STONE COLD HAVEN
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Should men be kept away from the delivery room?
Posted: October 22, 2009, 4:06 pm by Darius Stone
A debate has been raging this past week in the UK, about the role of men in the delivery room during childbirth. A renowned obstetrician Michel Odent has suggested that men should be kept well away from delivery rooms as they add little value to the process of childbirth.
Odent, a veteran who has overseen more than 15,000 deliveries in over 50 years says:
”I am more and more convinced that the participation of the father is one of the main reasons for long and difficult labours. A labouring woman needs to be protected against any stimulation of the thinking part of her brain – the neocortex – for labour to proceed with any
degree of ease. She needs to be in a private world where she doesn’t have to think or talk.Yet, motivated by a desire to ‘share the experience’, the man asks questions and offers words of reassurance and advice, denying his partner the quiet mind that she needs. The father’s release of the stress hormone adrenaline as he watches his partner labour causes her anxiety, and prevents her from
Relaxing. No matter how much he tries to smile and appear relaxed, he cannot help but feel anxious. And the release of adrenaline is contagious.”You see, my first encounter with the trauma of childbirth happened nowhere near a delivery room. Matter of fact, it happened at a social gathering while I attended some sort of party, I forget what the party was for, but I remember that I arrived late and was talked into having some dinner first before joining with the rough and tumble of the bash if you will.
The food was being served upstairs in the restaurant area and I ended up on the same table as a good friend of mine Bella, who had given birth less than 3 weeks earlier and was cuddling her little bundle of joy. While waiting for my food, I did what everyone who came through did – congratulated Bella, cuddled the baby myself and sang goo gaa songs as if the baby gave a fuck who I was. I of course questioned Bella about the father of the child coz’ this child was too cute to belong to her husband. I know him well, and G is one ugly son of a bitch.
Speaking of which, I really get cheezed off about how pretentious people can be. How many times have you heard people go all soft kneed and gooey and lying to a mother that her new born is a cute little thing, yet it’s all plain to see how ugly the sprog is. What happened to the good ole days when people were brave enough to call things for what they are? What happened to saying congratulations, but with a cautionary “lakini dude this baby is goddamn ugly, why lie”. But I digress.
As I tucked into my dish, more and more usual suspects came through to see the new baby. Unfortunately for me, many of them were young mothers who were keen to discuss more than just the baby. How was it? (as in the delivery) Was it as bad as the first? How badly did you tear?
I was very comfortable with how obscene these girls could get as we had been clubbing buddies for a long long time and very few things surprised any of us, or at least that’s what I thought. And believe me, this group of girls could be both vulgar and breath-taking in the same respect. I remember one of them once telling a dude who fancied her in the club not to bother if he was only going to survive one shot at an orgasm. If he wasn’t going to make her cum at least thrice, he should just cut his losses and run. And it was said with a nonchalant coldness it would unsettle any warm blooded male with a dick hard enough to cut diamonds.
Naturally, I made what I thought was a stealth move to relocate to another part of the room as clearly, the graphic conversation and description of childbirth was not conducive conversation for the meal. I was quickly ordered to sit the fuck down and listen to their tales, and I suspect the girls were enjoying watching me squirm as much as they were enjoying their conversation. I didn’t even realise at what point this banter turned into an indictment of the male species as I was blamed for all the happy go lucky men who just enjoy the orgasmic pleasure of sex and want little to do with the consequences. The least I could do was to sit and listen to the consequences of our orgasmic pleasure.
Of course I severely protested and insisted that they should blame their husbands and boyfriends seated downstairs, beer in hand and screaming at the football on the big screens. But that wasn’t going to cut any mustard. Calling my girlfriend at the time to bail me out was as useless as expecting the men downstairs to even attempt to venture into this conversation. I had to listen to every graphic detail from how Bella coped with the excruciating pain to the extent of her vaginal tears and how she was sown up by the midwife – and all this while having my rice and chicken. To tell you the truth, eating rice and chicken has never been the same for me any more.
