The only man in the maternity ward
For context, this was neither in the US nor Europe. This is not my first language and some terms are direct translations since I am not aware of actual usage.
I'm coming from an intense experience: my first son is born. In the days before that, I cared for my pregnant wife during the passing of her mother, who spent 3 months in the hospital fighting multiple conditions, chiefly neurological.
Two days after the burial, we went to the hospital for several exams. My wife was diagnosed with pre-eclampsia, a potentially dangerous pregnancy complication characterized by high blood pressure.
We spent almost a week in the hospital. My wife did not want a c-section, so our doctor employed multiple methods to induce labor over the course of several days.
There are no men in the maternity ward. Men do not sweep floors, do not take calls, or take any position of care.
I did not see any men in the hallway, although I assumed there were some hidden in the bedrooms.
When the nurses entered the room, they did not look at me. I was not a father, but rather a "companion" whatever you would use in English for someone who is just kind of there. When they had instructions pertaining to the care of my wife and son, they never addressed me. They only addressed me in matters lacking importance, like "Get me a towel", or "Is there any cotton left?".
The tone and body language were of contempt and distrust.
When my wife was soon to go into labor, I decided to go to the bathroom, since I expected to be locked in a room for many hours. When I left the bathroom (which was in the same room where she was), my wife was not there. She was gone. I looked for information and realized she was in the delivery room.
When I was in the bathroom, someone asked me to get something for the doula (a woman), but didn't tell me why. I did. You see, they had time to request me to get something for the doula, but couldn't use the same time to warn me that my wife was being taken to another floor.
That was incredibly traumatizing.
At every step, the message was very clear: "You are not welcome here". "You are not qualified to care for your wife and son". "You are man, and, therefore, a menace to this environment".
Well, fuck them. I was there for my wife since day one. In every contraction, every second she needed me, I was there.
I was the first person to touch my son when he left the womb.
We had to revolt to leave that place as soon as we could. Our personal pediatrician had to intervene because apparently, the maternity ward didn't really trust my wife either -- they just pretended. The kid was slightly underweight. I was convinced that the long stay at the hospital was the main factor impacting breastfeeding. My wife needed to mourn the loss of her mother and required some sense of normality and routine (we are so incredibly happy in our day-to-day, I was confident she would improve!). Turns out that I (and our doctor) were right. We're home now, and the kid's gaining weight again.
At every step of this process, I was invited not to care. "Get out, father, you are not needed here." "That is not a job for men, let the women do it for you".
Earlier today, a neighbor came asking "Are the girls helping you out?". I gotta be honest, I snapped. "No", I said. "This kid has a father". "Oh, but the feminine touch is special!". "It is not", I answered.
Well, fuck them, because I do care for my son, and I will continue to do so. I fully acknowledge and respect the special connection a mother has with their kids. I cannot bear a child, and I lack the ability to produce milk. Other than that, there are no tasks my wife can do that I cannot do as well.
I am not an angry person. Thinking about this makes me very angry and I hate that feeling. I feel a long-lasting trauma is forming. I'm pretty shook-up.
I love my son, I guess that ultimately that is all that matters.
I'm just glad I'm now home, and that I am no longer the only man in a place that considered me a foreign body, trying to eject me at every chance.
First of all congratulations, papa!
I'm glad you were there in that awful and unwelcoming place: you represented the missing half of humanity, the only envoy of men to welcome the newest member of our boys. You were there because your wife needed you, even if no one else in the ward acknowledged it, and you were there for your son when he needed you the most, even if he didn't have words yet to thank you.
I'm sorry that what should have been a special time that strengthens the bond between the three of you was so unnaturally and bizzarely....represented.
Are you in a culture that disrespects women? Was your presence there so hostile and awkward because most of the time men think they're too good for maternity wards and that women's labours are beneath them? I struggle to think of a place where they look down upon participation of a new father because they so highly value women. Usually it's because they don't value giving birth and nursing at all and the contempt then bleeds into men who willingly participate in the "baseness" of it.
Do you have a little circle of new father's to lean on at this time? It can be incredibly isolating. You guys went through something huge and yes definitely talk about it with as many people as you can.
Again, congratulations :D
Thanks!
I don't think this is about valuing mothers to the detriment of men, but rather a sense that men are, by default, incompetent and inclined to abuse. They didn't really trust my wife either, but they at least put on a pretense of doing so. It was not nearly as aggressive. I got word that the maternity ward has a history of retaining patients for way too long out of an overzealous belief that parents are incompetent.
I have not, and my best friend was awful about it. People seem to think I spent a whole week of attempts to induce labor, plus 20 hours of actual labor (and more than 48 hours without sleep), holding my wife's hand and smoking cigarettes outside like a cartoon dad. And, if I clarify that I was very much involved to the point of exhaustion, they'll say I'm trying to devalue my wife's pain and effort as if I was comparing myself to her. It is possible to acknowledge the mental and physical exhaustion a father can endure without denying that the woman is way more fragile and fatigued from the process, requiring the utmost attention and care at that moment.
I think maybe that's part of the deal here: you went though something huge, but you don't have anyone to talk about it with nor even people to acknowledge that you went through something. It's like someone whose parents are divorcing secretly, who can't talk about it with them (denial) or with anyone else (public shame).
I don't visit reddit anymore, but their /r/daddit and /r/breakingdad subs used to be super super good.
