Next came the hard sell. Possibly what convinced me was the hospital’s car park tariff, or it might have been the prospect of valeting the car’s interior should Helen’s waters break en route. Despite my inveterate knuckle scraping, I decided to follow the path of least resistance, a home birth it was! Having arrived at this momentous decision there were a few practical matters to consider and the final few weeks involved trips to DIY stores to buy pond liner, bargain shops for cheap towels and pharmacists for 'ladies stuff'. Sadly, the gas and air arrives on the day, so no sneaky try-outs.
The due date, I’m told, is almost arbitrary. So confident was I that this date would pass without incident that I hadn’t actually booked the day off work. It was therefore, with some surprise that I was awoken by Helen in the early hours on THE due date to be told “I think I’m in labour”, words more terrifying even than “I think I’m pregnant”.
And so here we are, eight hours later and eventually the doorbell rings. They’ve arrived! And what’s more there are two of them, Jo and Ruth, as well as Khadeja, a student. We get Helen out of the bath, the midwife examines her and declares her “good to go” – fully dilated and ready to push. The calm authority and reassurance of the midwives has given me a semblance of peace of mind.
We are now over eleven hours into Helen’s labour, my admiration for her is growing minute by minute, and whilst on balance my preference would still be standing at a bar with a pint in my hand, I now understand why I’m here – it is not to go through some fallacious life changing experience, it is to support the person I love through a difficult process, one for which we both share responsibility.
Helen is weakening a little and finding it difficult to summon up the energy for the last push in each cycle of contractions. Khadeja is dispatched to the kitchen to fetch honey. It is handed to me. What am I supposed to do with the honey? Is it to be taken orally? Or is it some kind of lubricant to ease the baby’s transit into the world? How embarrassing is it going to be to get this wrong? On balance I decide a wrongly administered oral dose will be less excruciating than a helping delivered to a gynaecological destination! I’m correct. The honey provides Helen with a short-term energy boost.
Finally the baby’s head appears and attempts to draw breath, I register an almost imperceptible rise in concern from the midwives, there is a flurry of activity, Helen removes her nightshirt whilst Jo helps the baby into the world and onto Helen’s chest. I’m struck by the baby’s resemblance to those rubber chickens you buy in joke shops, all floppy limbed and a little grey. Helen identifies the baby’s gender, “it’s Amy, hello Amy...” Thankfully I’m invited to hold my daughter, who is now regarding this new world with some suspicion, and so avoid the delivery of the placenta.
Some twelve hours after it began and Helen is back in bed, propped up on pillows drinking a cup of tea. Amy is in my arms, perfectly beautiful and highly inquisitive. We are starting our new life as a family, together, in the comfort of our own home. There is no ward sister to separate me from my wife and child, and no solitary journey home to an empty flat whilst Helen tries to sleep in an unfamiliar bed. I’m told that a lot of new parents have acute anxieties when they leave the hospital. Possibly it’s caused by the traumatic withdrawal of institutional support. Neither Helen nor I experience this. Having Amy at home made her a part of our lives immediately. Two becoming three seemed the most natural thing in the world.
Aside from my brief, dark, lunchtime of the soul, Helen’s home labour was largely
free of the stresses one associates with birth. For most people, their home is where they are most able to relax.A home birth might not be right for everyone, but it’s certainly worth considering.