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Am I nuts? Well, I talk to myself…

Note to the person at Bowling Green University: Please include your name and email address in your next email message. I can’t reply to you if I don’t know who you are, and I don’t like one-way conversations. Oh hell, now I’m crabby and I can’t remember what I was going to talk about. Ahem. I typed that in and then sat here and did this highly annoying thing I’m starting to do every time I don’t know what I want to do next: clean cat hair off of the keyboard. Sometimes if I’m really stuck I find my crochet hook, the tip of which is approximately as big as the tip of a ballpoint pen, and start rooting around between the keys themselves to get the cat hair out. Like that isn’t weird enough, there’s also this talking-to-myself thing. I’ve always talked to myself, but now I’m starting to do it and not notice until I’m halfway through a sentence and realize one of the cats is looking at me expectantly. “Yes? You were saying? Say something more interesting. Say something that includes the words ‘treat’ ‘wet food’ and/or ‘cuddles’. Better yet, why don’t we just go into the kitchen and find something yummy to eat without all this chit-chat?” Every once in awhile I’ll be walking around with my walkman on and mutter something like, “Yes, go ahead and take the garbage out tomorrow morning, that’ll work out perfectly,” but as far as I know there hasn’t been anyone within hearing distance. Yet.

I’ve been having a wonderful time reading your responses to my question about men and childbirth, please do keep sending them in. These are the ones I’ve been given permission to quote:

Am I envious of being able to be pregnant? No, not really. I have heard many times various people say that all males are jealous, a generalisation of the worst sort if you ask me. While I can’t physically have a child I do know that, when and if I decide to have children, I have just as important a role to play as the father. Studies have been increasingly finding that the presence of a father is just as crucial a role as the mother, albeit seemingly in more subtle and less obvious ways.

Besides, I am far more envious of not having wings to actually have time to be envious of being pregnant. :)

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pregnancy stuff.
of which i have intimate knowledge.
hmm.

1- i have no desire to be pregnant. my wife is 7 months right now. she’s not entirely happy over it. she is quite large, and no longer cares to be so large. Me ‘having’ a baby never entered my mind, ever. Just like, I’m never going to be Chinese. why should I care?

2-as to the time when baby Wendy (for that is her name) decides to come out, I have decided for a Traditional Male approach. I shall smoke cigarettes in the lobby and read National Geographics from 1979. Like the men of old. (1950’s, that is) Really, these idiots who bring their camcorders in to record every moment of childbirth, like, you’re gonna want a video record of a bloody lump of flesh ripped from your wife’s tender vittles, I mean that would turn you off sex for forever…

Really though, i’ll be in the room, but we have already decided that an epidural from the neck down is definitely the way to go. Any one who wants ‘natural’ childbirth deserves a nice 4 inch episiotomy scar…i refuse to see my wife in pain.

Do think a ‘man’ would want ‘natural’ childbirth? Well, maybe if you were the Marlboro Man, or Charles Bronson (grrr!), but regular guys would be medicated to the gills! We’d be all fucked up on Scotch and codeine and demanding that the birthing room TV be turned on to ESPN2…

my baby is going to be here in 6 weeks and i’m not ready. i don’t know if i ever will be. it’s scary. i don’t even know to take care of a baby. its gonna be hard.

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Okay, you asked for some male thoughts/experiences/viewpoints on childbirth… Here’s one father’s view…

My oldest child was born in 1968, back in the days when, other than his obligatory involvement in the process of initiating the pregnancy, the paternal portion of childbirth consisted of driving the mom-to-be to the hospital, signing paperwork at admissions, pacing in the waiting room, looking at the new baby through a window, signing more paperwork a few days later, and driving mom and child home.

There had been incredible changes by 1982 when my daughter was born. My wife and I went to Lamaze class and practiced breathing exercises, etc. Our hospital was just completing a new birthing center to replace the old-fashioned maternity ward and we were afraid that the baby would be ready before the birthing center was completed.

Well, we were one of the first couples to use the new birthing center. Our room looked more like an upscale motel room than a hospital room (if you ignored various pieces of hospital hardware, etc.) and was very pleasant. Of course, after several hours of labor my wife couldn’t have cared if we were on the hospital loading dock, if only the baby would get born.

We had arrived at the hospital well before dawn and as the morning progressed the labor didn’t. Nancy was having contractions, but the staff wasn’t impressed (”Hmmm, only six centimeters dilated, tsk, tsk” kind of stuff)

Breakfast had been offered and refused. Later on lunch was also sent away. Nancy had no interest in food. I was quite interested in food but the thought of food made her feel ill, she didn’t want to see me eat, but she also didn’t want me to leave the room. We had goofed on one of the key instructions from Lamaze class: we had failed to pack any snacks in the bag we had brought. I probably could have gobbled down a quick candy bar. Thus, a lesson to future fathers-to-be: pack snacks. I subsisted on black coffee and a few lollipops.

Eventually they hooked her up to a IV for fluids and glucose & drugs to enhance contractions. Then she had to be hooked up to a fetal monitor, which meant she was now confined to bed. Then the doctor thought he could speed things along by breaking her water.

