Birth from a fathers perspective
Birth Account by Ally Lowery November 2017
Birth from a fathers perspective, My wife and I had tried hypnobirthing with our first child as part of our home birth and safe to say I didn’t get on with the idea or the concept and it didn’t go to plan. For our second child we used the services of Bex and she was far better. The one on one guidance we received worked and gave me a good insight into what I needed to do.
In the days leading up to the birth I read through the sections of the course book relating to the birth partner and what I could do to help and felt a lot more prepared. My wife was overdue so we were expecting baby to appear at any moment. As it happened she woke up to surges around 5am and made herself some breakfast in between them. She then came and woke me up around 7am upon realising that things were advancing much quicker than she anticipated. I readied all the supplies for the hospital and organised granny to come and look after our son and off we headed for the birth centre.
When we arrived at the hospital Lucia was getting a lot of surges so I, less parked, and more abandoned the car in the car park and ran in to get a wheelchair. I was not only wheeling the chair downhill toward the birth centre, but I tried to carry all our bags in as well. Not my brightest idea as I couldn’t keep the damn thing in a straight line and the wife nearly ended up head first in a bush!
I’d also read that it would make things easier for my wife if I made her laugh during labour. So I thought I’d wear my big Daddy Pig t-shirt and mentioned this to her with the idea being that it would be the first thing our baby would see. Surprisingly, this got a laugh.
My main trepidation about the hypnobirthing was having to tell the nurses to speak to Lucia through me but this was based on us having a long labour and that was most certainly not the case! We arrived at the hospital around half 7 and despite the midwife announcing on arrival that it would be some time yet, my wife was on all fours in the corner of the room pushing before they could even finish their initial checks. It all went brilliantly. We had two midwives in the room and I fielded any questions they had and made consistent checks to make sure they were taking my wife’s prior (not so smooth) labour into account when giving instructions. Before she was on all fours I hadn’t done much more than act calmly and as a leaning post a few times. I also set up the music but there wasn’t time for much else. When she as pushing I whispered in her ear how well she was doing and did lots of soothing strokes. The midwives were fantastic and gave us lots of direction while being sensitive to the trauma we had experienced previously.
When our beautiful daughter popped out we had a cuddle for a while and then my wife hopped into the pool while I ate her toast 🙂
Thank you Ally for taking the time to share your journey birth account from a fathers perspective as I know from experience fathers can sometimes feel lost, or even going with the flow as this is what they feel is best. I loved the honestly that because you where more involved this came with new concerns of being the birth advocate and having your wife’s full trust that you know how to communicate exactly what she wanted. Your birth account has had me in belly laughter and tear at the same time. Thank you once again for sharing. Bex x