So this is Labour

Labour pain

She has now descended into the darkest recesses of labour.

'This is hard,' she moans. 'This really hurts.'

Her voice is pleading with me to bring her body some comfort. Her mind
knows that there is none I can offer, save for a bit of lower back
massage, and a reassuring voice. All I can do is hold her, keep her
spirits up, ensure the entonox mouthpiece is there when she needs it
(and she is beyond being able to tell me when a contraction is about to
start; I have to listen for the increased pace of her breathing, look
out for the crumpling of her face as it anticipates the new wave of
pain).

Her cheeks are blotchy red; grey crescents of exhaustion have formed
beneath her eyes. She is utterly washed-out. She drawls her words,
drugged by the mix of entonox and the constant hammering of the
contractions against her back and abdomen.

I want this to be over. The pressure on me is relentless. What must she
feel like? Jesus, what must it be like for her? I make a mental note to
remember how I feel. I tell myself that I do not want to do this again
for at least another couple of years. I don't want some bloody sugary
hormone kicking in once the child is here, duping me into believing
this was a breeze. I am aware my hand aches from all the massage, and
my back is sore from the hunched, contorted positions I have had to
adopt over the bed or the side of the bath, or kneeling on the hard
floor, in order to be able to reach H-J where she needs me. But above
all, I am tired by the helplessness and the absence of any let-up.
These minute-long drillings are now starting every 90 seconds. This is
going to age me. I chastise myself for indulging in such pettiness. My
discomfort is on such an incomparably pathetic scale to the pain she is
having to endure. God, I'm just another prissy, wet and wingeing
bloke.

Seven-thirty, Friday evening. We have been here since seven this
morning. The hopelessly demoralising news is that she is still only one
centimetre dilated. All that work, all that courage, all for one
derisory centimetre. The duty registrar, an Asian guy with an
after-shave I recognise, and with a warmth in his brown eyes, tells us
we have to hurry things along.

'We have to get this baby out,' he insists calmly, this man who is
several years my junior and who has probably saved hundreds of little
lives in his own short one. His peaceful voice instills a confidence in
me. The content of what he says reassures me he is a thoroughbred
professional, despite his youth. And yet I am discomfited by his desire
to hurry things along.

'Why not let things run their course?' I ask.

'The baby,' he says - and I admire his clinical inclusion of the
definite article, 'the baby will be getting tired. You know,
distressed. We have to get the baby out. Soon.'

And I am not sure that I believe him. I think the baby is fine. There
is nothing on the monitor to suggest the baby is suffering any
distress. I think the medical man wants our bed. Or is it that his
decisions are driven by a desire to do everything he can to minimise
the risk of a claim under his PI policy? Either way, I don't think he's
caring-sharing softie he looks. He has another agenda. He's as cynical
about his job as I am about mine. I take a couple of puffs of
entonox.

'We have to establish labour,' he purrs.

'What?' The gas has made me light-headed.

'We don't consider labour to be established until at least four
centimetres.'

All this, and it hasn't even been labour.

The hill is very steep and we are still at the bottom.

But then Dorian arrives. Dorian is cool (even if his fingernails are
gnawed down to the quick). We asked for an anaesthetist, not the lead
singer from a boyband. We're expecting a posh old fart with furry
eyebrows and soup down his tie. Who is this baby-faced, up-for-it,
dude? He should be peering at us patronisingly over a pair of
half-moons, not grinning through rectangular black Dolce and
Gabannas.

'It's wicked if it works!' he enthuses about the epidural. And he grins
a boyish grin, pulling a hand distractedly through his spiky
hair.

Dorian is rakish, twenty-something, and jigging from foot to foot. He's
amped up, man.

'We're gonna lose that pain!' he proclaims, and I want to hug him, or
at least give him a high five. Man, he should seal up some of his
energy in a big see-through plastic pouch and drip-feed it to
people.

If I walk past Rumbelows next week and see Dorian doing CBBC, I won't
be surprised. I reckon everyone loves Dorian. I certainly do. And H-J?
He is her oasis, her rippling lifeguard with body-tone, perma-tan and
high-cut Speedos, a knight in pale blue shapeless trouser suit (with
rather contemporary V-neck).

He takes her by the hand and softly explains, with all the bedside aura
of a Bella centre-spread, the risks of the epidural. I am expecting him
to talk about the long-term spinal damage that can occur, the
paralysis, the risks to the baby of a mother who can't push, the
increased likelihood of the spectral, infamous C-section. But he
doesn't. He just warns her that it might be 'patchy' (in other words,
won't provide all over pain relief) and it might give her a headache.
'But we've got drugs we can give you to deal with that,' he reassures
her.

Then he concludes his pre-match analysis. 'Coo-er-l! Give me five
minutes to get my kit sorted and we're game on!'

He leaps up and skids and slides around the room. He gathers tubes,
breaks seals on plastic packages and taps syringes. Then he hunches
over a stainless steel trolley and methodically, silently assembles the
pain-numbing magic trick, like a kid with an Airfix.

'A couple of scratches? .' Dorian has taped light blue paper, not
dissimilar in hue to that of his trouser suit, to H-J's back, leaving a
small rectangle of flesh, about the size of a matchbox, towards the
bottom. 'Now this might feel like a bee sting?,' he whispers, as he
injects the local anaesthetic. She flinches. I hover - like I have been
most of the time, and watch as he proceeds to thread a plastic tube
into her back. Soon Dorian has his line in place, and now he is slowly
injecting his mystical potion into H-J's spine. It will shortly spread
across her lower body, blocking out the pain. Well, actually it won't.
Dorian tells me this is just saline solution.

'It's going in really nice,' he assures me, raising his eyes from the
job in hand with disarming nonchalance. He explains, with an enthusiasm
which would make an average on-call anaesthetist seem nerdy, but which
gives Dorian an intensely post-modern panache, why he is putting in
salt water rather than some Class A mind-altering pain
exterminator.

I try to absorb what he tells me, but can't. I realise I don't care
about anything other than releasing H-J from her pain. Dorian could
have told me he was injecting pur?ed goat's cheese, and I wouldn't have
cared why, as long as the end result was the same.

I check on H-J. She seems fine; she is sitting over the edge of the
bed, her back to Dorian. She is dishevelled and pale. We are lucky
there has been sufficient break between contractions for Dorian to do
his work. Dorian signals that his work is done, by handing H-J a small
handpiece which is connected, via a plastic tube running up her back
and over her shoulder, to the junction box now taped to her back. The
epidural will enter her spine from the drip by the side of the bed. She
can push the button she now holds to top up the anaesthetic should she
find she is still experiencing pain at any stage.

Soon, the epidural is working its magic. Midnight, and pain is a
distant memory.

[At this stage, events took over. At around four a.m., the consultant
reappeared and did a further VE. Amazingly, H-J was by then fully
dilated. Our baby was born at 0656, after two hours of pushing. There
was no further intervention. H-J was assisted brilliantly by the
midwife, who looked like Kathy Bates but fortunately was not a
psychotic obsessive.]