MANTALK: Dads in the labour room

Times are tough, right? Schools have closed and we will barely have breathed this Easter before school fees is staring us in the face again.

So, last Thursday, I called a friend who owes me money from a job I did for him a while back. It was 4pm. I was seated in the car waiting for the lights to turn green when I saw someone who looks like him walking with a swagger across the street and I thought, how the hell does he walk with that swagger when he owes me money?! Let me call him. So I called him.

“Boss, you are starving me and my children in this town yet I can see you walking like you won a lottery.” He said he would have to call me back; he was in the middle of something. Before I could say, “Hold on one minu-” he had hang up. He didn’t sound like he was out in the street. Hmm … Strange.

He called back and said, “I know boss, but I’m about to go to theatre any time now.” I said, “Shucks, sorry, are you unwell?” He said, “No, but my wife is.” I said, “Oh what is she suffering from?” He said, “Pregnancy, and now labour.” I laughed. Suffering from pregnancy and labour. That sounds serious. Poor lady, for how long has she been suffering from that? Did she drink some bad water? Or perhaps it’s the many stubborn mosquitoes, does she not use a mosquito net? Is she on any medication? I had so many questions I couldn’t ask.

Anyway, he’s 44 years old and this is his first child. He sounded terrified, which is what you should sound like when you are expecting a baby any moment. He told me she had been in labour for seven hours and he was tired of being in the room with her. She couldn’t sit still. She couldn’t lie still. Neither could she walk. She lay there moaning, grunting, cursing and gripping his hand tightly after every contraction. Is it so bad that I’m tired of being in this room, seven hours later? I said no, it’s not so bad you don’t want to be in that room, what would be so bad is if you actually left her in that room right now. “That’s the only room you should be in right now.”

I asked, “How much has she dilated?” He said, “I don’t know, maybe 4cms?” I said, “Oh, strap yourself in for a long evening. Good luck and please don’t send people those terrible messages of ‘baby and mother are well and resting’, they are boring.” Well, I couldn’t ask him for my money given his dire situation, could I, now? He had bigger problems in his hands. (I swear that pun isn’t intentional).

THE LABOUR WARD

I didn’t envy him one bit. I don’t envy anyone who has to be in a labour room at 44 years. Much less if this is their first time there. There are men who get babies at 50. It’s this kind of stuff that twists my mind. It’s astonishing. At 50, you should be having a nap in the afternoon, not asking the nurse how long you have to wait for the baby to crown.

Being in the labour ward is no fun. First, most don’t have windows. I think it’s intentional, to prevent the man from hurling himself out. Then everything is so white giving you a sinking feeling that you are on holy ground. And in labour wards nobody cares about you, and rightfully so. You could be having a bad cavity but you can’t say a word. You can’t look tired because you are not the one who has been carrying a 4kg mass in your stomach for the past nine months. You are not the one with a big nose and swollen feet. You are not the one who has been eating soil for months, and who hasn’t even seen the said swollen feet for many months.

You can’t show any form of irritation or discomfort, because what kind of discomfort could be worse than the pain of labour? No, really, what discomfort is that? So you sit there and you do as you are told. You fetch water. You fetch the doctor. You take any insults or cruel words if any. You can’t tire of rubbing the back. And you definitely can’t cry.

Sometimes all you want is to leave and go have a double of whisky to calm your nerves but you can’t because she wants to see you there even if she acts like you are the very last person she wants to see.

But the good news always is that labour doesn’t last for two days. It ends. Just like Christmas. The beauty is being there to see your baby when they check in, to hear them cry. To see how terrible they look with puffy eyes and pink peeling feet. But they are yours. And you will never witness the same child born twice. So it’s a sacred moment. If you are in a labour ward this weekend, embrace it. And while at it, try not to faint, we don’t want such little embarrassments.