The afternoon passed. Through the open door I could see the staff eating dinner at the nurse’s station. They didn’t even bother to offer anything by that time. And by this time Nancy is far beyond thoughts of some idyllic natural childbirth; she is saying give me drugs, knock me out, stop this pain.

That evening the doctor said that labor had been going on for too long, that too many hours had passed since her water broke (had been broken by them) which raised risk of infection, etc. He advised a C-section. Yes, cried my wife, yes, anything, just knock me out NOW!

Because it was considered an emergency C-section they would not allow me into the operating room. The operation was successful, healthy baby girl, wife is fine, she is still knocked out, she’ll be in the recovery room soon. A nurse guided me to see my daughter and then gave me a very funny look when I implored her on the way back to the recovery room to please please please guide me to the locker where my clothing was (I was wearing hospital scrubs) so I could get some change for the vending machines. I was ready to kill for a candy bar. (It was around ten pm and I had not eaten since yesterday.)

Three years later, when Nancy and I were going to have another baby, we were determined not be be caught up in traditional male dominated hospital institutional birthing. We were convinced that a more natural non-interventional process would have allowed a normal deliver without surgery. So we found a female ob-gyn, one whose own children had been delivered by C-section and who said she wished she had had an option and who was willing to attempt vaginal delivery. (There was considerable prejudice against this; the slogan was “once a C-section, always a C-section”)

We also attended VBAC classes (Vaginal Birth After Caesarian) given by a pair of nurse-midwives. These classes rotated meeting at participant’s homes. We studied and practiced Lamaze & other techniques, learned about natural childbirth & nutrition, etc. etc.

We lived just a couple blocks from our hospital. Our plan was to have natural childbirth at home attended by a nurse-midwife and then to call the doctor and say “Oops, the baby just popped out at home, would you care to stop by?” Now this was very illegal in New York State at this time… These nurse-midwives could not legally attend births without a doctor’s supervision & they risked fines, jail, and loss of license. We were prepared to state that they were not there or that they just happened to stop by at the right moment.

So when Nancy went into labor our living room became a birthing center. (My 1968-vintage son had moved in with us the previous year; when he saw what was going on he elected to visit his mom for a couple of days.) There were two nurse-midwives, a certified nurse/birthing coach, and an apprentice birthing coach settled in to help us. Two of them were nursing mothers who had their children with them. This was a very warm female/feminist scene.

I spent sometime just holding Nancy’s hand and helping with breathing exercises, sometimes fixing meals, sometimes playing with our daughter (who was having a great time with so many women there plus other kids to play with).

And the afternoon became evening which became night which became morning which became afternoon… yeah, you get the point, a long protracted labor, insufficient dialation… Finally, at the nurse-midwives’ insistence, Nancy called her ob-gyn to tell her she was in labor.

It is now evening, we are in the hospital, Nancy has been in labor more than 30 hours, but her doctor thinks it has only been since mid-afternoon. Nancy is at the point of just wanting to be knocked out but her doctor knows how important a vaginal delivery is to her and so she is encouraging her to hang in there & keep trying!

There is a medical student there and I began to realize that the doctor is saying upbeat encouraging things to Nancy but sometimes she adds to the student something like “that’s true, you know” when it is something less than encouraging. She has also ordered an operating room to be ready for a C-section (”just in case”) but when told the anesthesiologist, etc. would be on stand-by she insisted that she wanted them in the OR and ready to go.

She said “One last try, come on, you can do it, push!” and then she said she didn’t like the pressure the baby was putting on the earlier incision and it was time for a C-section and off they went, this short Indian woman doctor running along side the gurney as they rushed off to the operating room. Once again I was not allowed in the OR because it was an emergency operation. (They don’t like fathers freaking out or passing out, etc.) This time, having the doctor’s support, I was able to hold my son when he was just minutes old (with a nurse lamenting that I wouldn’t even let her clean him up before I held him)… and in the morning our daughter was able to come into Nancy’s room and hold her new baby brother. (And even a three-year-old could see a logical problem in her being allowed in the room all day, but during visiting hours she had to stay in the waiting room because no visitors under 12 were allowed!)

(A few years later I underwent surgery to repair a hernia and so I got to experience a little bit of what it must be like to be sliced open and stitched back up for a C-section. It was not fun.)

Well, you asked for comments on childbirth from a father’s point of view… but I’d bet you didn’t expect to receive such a long-winded rambling missive (…uh, on the other hand, you have seen how I can babble on & on so maybe you did expect this).

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frankly, i’d rather pull out all my teeth than give birth, from what i’ve seen; i have all the maternal/paternal instincts of a patch of slime mould, and no, i’ve never ever ever felt like i’m missing out on something. oh, and if my life partner were in the hospital giving birth, i’d have to be in some sort of alternate universe, considering that my life partner’s views are similar to my own, and so i don’t rully know what i’d do.

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How shall I put this….

I think “Are you NUTS?!?” sums it up nicely :)

*grin*

Of course, you didn’t really mean to say “all men”, did you? :)

that’s why it’s called a one-person papasan, fools

Men are from Macy’s, Women are from Home Depot