Belfast - New government advice suggesting greater inclusion for men in the pregnancy and post-birth experience was warmly welcomed in our house this week - by me. My husband, however, disappointed me by breaking out into a cold sweat.
The guidelines, compiled by the Royal College of Midwives, include scheduling antenatal classes around office working hours, peppering maternity wards with men's magazines and even providing accommodation so that new dads can stay in hospital overnight after their babies are born.
It also calls for doctors to make fathers feel welcome during antenatal check-ups - perhaps to offer them a seat, rather than leaving them standing about like a spare part, only occasionally acknowledged with the odd flick of the eyes, a contemptuous glance which seems to hint at blame for the whole sorry, painful bump-resultant state of affairs (or were we just unlucky?). I thought this all wonderful stuff.
“Wouldn't it have been great,” I said to my husband, “if you had been informed enough to really help me through those early hours of labour and we'd been able to put off that panicky rush trip to hospital? And imagine you'd felt confident enough in the labour ward to do something genuinely useful, like taking my blood pressure or passing me gas and air, instead of focussing on the CD player, fretting over whether it was time to move on from the Stones to the White Stripes.
“And, best of all, if you hadn't had to leave me on my own just hours after such a long traumatic birth and been offered a comfy chair or a bed to sleep on so you could stay with us all night long?”
I wasn't being sarcastic or facetious - that's just the way I talk.
I really would have appreciated a cool, confident hand in charge when I felt those first pangs of labour, rather than dealing with contractions, anxiety and the agitated room-pacing of a man about to go from being wild-eyed hedonist to responsibility-laden new dad in mere hours.
And, while I could live without his active involvement in the birth process itself (a girl likes to retain SOME air of mystery), I would have loved my husband to have stayed with our new daughter and me that first night.
That way I would have had affection, company and conversation (perhaps the best conversation, about hopes, plans, schemes and dreams, we would ever have), rather than a lecture on breast-feeding and how to shut up my crying baby from someone who had icicles for eyelashes.
My husband considered this scenario for a moment before firmly shaking his head. Men, he opined, must accept their place in the maternity ward, and that was simply not to get in the way.
This new guidance was aimed at sandal-wearing noodle-knitting metrosexuals named Malcolm ('Call me Malkie') who said things like 'We're pregnant'.
Men had no right to make demands from a cash-strapped NHS, insisting on being involved in a procedure that nature made quite clear was a female domain. And if that meant making the sacrifice of spending that first night in the pub with cigars rather than on a chair in a maternity ward, so be it.
I suspect we'll never quite agree. But I can reassure other women in the same boat of one thing. This display of fear and reluctance does not mean you won't bring your baby home to an over-overjoyed, nappy-changing, lullaby-crooning dad. It's all uphill from here. - Belfast Telegraph