Some good friends of ours recently became grandparents for the first time. Personally, it’s not a prospect I look forward to, perhaps because it will mark another station on a line which is approaching its terminus. Selfishly, there are also fears I might again find myself cast into the never-ending – or so it seems at the time – spiral of piteous wailing, avocado and banana stains and back-to-back screenings of The Lion King. Perhaps, on reading this, my sons will decide that, if the day comes, I won’t be selected for grandparenting duties for more than about 20 minutes. If put to it, though, I daresay I’ll cope, and probably with a lot less fuss than I seem to be making now.
At least I won’t need to be present at the birth. The times I spent at the arrivals of my own children were both traumatic and pointless. Only on one occasion, the last, did I perform any useful task. Mostly I was superfluous, being asked to move please or stand over there. In the 1980s and 1990s there were several bands that seemed to have one too many people, the extra doing a bit of dancing or malacca-flailing but otherwise just getting in everyone’s way. That’s what dads are like in delivery rooms.
When I was born, fathers were banished to the pub. Some time between then and the 1990s this became frowned upon. Fathers had to be present; it was vital for the mother; for the child; for him. Not to attend was social and moral cowardice. Public opinion was firm. I had my doubts but it seemed easier to go along with it.
The main standard bearers of this new orthodoxy, certainly in the London Borough of Wandsworth where Lynda and I lived, was the National Childbirth Trust (NCT). Wandsworth then had the highest birth rate in Europe and was known as Nappy Valley. Pretty much everyone we knew had either just had a baby or was on the point of doing so. The NCT was everywhere, holding sessions in every available venue. Attendance at its ante-natal sessions wasn’t exactly mandated by law but it might as well have been. So, along we went to those.
Aside from an unrealistic obsession with natural birthing and pain-relief, the main thing I took from these sessions was that I was going to have to fight. The NHS, the argument ran, was hell-bent on doing all it could to thwart the desire of mothers to give birth in the way they wanted. The mothers being otherwise occupied, it all fell on the shoulders of the father. My role, I learned, was not to offer moral support but to wage a ceaseless battle with the health professionals to ensure that the mother’s wishes – which, as I was on each occasion to discover, rapidly changed when confronted with the realities of labour – were followed, despite my having no medical training.
I quickly realised this role was an impossible one. I couldn’t admit this to the NCT staff, nor really even to Lynda. Instead, I hoped that everything would work out. Other fathers felt differently. A year or so later I was told by someone in the NHS that they could always tell which couples had been to NCT classes – the man had a Walkman loaded with Buddhist chants and a string bag of organic satsumas while the mother was roaring and swearing and demanding massive doses of Pethidine.
All of this has made me reflect on the four occasions I spent getting in the way of doctors and midwives…
My eldest son, Michael, was born in a blizzard. Lynda and I had decided to spend a last weekend of freedom before his projected arrival date of 1 January in a hotel in Bibury in the Cotswolds. At about midnight, dropping off to sleep after a meal of the prodigious proportions that we enjoyed, I was awakened by a tap on my shoulder. It was starting.
As I got dressed, the view from the window was not encouraging. Everything was white and more snow was settling. I went downstairs and explained the problem. Fortunately the owner was both sober and in possession of a 4×4, so within forty-five minutes we were at St Peter’s Hospital in Cheltenham.
The next fifteen hours were a blur of screams, false alarms and hints of possible complications. The only times I’d seen more blood were when my nose had been broken, once by a swing door and once by a greengrocer. The snow-bound solstice sun had risen and all too quickly set again before Michael finally emerged.
Finally plucking up courage to venture down to, as it were, the business end, I looked down at him. I was greeted by a focussed stare that almost lifted me off my feet. He was, I realised, already a real person with opinions and attitudes. His attitude at the moment was: “What the hell have you done? I was warm and safe and now I’m here – what’s going on?” I looked back at him. “You and me both, mate,” I said.
He needed to spend the first ten days in an incubator in St George’s in London as he was, as one nurse said, “slightly under-cooked”. He came home on New Year’s Eve. More or less as Big Ben was striking, Lynda passed him to me. “I’m knackered,” she said. “You take him.” It was impossible to argue.
I’ve had some scary moments in my life – a car accident, three days in Moorfields Eye Hospital, Chelsea v Leeds at Stamford Bridge in the bad old days, and a bus journey across Crete – but this was right up there. As soon as Lynda left, his gaze locked onto me and clearly said, “Oh God – you again.” Then he started to cry. I couldn’t blame him.
