT, THAT’S IT, FRAN. GIVE ME ANOTHER PUSH LIKE THAT!’
‘YES! YES! ONE MORE!’
My heart sank as I could see that this last push from Fran didn’t make a significant difference in the movement of the baby. I began to fear the worst; that the transfer to hospital Fran so wanted to avoid was now going to happen. Fiona had other ideas.
‘Fran, how do you feel about us making a cut?’
‘What?’ managed a shattered Fran.
Fiona explained that they could perform an episiotomy – a small, diagonal cut in the vagina that would increase the exit route for the baby.
‘We’ll give you a local anaesthetic,4 so you won’t feel anything.’
To my surprise, Fran agreed immediately. She was clearly at a point where she had very little left in the tank and needed to give birth soon.
Knives appeared. A small kit of sharp instruments was passed to Fiona, along with a needle and syringe. The anaesthetic was injected, and the cutting began. I looked away. Fran didn’t even wince. The wonder of modern medicine. This would have been the point in years gone by when the mother would have been in absolute agony, and when the lives of both mother and baby would have been at risk. Gwyneth was able to step in and check the heartbeat of the baby and, to our great relief, reveal that it was still healthy.
When the next contraction arrived, the coaching recommenced and Fran pushed for all her worth. Baby’s head was nearly there.
‘Next time, you’ll have your baby, Fran. Hang in there.’
These words seemed to inspire Fran and when the next contraction arrived, she found one more reserve of energy and produced a push – at least for Fran and me – of historical proportions. Something extraordinary happened. In what seemed like a fraction of a second, out whizzed the baby, like it had been fired from a piece of industrial machinery. It plopped into Fiona’s waiting hands, umbilical cord wrapped around it. It was crying. It was covered in gunge. It was an unbelievable sight. And it had a cock and balls. Probably a boy then.5 In only a second, our lives had changed forever.
Fiona handed the baby boy to Fran, who clutched it to her chest. Hers and the baby’s eyes met. Love at first sight. Pure joy. Nine months of preparation for this moment. Mother meets baby. The enigmatic lodger has shown his face at last. Exhaustion and love mixed on Fran’s face to create the warmest smile I had ever seen.
And me? Well, I had been busy filming these first precious moments on my phone, conscious of activity around me, the midwives doing what midwives do at this point, the joyous sounds, a crying baby. I waited for my own emotional release – the tears of joy – and yet they didn’t come. I still felt like an observer, oddly distanced. I stroked Fran’s hair and congratulated her. I looked down and saw that the baby was already on Fran’s breast. A very English lad. It was nearly four o’clock, so he knew it was teatime.
I was offered the opportunity to cut the umbilical cord, which had now stopped pulsating and was ready to be clamped. I declined the offer politely, because for me this was no big deal. I would sooner have someone do it who had done it before. My special moment was still to come.
‘Are you ready now for the third stage, Fran?’ asked Gwyneth.
Ah, yes – the third stage. I’d forgotten about that. As if the rigmarole of birth had not been testing enough, the mother now had to go through the further duty of birthing the placenta. Once again, Fran turned down the offer of the drugs that could facilitate this process, and she opted for a physiological third stage. Gwyneth suggested that they all went off to do this in the bathroom, and I was told to take my shirt off and to lie down with the baby and get some ‘skin to skin’ time. The baby was passed to me and I took it in my hands. Immediately I felt the fear that I have always felt when handling a baby – what if I drop it? I was expecting the fear to be diminished by the fact that, for the first time, this would actually be my own baby I would be dropping, but in reality the fear was more intense. Dropping somebody else’s baby was stupid and careless, but dropping your own made you an abuser, and it probably had an accompanying prison sentence. I held on tight as I lifted the baby towards me and laid him across my chest, his little eyes looking up at me.
