By Hannah Schenker
Telling our birth stories is part of the whole experience of having a baby. There’s something exciting about telling your story, or hearing a friend’s. Or it can be cathartic if the birth didn’t go as planned.
It is also really good to hear from a Dad’s perspective, right?
Right?
“I’ve always thought of myself as pretty cool under pressure. But the first time I got that call that my wife’s waters had broken, something changed. The excitement of almost being a dad went straight out the window because holy fuck, a tiny human was about to come out of my wife.”
This Dad’s take on it may make you pee your pants with laughter.
Brad Kearns, known on Facebook as DadMum, shared the birth of his son Knox from his point-of-view as a new daddy, reveling in the birth experience in all its wondrous glory.Well, sort of. Turns out a little dangerous driving may be on the cards when your wife goes into labour…
“Now as a man I obviously couldn’t feel the pain. But let me tell you, when those contractions were hitting, I had a pretty good idea what was going on. I remember looking at the speedo realising I was doing 160kph down the motorway. It was fucked. This was happening. Holy shit… The louder she got, the higher my heart-rate spiked and the faster we went.”
And while your high anxiety might be the flavour of the moment, the pros may not share your view:
“Parked as quick as I could, rang the shit out of the buzzer, threw her in a wheelchair and sprinted to the maternity ward like it was the fucking olympics. This woman strolls over and opens the door for us. I’ve just put in a performance that would rival Usain Bolt over the 200m whilst pushing a wheelchair, and this old lady casually opens the door like it’s a book club meeting and I’m 20 minutes early. Like she was already angry at me because she had to put down her tea. Fuck out of my way woman, my wife is having a baby!
Have you ever felt like the dumbest person in the room? I did because they all seemed pretty relaxed. The nursing staff. Nobody seemed to give much of a shit about the whole ‘babies head is bigger than a vagina’ thing. It must be their training. We obviously weren’t as close to D-Day as I thought. So we set up in one of the birthing suites. I knew we weren’t as close as others because I could hear the bellows of a woman in pain coming from down the hall. Fuck were we in for a good night or what!”
It’s heartening to see that he learned plenty in the pre-birth antenatal classes, to really assist his wife as much as possible:
“A few weeks earlier I had gone to those pre birthing classes so I felt like I knew what was going on. Nope… No fucking idea. People come in, people leave, they say stuff like dilation and every now and then someone throws on a latex glove and goes under the hospital gown. You really don’t know what love is until you’ve hosed your naked partner down with warm water in front of complete strangers. This shit was like something off the discovery channel. All bets were off. Dignity was out the window by this point. I made sure I stood well back because I didn’t want to get too cold later if I wet my clothes. Just kidding. I had spare clothes.”
Happy to see that it all ended with a healthy baby boy. Congratulations!
“Knox was eventually born and it was beautiful. If you know any men out there who are pretending not to be nervous. Tell them they should be very fucking nervous. Or send them my way. I’m a pro now”
