Men should avoid the delivery room

IT was the moment my husband mentioned to the midwife how dreadfully painful his triple heart bypass operation had been, that really did it.

Lying there in the throes of a drug-free 14-hour labour, wracked with excruciating pain, being slowly and tortuously ripped apart by the alien life form inside me and in no mood for pleasant chit-chat about how having a baby is probably a breeze compared with open heart surgery, I finally snapped.

Of course, several years later I can't remember the exact phrase I bellowed at my startled husband, although I'm pretty sure it was a slightly more colourful version of "shut up or get out, you berk".

Didn't he know that I was having a baby, for goodness sake? And at that precise moment in time, no-one on this planet could possibly be enduring more pain than me - and that included triple heart bleeding bypass patients.

Sadly, worse was to come.

Being a scientist who rather fancies himself as a bit of an amateur medic, my other half took just a bit too much interest in what kind of needle the midwife had chosen to perform her rather unpleasant embroidery on my nether regions, embarked on a long discussion on various stitches he had endured - none in quite as personal a place as mine though, so I beat him on that count - and then, to top it all, discovered they had a mutual acquaintance who had to be discussed at length while I lay back, legs akimbo, ignored.

It was probably my own fault for allowing him anywhere near the delivery room. For the truth is that a fair number of women - 38 per cent according to one survey - believe the best, and possibly safest, place for their man is on the other side of the labour ward.

No doubt Mrs David Cameron would disagree. Her husband, the Conservative leader and self-appointed father of the year, has just suggested that men should follow him into the inner sanctum of the midwife's lair, to observe the "magic moment" - that's his words, not his wife's - of childbirth, to mop the little lady's sweaty brow.

Indeed, during a speech to the National Family and Parenting Institute, he pontificated: "Some relationship experts describe the moment of childbirth as the magic moment which can either play a key part in bonding a couple and increasing parental responsibility, or is a missed opportunity which leaves a couple drifting further apart and on a downward spiral."

Goodness. Well, if men ever felt under pressure to witness for themselves the gruesome and bloody spectacle of childbirth, they most certainly will now. And, likewise, if their partner ever felt they would rather keep all that messy business between her and the professionals, then, quite frankly, she's had her chips.

Unlike 50 years ago, when barely five per cent of men attended the birth of their child. Back then, men's job was to quite rightly disappear for a few hours to allow the women to get on with it. They then were expected to reappear within seconds of the birth with a big bunch of flowers.

Now it is estimated that around 96 per cent of dads-to-be are in those delivery rooms - but just how many are there through choice, and how many because they are now expected to be there? Chances are, if they are there because they feel they've got to, then they'll be about as useful as a pair of size 5 Pampers pull-ups on a newborn's bum.

Some may well witness a relatively straight-forward, uncomplicated, entirely natural process. They might even get through the event without incurring the wrath of their hormonally wracked partner. And perhaps everyone will leave the delivery room having experienced their own personal "magic moment".

Others, sadly, will witness childbirth in all its spectacular gore - the kind of technicolour horror that the pregnancy magazine's skim over, the emergency Caesarian, the forceps delivery, the cord around their baby's neck . . . and much, much worse.

Add to that the research which suggests that nervous men probably do more damage than good in the delivery suite: Bath University looked at Caesarian births, and found that anxious men passed on their fears to their partners who, in turn, spoke of experiencing more pain afterwards. So, I wonder, does that sound like a particularly good bonding experience?

Even men don't even seem that convinced that they have a role to play in witnessing childbirth. Four in ten fathers, according to a recent Royal College of Midwives survey, admit they feel "fairly useless" during the birth - hence the annoying drivel they begin to speak just as their partner's pain reaches an agonising crescendo.

Still, we women are our own worst enemies. We buy into the baby magazine's idea of childbirth. We consume soothing words of wisdom about the vital role our partner can play: how he can be on hand to switch on our favourite CD at the right moment, to rummage in our bag for an energy bar and how he will smother us with love and affection while we both coo at our newborn.

Ladies, be warned. The reality is that he's probably switched your James Blunt CD for his Black Sabbath one, he'll have eaten the muesli bar and would rather hug the barman at his local during a post-natal booze-up.

Still, I suppose my husband's attendance during the birth of our first son six years ago couldn't have been that bad. Three years later, he was back by my side again. And yes, actually, he was just as annoying second time around as he was the first time.