Soon, I realised I was going to have to change his nappies. It seemed impossible that I could get him out of his strange garments without pulling off a limb, or at least a finger. Somehow I did it without damage. He looked at me again and resumed wailing. I fed him. He settled, shut his eyes for ten seconds, opened them and started crying again.
This pattern, with a few minor variations, was repeated every night for about four months.
Dominic, by contrast, was born during a fierce June heatwave. The temperature outside St George’s was around 20 degrees when we arrived at 7am and about double that inside the delivery room. Once again, I had nothing to do but get in people’s way and watch Lynda’s pain. This time, though, it was quick, and by 10.30 he was out.
I went home to sort a few things out and, before driving back to the hospital, thought it worth retreating into the cool tranquility of The Grove Arms to sink a pink of very cold lager.
The heat had ramped up while I was in there and, on emerging, I had the sensation of being punched in the middle of my face by the sun which I’d previously only experienced when getting off a plane in the tropics. Cowering like a werewolf, I finally made it to the car and carefully drove to Tooting. The temperature in the recovery ward was much what it had been outside the pub, except there most of the people hadn’t been screaming.
“Is there anything I can get you?” I asked Lynda rather helplessly.
“Yes – get me out of here,” she replied through gritted teeth.
This I accomplished. An hour later we were back home, Dom on her knee, awaiting the arrival of the childminder with two-year-old Michael, for whom Dom would be breaking news.
Michael walked over, took in what we were saying about now having a brother, nodded, patted Dom on the head and said: “My sweetie darling.” A hurdle – and no small one, I felt – had been crossed.
Wind forward eight years. Lynda and I had separated and I was now with Penny, in Hammersmith. Another solstice night, though less dramatic than the one that had greeted Michael, was the setting for Adam’s arrival.
I was unsure what Penny thought childbirth was going to be like. I think she saw it as an extended party with her in a birth pool at the centre of it. One was rented but couldn’t be used as her waters started leaking. The hospital threatened to induce her, leading to a flood of tears.
Defeated in pursuing these NCT-inspired fantasies, we zoomed off to the Hammersmith Hospital (which, despite its name, is in Acton; unlike the Charing Cross Hospital, which is Hammersmith), where son number three arrived in time for me to make closing time at The Goldhawk Arms with Dave and Bel; she having acted as Penny’s doula, the two of them having scandalised many of the participants at the ante-natal classes they attended – it seemed easier to leave them to it – with their frank conversations.
Fifteen months later and I was on duty again, this time at home (now in East Garston), Penny having decided that her second child was not going to be born in hospital. I left Adam with Jean and Malcolm across the road and returned to find not one but two midwives in attendance. Most of their time seemed to be spent filling in forms, as if no baby could emerge until the documentation was complete.
“Where’s your next appointment?” I asked one of them, during a lull.
“Assuming we get there,” she said, gesturing towards Penny on the floor, “in a tent on top of the Ridgeway. That’s where the mother said she wants to give birth so that’s where we have to be.”
I raised my eyebrows but made no comment. The spirit of the NCT and maternal choice was clearly alive and well.
Soon afterwards, Penny announced that pain transference was required. She asked me to extend an arm, into which she attached all 10 fingernails and started to squeeze. I don’t know how long this lasted but the marks were still there some weeks later. During all this, Toby emerged. His first sentient encounter was with Charlie the cat who had muscled his way into the room to see what all the noise was about: not something that would happen in a hospital, but Toby’s immune system seems none the worse for it.
The midwives and their forms having departed, we were paid a visit by the doctor who pronounced everything A-OK. Five minutes later I realised I hadn’t asked him for any painkillers, which Penny was now demanding. Selflessly, I thought, I suggested that some could be procured at The Queens Arms. This they were: and it seemed rude not to have a pint at the same time…
So, there we have it, guys. That’s all I can recall about your arrivals. I hope your experience of the world I was partly responsible for bringing you into hasn’t been too awful. We’re still all speaking to each other, so I guess things could be worse. As for grandchildren, though: give me a moment…
Actually, no: it’s not my call and it’s not in most ways my problem. The generational baton has been passed on. I’m here if it happens and I’m cool if it doesn’t. Whatever, it’s cool. You’re the best. What more can I say?
Brian Quinn
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