“You're about 8cm”. Ten is the goal. Ten means he or she is ready to enter the world. Eight? After twelve hours of relentless, excruciating contractions? We’d hoped the next examination would bring more encouraging news. The wife is exhausted, having slept little in the last week. Coupled with the baby’s dipping heart rate, this is not great news. Eight to me sounds like an inconvenient delay. Eight to the wife spells disaster. A drip will be needed to intensify the contractions, in order to speed the process along. And after twelve hours of labour, no pain relief is, well, no option. An epidural is a must. A caesarean now looks increasingly likely if he or she needs to come out quickly.

Now none of these outcomes are seen as a problem these days. An epidural is almost the norm, while many people even opt for caesarean’s despite the elongated recovery period and obvious discomfort.

But to someone with my wife’s expectations of herself, she has failed. She has worked with dogged determination through the night and morning to avoid all of this. She feels that she must’ve under-performed, that I will be disappointed. As tears fill her eyes and her vision of childbirth slithers from her grasp, I am also ill at ease.

Firstly, the epidural. The wife specifically told me, pre-hospitalisation, that she would be put under pressure to receive all kinds of pain relief, and that I needed to stick up for her, to resist the anaesthetic advances at all costs. Not only this, but I cannot imagine anyone so ill at ease on the receiving end of a needle. She jumps a mile at every blood test. So the idea of a needle being positioned in the spine, whilst bent double, mid-contraction, leaves me concerned to say the least. What if she moves, and is paralysed for life? Even the anaesthetist gives a rundown of all of the various probabilities of the numerous side effects. Then there’s the caesarean. What if this means we can’t have any more children? That the wife is unable to breast-feed? So many questions.

What do I do? Do I encourage her to go on without the epidural, despite the exhaustion? This isn’t an option. I know I must also allay her fears that she has let me down, or failed in not going the distance without any help. Through moist eyes on both parts I do my best to reassure her of this, as it cannot be swept under the carpet or overlooked. This emotion could plague her for a long time if left unaddressed. And in my eyes she has done anything but fail. I am hugely impressed, and have felt the bond between us tighten throughout the whole experience. My sole concern is for her safety. Accepting help along the way and things not going to plan are just facts of life.

So, with steely resolve, we embrace the positioning of the epidural. I don’t even have to leave the room to pass out. It appears I’ve also come a long way.

The relief does not take long to pass into the blood stream, and at last she is able to rest for a few minutes, as the rigours of contractions are by-passed physically and evidenced only by the peak of a graph on a small monitor by the bedside. I take the opportunity to get some belated lunch from the canteen, with a stop at the water closet en route for a little cry.