Thinking of this debate about fathers in delivery rooms does make you wonder though. Will it all fall apart if we’re not there? I know for a fact, that many of my peers who are still back home won’t go anywhere near a delivery room. The best they’ll do is probably wait for the phone call to confirm whether it’s a girl or a boy, pop in to see mother and baby and then head off to the pub to celebrate with their mates.
I know it used to be like that in the 60s and 70’s, but the bra burning brigades of the 70s saw to it that some “bonding” was forthcoming and before long, men attending deliveries of their kids became more common than microwaves in the average household – at least in the western world. A good proportion even film the whole delivery and keep the video tape in the household collection alongside 101 Dalmatians, Chuck Norris’s Delta Force and that Lord of the Rings Trilogy.
Let’s face it. Despite the perceived bonding and closeness and the out of this world human experience that a couple can get from the man being present during the delivery, childbirth is a painful, stressful, unpleasant and traumatic experience. No amount of rose tinted “having my hubby around to support and share the experience” will change that fact.
Experiencing the birth of a child will definitely change a man. The question is whether it will change them enough to appreciate what their partner has just gone through enough to strengthen their relationship; or whether it traumatizes them to the point where they have a problem even looking at the business end of their partner’s femininity with the same enthusiasm that they used to do.
There are documented stories of men who have attended childbirth, and have been so traumatized that they have subsequently walked away never to be seen again by their partner.
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The fine line between being anal and OCD
Posted: October 3, 2009, 7:06 pm by Darius Stone
Strange creatures we are. We’ll probably find any excuse to suggest that we’re not freaks. But I got thinking this past week about some of our habits that others would think freakish.
I have this habit for example, of washing my hands with soap and water every time I get into the house. There’s this voice in my head that tells me that nothing outside my house is cleaner than what I have inside. Maybe even thinking that outside is just outright filthy. I won’t touch anything in the house until I scrub my hands. I also won’t sit on my bed (whether it has covers or not) without changing the clothes I wore while outside – maybe it’s that thought of all the public places I sat on or the dirt I accumulate at work or wherever.
This past week, a friend and I took the wives and kids bowling and while waiting our turn, we decided to have something to eat at the bowling alley. ‘ER indoors always carries sanitized wet wipes because my son has octopus hands – you can never know what he’s been touching. So whenever we’re out and need to eat, they come in quite handy where soap and water is not an option.
My friend’s wife was also equipped at the bowling alley with a purse sized sanitizer that pretty much illustrated to me that we all seem to have these crazy rituals that we may not necessarily acknowledge or even tell people about. Her kids were not even going to touch the plate without a ritualistic clean with the sanitizer. I didn’t even realise they were sold as fashion accessories, or that literally half the population wanted to carry them lest they get infected by something.
At what point do these habits become an obsessive compulsive disorder or at what point are we just being anal. My wife for example, is anal about having a clean house. Leaving dirty dishes and pots in and around the sink might as well be a class A felony punishable by 2 nights in the dog house and a dressing down. “I’ll do them later” doesn’t cut the mustard in the Stone household any more.
I’ve heard of people who won’t even touch door knobs with their bare hands or sit down on a bus or subway if they’re wearing a mini-skirt. There’s a guy who recently died in Germany from inhaling dettol. This dude had dettol everywhere in his house – buckets and bucket loads of dettol in the bathroom, kitchen and probably under his bed.
There’s this former neighbour of ours (thank God she moved) who had this crazy habit of walking into our kitchen and the first thing she always did was open our fridge and appraise its contents. It didn’t matter what time of day or night or whether she was on her cell phone when she rang the door bell and we opened the door. She would head straight for the kitchen as she started her gossip of the day or continued her phone call, and go straight for the fridge. I tried to convince my wife that this was not a Kenyan thing (long story)…but truth be told, this girl really pissed me off too.
One day when ‘er indoors told me the neighbour was on her way, I quickly emptied the fridge and put the contents in the nearby cupboards. The picture of her face when she opened the door of an empty fridge was so priceless, MasterCard would have a problem selling it.
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The end of the fish cakes
