Familiarise yourself

I considered myself reasonably well-informed about my partner’s biology. We’d been together for over a decade before we started trying to conceive and me being a progressive, feminist liberal man (come on, this is a dad blog), I thought I already understood the things I’d need to know about the physical realities of conception, pregnancy and birth. Spoiler alert: I didn’t.

I’d like to think the traditional depiction of the male birth partner (generally useless, scared of the “business end”, unwilling to even hear terminology like “mucus plug” and definitely not up for hypnobirthing, whatever that might be) is outdated and irrelevant, but that’s probably too optimistic, even for 2019.

Maddy had to sit me down and explain to me the aspects of her cycle that would inform when our efforts to conceive would be most productive. We installed apps to help track this (Flo is the one she recommends) but it highlighted my own ignorance about a huge aspect of her life that I’ve been able to mostly avoid taking responsibility for during the last decade (eg. contraception). I felt embarrassed and naïve.

Metamorphoses

Later in the pregnancy I remember being surprised to hear midwives casually describe the sensation of a contraction as “like period pain”, as Maddy calmly nodded understanding. So… one of the most dreaded aspects of early labour is comparable to the regular, monthly pain that many women experience on a routine basis? And women just get on with it? I had a lot to learn. It turned out many of the less-pleasant side effects of pregnancy are similar to those during ovulation.

My body hasn’t changed these nine months, beyond putting on a bit of weight due to the increased presence of snacks in the house. Maddy’s has transformed – not just in the obvious way, but in its very core. Her body currently houses a tiny human, a being she grew and nurtured herself (with a little input from me at the beginning). I couldn’t stop thinking of the process as a “levelling-up” or “evolution” (yep, I’m thinking about Pokemon) as she unlocked an ability that her body had been capable of for decades, a slumbering force lying dormant but powerful when wakened.

I felt in awe of this process, but also fearful of its strength and my weakness in the face of it, my almost irrelevance or complete redundancy. I resolved to be the support and companionship Maddy would need to understand and grapple with these changes and developments, if I couldn’t do much to otherwise shoulder their physical burden.

The one-body problem

As a supporting partner I continually found myself wondering how she was feeling: oh, she was vocal and expressive about it. But I had no reference points for these sensations. When she complained of stomach pain that felt “like period pain”, was this a medical emergency, or another instance of her simply accepting the physical burden of womanhood? When she experienced minor spotting, was this something typical? Do women’s bodies routinely leak blood and other discharge? I found my knowledge and experience lacking, despite what I thought I already understood. Spending hours in airless waiting rooms for examinations to confirm all was well, watching doctors prod and intrude as she lay back, resigned. I cursed my own foolishness, Googling and ingesting information in vain attempts to catch up.

I watched one dad in that hospital waiting room at 11pm, playing loud music videos on his phone featuring gunshot sound effects and police sirens, his silent partner huddling next to him on the plastic chairs. His apparent indifference made me wince, though it reminded me that other men besides me have come up against the realities and challenges of the female experience (as observed through the male gaze, anyway) and found themselves lacking. Sometimes that shame, that guilt, means that retreating becomes easiest: avoid the scary, uncomfortable stuff. Let the women in the birth centre take on that emotional labour, the unspoken sympathies, the shared glances that express what we, unschooled men, cannot. But it’s wrong. We can atone for that failure, we can accept our weakness and then step up and be there for our partner when it matters.

Something big is coming, and that male-centred worldview is about to be forcibly expanded, too.