The "we-told-you-so" brigade had a field-day. My partner's attempt at a home birth ended in tears, confirming everything these 20/20 hindsight people always knew - as if we hadn't already heard that a first delivery at home is very un-recommended.
So why did we risk it? You'd know if you've been in a hospital recently. Pale, drawn people, on the verge of throwing up - and they're only the visitors. I usually have to be carried out on a stretcher. My partner, the expectant one, was fed up with paternalistic, unsympathetic and arrogant quacks prodding her as though she were a beanbag, crediting her with about as much intelligence. Our decision (for it was joint) to give birth to our baby in its own bedroom was confirmed after attending a public lecture on the benefits and safety of home deliveries.
A midwife called to the house to size us up: literally. She reckoned that, judging by our noble heads, the baby would be in for a tight squeeze. But something called our "energy" was good. The alarm bells got louder when the best advice she could offer for coping with the pain of labour was treehugging. And we weren't to worry about what to do on the big day - that's what intuition's for.
The replacement midwife was an altogether more down-to-earth character - her suggestion that a few ante-natal classes might not go astray proved she was at least practical. By now, just a few weeks from the due date, we felt we had the whole thing in hand.
It was a stroke of luck that I should be just completing my maternity education by means of Miriam Stoppard's Pregnancy And Birth Book as my partner felt her first contraction. At one o'clock on a Monday morning, labour was at last underway. Shortly afterwards, the waters broke. By two o'clock, the midwife had arrived, made her examination and reassured us that though the baby was occipital posterior, or "face up", the dilation of the cervix was already advanced at 2cm, all was well and she left. The midwife returned at 11 a.m. and, businesslike, set out her bits and pieces. All we had to do now was wait. And wait. And wait. After 12 hours the only thing that seemed to be progressing was the pain. Late in the afternoon, a second midwife joined the fray, replete with a briefcase full of homeopathic pain-relievers, something my partner did not subscribe to.
Finally, though, the waiting and pain was to bear fruit. At 8 p.m., it was time to have a look at this baby. Hanging from my shoulders, my partner assumed a squatting position and, with each contraction, attempted to push the poor creature into existence. Childbirth has been likened to taking hold of your mouth and stretching it over your head - it's that crazy. Yet there was no going back now and each vessel-busting exertion was accompanied by a volcanic roar. Considering how little we know about childbirth until we experience it - men and women - it's surprising how simple it is. Not the pain, of course; nothing simple about that. But the procedure is straightforward enough. Labour is triggered when a woman's body decides the time has come to expel its load. The contractions are what happens as the cervix begins to dilate, or open up, in order to give the baby a fighting chance of getting through. Those breathing exercises, the staple of so many sitcoms, are in the first instance designed to help the woman cope with the agony. Then, as the cervix approaches full dilation, panting is employed to help resist the urge to push the baby out before dilation is complete. Only when the cervix is fully opened at 10cm is it time to start the delivery.
Meanwhile, back in our place, despite every effort of my partner there was still no sign of a baby. The midwives then cheerily proposed to push the cervix over the baby's head. The cervix was 9cm dilated, they claimed, so surely a shove would compensate for the last centimetre. What did we know? "Shove away, for f. . .k's sake - use a crowbar if you have to," my wilting partner pleaded. But sometimes you just don't anticipate how much things can hurt.
After two hours of this madness, the midwives announced that due to circumstances beyond their control, the baby's arrival would be delayed. So, more contractions for now and we'd see about delivering the baby later. To my partner, this was akin to having paced herself through 26 miles of the marathon, but then, with only half a mile to go, seeing the finishing line begin to move away. It was simply impossible to go on.
By midnight, the midwives realised the game was up. The best bet was hospital - 40 miles away. We were incredulous at their suggestion we would go in our Noddy car. Instead we demanded an ambulance. Now!
We made it to the hospital without serious injury and, with much relief, settled down in the delivery room. It was another three hours before the baby finally made it, 27 1/2 hours after it all began, and only with the help of a pain-relieving gas, a pain-relieving injection and, crucially, an intravenous dose of Syntoccinin to speed up and intensify the contractions. Sure, the ambience was missing - no candles, soft music, all the other paraphernalia of home births - but at least the little mite was alive. Just. Perhaps it was as well that we didn't know precisely how a new-born behaves. We assumed they were all blue and lifeless at first. Thankfully, he was resuscitated quickly enough.
We spent a couple of days in the hospital, recovering and trying to make sense of our nightmare. Talking to other people, doctors and midwives among them, we gradually worked out what really went on. It might seem a small distinction, but there's a mass of difference between a home birth, the thing we thought we had signed up for, and a natural birth, something practised 500 years ago and back in favour with contemporary flat-earthers.
Perhaps we should have realised earlier what we were letting ourselves in for. Home deliveries, not surprisingly, are frowned on by many in the medical establishment. Unfortunately, the conservatives call the shots and refuse to create the infrastructure necessary to ensure the safety of home births. Some midwives, unwilling to submit to establishment thinking, have chosen instead to take risks as part of a campaign to return childbirth to the home. But given their inability to deal adequately with emergencies, particularly where the baby is concerned, we would have to say, from our experience, that having a baby at home in Ireland is just not safe.
A century ago, that would have been understandable. Birth often meant death: for the mother, the baby, often for both. Intervention was limited to forceps. These days, thankfully, various manoeuvres and strategies can be employed to complete delivery. And when the waters break more than a day before a baby's born, or when the child is face-up, it's especially important not to take chances.
It may well be the case that current practice is to intervene too soon and too readily. It's true that Caesareans have become the norm in the US, and Irish obstetricians, too, can be over-eager with the knife and salad-tongs. As for hospitals, they are the last place a baby would choose to be born in.
The answer might be something like the properly equipped "sideby-side" birthing centres operating successfully in the Netherlands: a soothing environment incorporating a bit of progressive thinking, safe procedures and that bugbear of the new-agers - life-saving technology. For Dutch women who choose to deliver at home, an airborne emergency unit is never more than 20 minutes away. Sounds pretty safe to me. In retrospect, I think that while we're waiting for improvements in our baby-delivery service, it's gaga to engage in deluded and dangerous bids to hatch them au naturale.
Anyway, the nightmare is over for us. Another lesson learnt the hard way.