Parenthood

At about five o'clock on the morning of 6th May - which would eventually turn out to be the day my daughter was ushered forth into the world - with my wife Michelle in intense pain from an already lengthy labour and entonox canisters rapidly being connected to breathing apparatus; with our lounge, as the intended scene of birth, appearing to be something of a cross between a medical triage and child's waterpark; with my wife moaning and groaning and the midwife telling me I'd made her perhaps the best cup of tea she'd ever had; in among this chaotic scene, I experienced an epiphany, perhaps the strongest in my life to date - we were about to have a baby, and I was about to become a father.

Now, our baby was, on the 6th May, as she wended her way oh so slowly out of the womb, precisely two weeks overdue. Therefore I'd had nearly ten months to get used to the concept of what was imminently about to happen in our lives. But somehow the true gravity of the coming change in my life had not yet fully hit me. I thought it had, after all earlier on this very page I have remarked that nine months of pregnancy repreents the perfect amount of time for you to adjust to becoming parents, and therefore felt pretty confident about the whole thing. But, in the early hours of that morning just over two weeks ago, I suddenly felt a massive wave of realisation, trepidation and abject fear wash over me. My wife didn't appear to notice - after all her focus was on the pain and on the immediate task of getting our baby out of her body come hell or high water - but I sobbed a little. Partly for suddenly feeling out of my depth, and partly because it was awful to see the one I love so much suffering such pain.

Of course, my fears were unfounded, and we've both adapted to parenthood very well. As I write this, our daughter is asleep on my left arm, so I've even discovered how to multi-task too. But at the time, in that moment and throughout the day until Seren Elyse was born at 17.35, it felt like I was standing on a precipice. I don't think my wife would have noticed; in fact, I rather hoped she wouldn't as my sole focus needed to be on supporting her. Then again, with the amount of gas and air that she'd consumed I don't suppose she'd have noticed anything.

The progress of Michelle's labour seemed like an eternity, and to a certain extent that's not far off the truth. Before my paternity leave started, my manager at work joked that we should have a sweepstake in the team on how long Michelle's labour would last for - he joked that it would be around 68 hours, which we all guffawed profusely at. He wasn't far wrong - contractions started at about 19.00 on Wednesday and Seren was finally born some 70 hours later.

By the time our beautiful daughter- after all we are her parents, and therefore fully entitled to think she is the most beautiful girl in the world, which she genuinely is - was born, we had certainly made the best use of the NHS. Michelle desperately wanted a home water birth, which requires a midwife (and later a second midwife) to be present for the majority of the established labour. As labour took so long because, we later learned, of the position of Seren's head, and as midwives' shifts don't last forever, we went through five midwives in all. Michelle got something of a taste for entonox, and used up six whole canisters of the stuff, depleting the entire supply that Milton Keynes General Hospital had that day. And to cap it all, because things had taken so long, it was decided that enough was enough and the hospital should take over. Whereupon an ambulance was called, a spinal anaesthetic was administered and Seren was born, in an operating theatre, by ventouse. You can't say that we didn't get our money's worth, but it was pretty distressing at the time. I never thought I'd find myself chasing an ambulance whilst wiping tears from my eyes and mouthing apologies to my wife under my breath, but there you go. Everyone says you can't plan a birth down to the finest detail, and now I know why.

So it turned out not to be the birth that Michelle had planned for, but the result was the same - a healthy, slightly distressed but perfect baby girl. And we were of course overjoyed.

Seren and Michelle unexpectedly stayed in Milton Keynes hospital until the following Tuesday, which was for me one of the hardest and most surreal experiences of the whole thing. Here I was, someone who had become a father, someone who had graduated to this new level of maturity and pumped up with pride, forced to return to our house, alone. Our house which was still set up for a home birth with a lounge that could only be described as carnage, all towels and water and used tea cups; our house where to me it seemed I could still hear the anguished moans and groans of my wife still echoing around the now-silent rooms. By the time I returned from hospital on that Saturday evening it was so late that I could not bring myself to make dinner, despite the fact that my last meal had been a solitary slice of cold toast at the precise moment that my epiphany had washed over me; thus, after making the obligatory family phonecalls, I found myself nursing a beer and eating unhealthy snacks amid the mess and devastation of our house.

Everything in my life had completely changed, for the better of course, and that epiphany seemed so irrelevant now that Seren had finally arrived and my responsibilities had kicked in. And yet there I was at home living like a student batchelor.