The Dad Delight

Spending the first few days of fatherhood in the hospital was great. Being able to deal with learning how to respond to Theodore’s cries, nappy changes, wrapping him and bathing him was great.

Having nurses around to help whenever you are unsure what to do definitely eases the pressure, especially when you don’t know how to get the baby to go to sleep.

Now it’s time to be home.

Slightly worried about what will happen now we are home and there are no nurses around to help. Sleep is what I am most worried about – when you are younger you never really value sleep. Over the past couple of days I have seen how not having enough sleep will affect me. Should I be worried? I don’t think so. Coffee exists for a reason.

There is a lot of things people don’t tell you about before your trip to the birth suite. I didn’t know what to expect from the whole experience other than needing to support my wife. Would there be a cacophony of screaming and “You did this to me!” statements? Going in I had no idea.

After my wife’s water broke, we endured a slow process of watching her contractions on a machine. We had to wait for them to build up to a pace that would allow her to push our child out. While we waited, time seemed frozen. I was cracking funny dad jokes and my wife although uncomfortable was in good spirits.

Then the contractions really kicked in. You know it’s on like Donkey Kong when you instinctively stop making jokes and start holding your wife’s hands very tightly. My wife got the gas (No, I didn’t try it) and she was kneeling, leaning over the bed, slowly building up to pushing our child out.

A lot of thoughts run through your head at this point.

What am I meant to do now?

How do I support her?

What will it be? (A lot of people seem to find out these days but we didn’t)

But none of those thoughts matter when crunch time arrives. You focus and you follow the midwives’ instructions. You somehow try and keep your wife as calm as she can be. Our midwife was telling my wife when to start/stop pushing, and then before we knew it – we had a baby.

That first feeling when you see your child is incredible. A culmination of hours of emotional intensity, the climax of seeing your child’s first breaths in your wife’s arms is one of those rare times when everything else in the world fades away and you are completely focused on the moment. My wife and I were lucky that it went smoothly and now we have a cute little baby boy to keep us busy.

New Knowledge

As a result of my wife birthing our son I have learnt a couple of things, namely:

It’s actually very uncomfortable to sit/lie down in the hospital bed when giving birth. Hollywood’s portrayal of birth is vastly different to what we experienced. Instead of being in a bed, my wife knelt to deliver our boy.

Babies come out a bit off-colour due to their blood circulation not fully kicking in until they outside the womb. Yes, they don’t come out clean, but having them come out slightly differently coloured to what you expect can freak you out a little.