I will start this week’s blog off with a public service announcement. I urge all men that are due to be father’s in the not so distant future, when asked by your partner if you would like to watch the Channel 4 programme, One Born Every Minute, just slowly leave the comfort of your armchair or sofa and shuffle. Shuffle to the nearest exit and run as far away as you possibly can. Leave it an hour and make your return back home. By this time, the horror of that programme would have subsided and it would be time for the news or something a little less disconcerting. I would especially recommend not watching it if you are entering the final stages of the pregnancy and you are just that little bit curious and fancy preparing yourself for the big day. Nothing will prepare you for the sheer horror of this programme.
If you have never watched the show before, I will fill you in. It is shot in a fly-on-the-wall documentary style, with cameras placed in different areas of the maternity wing. Some are placed in private rooms for the couple, some in theatre for when the baby and mother need that little bit of help and the other is placed in what looks like the midwives tea room and all they do from what I can make out is sip tea, eat biscuits, make names up for lady parts and generally have a bit of a giggle.
As I’ve mentioned, avoid it all costs, but if you are insistent on ignoring my advice and you feel you have to watch it, I would recommend the first half an hour, when the tone of the programme is fairly light-hearted. The mother and father are quite jovial, the midwives are very personable and clearly enjoy what they do, although shoving their hands into other peoples crevices wouldn’t fill me with joy every time I woke up in the morning, I struggle to shake someone’s hand if it is offered to me.
As soon as the second half hour comes around, that’s the time I recommend switching off. As soon as you hear a blood curdling scream coming from the room adjacent to the one the couple are in and you see their once cheery face now turn into one of concern and petrified anguish, it is time to make your excuses. Take up needle work, do the ironing, go fix that gutter you’ve been meaning to do for some time. Just do anything other than staying put. You’ll thank me. Let me be your crash test dummy.
See, I’ve watched bits of the programme before, my wife being in the medical profession is interested in any TV programme that has a hospital in it, Holby City, documentaries about Doctors, Animal Hospital? Anyway, when I’ve watched it previously, it has had little to no effect on me. Ok, I was maybe a little squeamish, anything associated with hospitals makes me feel queasy, so as you can imagine, watching an hour of hospital footage is not my idea of a comfortable watch. My wife suggested that I watch this week’s episode as she thought it would be a good insight into what to expect. I thought that her logic was sound, I was sure I would pick up some hints and tips, but for some reason watching the programme with a baby on the way gave me a whole different viewing experience. I’ve got to be honest; it made the pit of my stomach lurch uncontrollably as I imagined us in that very same situation in less than two months’ time.
One crumb of knowledge I devoured during the programme was how not to act as a soon-to-be father. Not that I would react in this manner anyway as it is not in my nature, but one particular young father witnessed his partner going through excruciating pain and he thought the sensible way to deal with this situation was to pace uncontrollably and use his fists to punch walls that seemingly hadn’t done anything to deserve that type of punishment. Whilst his partner was in theatre having the baby delivered by forceps, he was fit to burst with rage and he thought the best way to deal with this situation was to go to the pub. His parents, who were trying to calm him down, managed to dissuade him eventually.
One of the midwives did comment that the hospital and especially the labour ward did strange things to men. The gist of it is that men suffer an emotional breakdown, we are either angry and frustrated with the world or we tap into our caring, loving side and blub until whatever has irritated our eyes has worn off. Maybe that is why men of an older generation never stayed with their wives during pregnancy and why the pub or the shed were more preferable options.
Maybe they knew all about the hospital emotion-alizer (made that word up there) that triggers this change of state as men enter through those hospital doors. Well, they’re not going to get me. Just as my wife will pack her necessaries in a bag before we leave for the hospital, I will also. A big crash helmet and some tin foil wrapped round me should reflect those harmful rays and by the time our little son or daughter enters the world, I’ll be in an emotionally calm place.
Do you think that will work?