This was the moment. I became lost in his features, all-consumed by his presence. Here was the tiniest human being I had ever seen, who until a few minutes ago had been inside my partner’s belly. Now he was beginning a life, and I was one of his protectors; I was to be his guide, his mentor. In this moment, the enormity of the task didn’t overwhelm me – rather it filled me with pride. I would give my all and I would rise to the task. I had a strong sense that the past counted for nought. This was the real beginning. This was life’s remaining challenge – to welcome this distinguished guest, to entertain him, to keep him peaceful and happy.
My eyes focused in on the baby’s mouth and I could see that it looked like mine. Confirmation, if I needed it, that I was truly holding my genetic offspring. In some primal part of me connections were made, and whatever these connections were, they led to my tear duct. Slowly I wiped away the tear of joy. My first real tear of joy? Maybe. Our lives are full of firsts. The first time we walk, the first time we talk, the first time we dance, the first time we drink alcohol, the first time we make love. This was the first time I had ever stared at someone for forty minutes. This minuscule being had me transfixed. I barely noticed the sound emanating from the bathroom, where brave Fran was completing the placenta birthing procedure. A midwife appeared and assured me that all was well and that Fran would soon return to put the baby to her breast. Then we would begin family life together.
I hadn’t looked once at the midwife during this last exchange. I was still caught in the headlights of the reclining life form before me, the beautiful, perfectly formed baby boy. Our Devonian son.
What now? I thought.
A split second of sheer panic. Aaaaaaaah! I had no idea.
Then I calmed down.
It was OK. I’d ask Ken.
Epilogue
The baby – we still didn’t have a name1 – slept on my chest for that first night, because Fran was so exhausted that she was out for the count, and nothing, but nothing, would wake her. A simple thing, you’d imagine, sleeping with a tiny, little human being on your chest, but it was both exciting and terrifying in equal measure. Each time he went quiet, I needed to check his breathing. My night sleeping with Titch in Tavistock hadn’t prepared me adequately for confident fatherhood, and somehow I couldn’t yet trust that this baby was built to keep on going.
In the morning I arose, convinced that I had bonded with my boy, and punch drunk with weariness, I began to ready myself for my role in these next few weeks.
House nurse.
Whilst Fran recovered, I would attempt to run the house. Such a task was daunting for a fresh and vibrant version of me, but the sleep-deprived idiot who was attempting to navigate his way around the kitchen cu
pboards felt overwhelmed. It was shaming. Fran had gone through this extraordinary physical feat of carrying a baby and giving birth, and yet I was struggling with the fear of making breakfast, lunch and dinner, and operating the washing machine, dishwasher and vacuum cleaner. Putting off a start on the housework, I took five minutes to text friends and family with news of the birth. Then I picked up the phone.
‘Ken?’
‘Yes?’
‘It’s Tony. We’ve had a little baby boy.’
‘That’s marvellous news. You wait till I tell Lin. She’ll be thrilled. Well done.’
Ten minutes later, I looked out of the window. There were blue balloons all the way along our front fence. A car went by and beeped its horn. The village had now been informed. Forget all the modern technology. Sod email, Facebook and Twitter, the balloons were up and the message was clear. A little baby boy.
The phone rang. More congratulations? No, it was Fran, using her mobile from upstairs. I didn’t know it yet, but this method of communication would mimic the old-fashioned bells that rang when the aristocracy wanted something from the staff below stairs. Could I bring Fran a drink? You bet. I rushed up with a cup of tea (not before knocking several things over first) to see my heroine proudly holding our new baby. Taking care not to crush baby, we managed our first family group hug. Wow.
Later that day, Lin popped round and took all the linen, sheets and general detritus of the birth and shoved it all through her washing machine. I’m not sure what model it is, but it must be a good one, because everything returned looking spotless.
Throughout the day cards dropped in through the letterbox and presents appeared in the porch. All were resolutely blue.2 Fran and I were touched by just how many people in the village cared about us. If we needed confirmation that we had made the right call moving here, then here it was – in blue and white. The offers of help that accompanied the best wishes were tempting. When I read ‘Let us know if there’s anything we can do to help’, I wanted to reply, ‘Yes, come and cook every meal for us, change the nappies, do the washing and sort out all the shopping. Take Saturday mornings off.’