The Horrible, Horrible Miracle of Childbirth

The confluence of Mothers Day and the birth of a baby boy to our next door neighbors has me thinking of our own birth experience with Benjamin Elijah's coming into the world now 15 months ago.

One of the things I know I did right when it came time for my wife to deliver our son was to surround her with women and get out of the way.  In some ways, we did the "alternative" childbirth thing.  We attended classes on "natural childbirth" (their motto: No Drugs, No Mercy), and we eschewed the customary OB/GYN in favor of a midwife.  Also attending our "birth experience" was a doula -- who is basically a kind of stand-in for all the village women who would, in traditional or primitive societies, care for a woman while she was giving birth -- and deal with the mess.  It turns out when you live in the San Francisco Bay area you can do all this and nobody thinks it particularly strange or even all that different.

My conservative anxieties were satisified by the fact that all this took place at Stanford University hospital, not the Rainforest Cafe as you might expect.  And let me say this in defense of midwifes and doulas everywhere: it is simply a superior level of service.  Those women never left my wife's side (except as the midwives shifts changes -- it was a long labor); they or a nurse were in the room with us every moment from the time we got there until about a hour after Benjamin was born.  Contrast that with the usual birth, where you've got a nurse who's in and out of the room as her schedule permits and a doctor who shows up for the last fifteen minutes, mostly to "slash and gash" -- cutting episiotomies or pulling the caesarian trigger when things are moving too slowly for his taste.  We were at one of the best hospitals in the country; we had backup if anything went terribly wrong.  With that taken care of, why not pay less money for better service?  When it comes to birth, "Let the Women do It" I say.

You hear stories about babies being born while their fathers were at the bar down the corner passing out cigars, or pacing out in the waiting room at the very least.  Those men, in those long-gone days, didn't know how good they had it.  Now, we are expected to be there lending a hand.  My neighbor was told: "Grab a leg.  You're a stirrup."  I confined myself to standing by my wife's side, holding her hand, and whispering encouragement in her ear through each contraction.  That seemed to work for her.  Later, she told friends and family she was suprised by how helpful and supportive I was during the birth.  But I had my limits.  I basically pretended there was a force field at my wife's waist, beyond which I could not go, or look, or even think about.  Asked if I wanted to cut the cord, my though was "Hell no.  I'm paying you to do this stuff."  Besides, I was too busy with the camera, looking for angles that showed enough but not too much of the blessed event.

Society has now placed men firmly in the birthing room.  There doesn't appear to be any getting out of it.  Since that's the case, here's my advice:

• Keep your eyes locked on your wife's face.  Let the experts worry about everything else.  Don't look, not even once, no matter how curious you get;
• Be prepared to see, hear, smell, and touch things that will Haunt You for the Rest of Your Life;
• Accept that you can never be fully prepared and that the most shocking moment of your life will be when a baby comes out of your wife.  Don't be suprised if you hear your brain say: "A baby?  Where the hell did that come from?"
• Don't worry: compared to the birth, the rest of parenthood is a breeze.  Really.

1:35:26 PM