He Says, She Says
7 truths no one tells you about giving birth
Award-winning writers Robyn Wilder and Stuart Heritage share their insights into labour and giving birth
It’s hard to know exactly what to say here. On one hand, I will protect a first-time expectant mother from the gory details of someone else’s tricky labour – to the point of intercepting and removing any guests at their baby shower who look as though they might suddenly say, ‘Did I ever tell you about my episiotomy? I think there are photos on my phone…’
On the other hand, there’s no getting away from the fact that I gave birth to both my sons by emergency caesarean section. But, gory details aside, there are some things I could have done before the labour to improve at least the birth of my first son, back in 2015.
1. I wish I’d known about birth doulas and midwifery advocates. Despite living with panic disorder, I was finally managing to look forward to the birth, after a lot of work with the perinatal mental health team, who helped me plan a non-terrifying semi-water birth at the midwife-led birthing unit.
That all changed overnight with my diagnosis of gestational diabetes. I was informed birth would be induced in hospital at 38 weeks. I learnt that I could request a C-section for mental health reasons, but was told ‘not to worry about it’. Even contact with the perinatal mental health team was cut, for some reason.
I started to feel obstructive, underfoot and annoying in my own birth plan. Had I been working with a doula or medical advocate, I might not have felt so disempowered or eclipsed, and my birth experience could have been far more positive.
2. I’m glad I attended my maternity debrief. Most hospitals offer an option to go over your birth notes if you have lasting trauma from delivery. I recommend this to everyone.
It took me almost two years to work up the courage, but as the midwife talked me through the notes I realised I had unintentionally been blaming myself for my less than perfect labour all this time when, in fact, a physical problem meant I wouldn’t possibly have been able to give birth any other way. The midwife also acknowledged I’d been treated badly, and apologised on behalf of the hospital. I hadn’t been expecting it, but it was such a weight off my shoulders.
3. Today I’m grateful for my surgeries – otherwise I wouldn’t be here, and neither would my sons, who are currently trying to sabotage this article by randomly pressing keys on my laptop.
Apparently my working is ‘boring, boring, boring’.
As a man, all I can really offer you here is a series of things not to do while your partner is in labour. There may be more things you shouldn’t do, but here are the ones I learnt through the bitter agony of experience.
4. Don’t complain about your chair. I swear, this is much harder than it sounds. True, your partner is currently going through one of the most agonising, terrifying, primal experiences a human being can ever go through, but at least she gets to do all that in a bed. Meanwhile, you’re left stuck in the worst piece of furniture possible; a chair that looks like it should recline, but doesn’t. It is hellish, but probably not something you should say out loud in the moment.
5. Don’t complain about your journey in. On the day our second child was born, my wife had initially gone to hospital by herself for a check-up. However, the results of the check-up were very quickly deemed to be THE BABY IS LITERALLY COMING OUT OF YOU RIGHT NOW. So she called me, and I got a bus to the hospital. And then when I was halfway there I realised that I didn’t have the baby bag, so I got off the bus, got on another bus and called a cab. Then I realised I didn’t have any cash, and had to call around all the cab firms to see which one took cards.
‘Whew!’ I said when I finally got to the maternity ward. ‘You’ll never believe the journey I had.’ This, I learnt, is not how you greet a woman deep in the painful throes of unanaesthetised labour.
6. Don’t choose the 2013 Will Smith movie After Earth to watch together as a bonding experience when labour stalls. It just isn’t a very good film, that’s all. Pick something else.
7. Don’t sell yourself short. That second labour went awry quite fast. Robyn gave birth to our younger son by emergency caesarean section under general anaesthetic, and I wasn’t allowed in the room. After the scariest 45 minutes of my life, my son was wheeled in to me. For two hours while Robyn recovered, I was the only person he knew in the world. In the big scheme of things, birth partners are stunningly inessential for 98% of the time.
But if the time ever comes to step up, you step up.