Did you guys go to prenatal class and meet other new parents? The dads will want to talk too.
I hope you find a better tribe and that it was a super awful hospital thing, and not a wider cultural thing in your current geographical country...
It was a huge deal! You almost lost your wife and kid and you pulled through and now you're a parent and forever will be come heck and high water! It's an ongoing battle and there's so much at stake and everything is new! Of course you need people to talk to about it who aren't diminishing! I hope you find your tribe soon :)
Yes, thank you, it is very true that I should have sought these groups. What happened was, with the months-long, dramatic hospitalization and subsequent death of my mother-in-law, whom we buried literally 2 days before we were admitted to the hospital, a lot of the measures and plans we had in place went out the window. I was caught by a sequence of intense personal storms.
I am also naturally averse to groups and socialization as a whole, but I should have pushed against that instinct.
Maybe there are groups for fathers around here, and not just the ones that are expecting.
I will look into those subreddits, thanks!
No blame at all for didn't see this kind of need coming :)
In Canada and us there are also new baby parent hang out groups where new parents can bring their kids to a small class or short lecture or free play..... Loneliness beseiges many many new parents. But "meat space" can be challenging in their own right so if you don't have the energy for them right now that's perfectly understandable as well.
I am a lone wolf, always have been. A lack of socialization is not an issue for me at all. I thrive in solitude. In that sense, caring for a newborn is a great fit for me.
However, it seems valuable to seek the company of other fathers that might help me process and understand everything I went through.
One thing that's causing me pain in that area is not being able to spend time on my hobbies. I love my kid, but, when I think of MUDs, Baldur's Gate 3, WoW Hardcore, and the upcoming Starfield, something dies inside me :P
the conventional wisdom is that "the days are long, but the years are short" -- pretty soon you'll be gaming WITH your son!
but yeah in the moment it sucks. When we had the child, it coincided with a AAA title that ALL my friends were playing, putting in 100+ hours in a game when I was struggling to simply survive. S. U. C. K. E. D. Big time. That kind of shift, from lone wolf, master of your own body and time and life, to frankly NPC status....and the relentlessness of it: not just for one day or a week but it can go on for MONTHS, that can throw the strongest of folks off their game.
Your labour and delivery story sound like it was sub-par. They probably didn't talk about the P-A-I-N of labour pain management? Works for the mental pain of being a new parent as well. PAIN is :
Purposeful
Anticipated
Intermittent
Normal
All the suck parts of parenting are purposeful, because you're doing the most difficult and complex thing known to mankind: of raising a happy and morally upright member of the human race. The struggles are anticipated, because you are walking a path that goes back tens of thousands of years, even if specific hardships are new, the struggle is ancient. And that even the worst days shall pass....they do, I promise. The highs are very high, but it also means the lows are pretty low. And that's normal. You're not somehow doing it wrong or feeling strange feelings: totally normal.
Of course each person is unique and I think some of us are more unique than others :) You're going to have challenges that others will look at and think, man, I'm glad I don't have those. Feel free to vent here of course :)
From my limited understanding of maternity wards, and I hope this isn't just personal optimism speaking, they treat everyone except for the patients like that. Fathers, patient's parents, relatives, children, close friends. The process is first and foremost medical, and if you aren't directly involved with the medical side of things, you're a liability or a distraction. Their primary duty is to the woman about to go though hell with a side of significant medical risk, and the baby. I think it's one of the major deficiencies in many medical systems, humanity and empathy are rare when overworked employees are just paid to move bills and preserve lives. Maybe they had rough experiences with relatives in the past. Maybe they hated your guts because you were a man in a woman's ward. Can't really say for certain, but aggravating as it was, I doubt it was for personal reasons. Global society has always been kinda sexist about the whole parenting thing, it's definitely something we all have to work on.
All that said, congratulations, sincerely! I hope you, your wife, and your son bring each other joy, and that you all have patience to nurture your new family.
That's interesting. From my only interaction with maternity and perinatal care in England over ten years ago I was welcomed, and encouraged to take as full a role in providing care to my child and wife as possible. I was taught how to change a nappy, how to bathe a child, etc etc. One or two of the nurses were a little bit "ha ha, men are a bit useless and need to be taught, women are naturally nurturing who just get it". That was a bit frustrating, especially because they were providing this instruction to all parents.
There were two things that caused a slight deviation from this:
The perinatal and postnatal time is very high risk for women and birthing people in abusive relationships, and so every person going through pregnancy should be spoken to by staff on their own. This means staff build in lots of opportunities for people to disclose abuse.
Breast feeding / chest feeding is really heavily promoted, and they want breast feeding only for the first six months. Anything that meant that was less likely was resisted. Some couples may say "I will mostly breastfeed, but I want to get a pump so the other partner can bottle feed some nights" and they'll get a range of resisting opinions.
#2 is different now, or at least is was in the hospital we were in five years ago, I suspect these things vary a bit with location. While they definitely promote it, there wasn't much pushback against not breastfeeding, and there is a lot of support available to make it work if parents want. Never did for us, my kid successfully hit the boob once despite many, many attempts and countless lactation consultants and assistants and so on. It was NHS staff who told us not to buy a pump - not because they didn't think pumping was a good idea, but only because it's better to rent one (the ones you buy are rubbish, the rentals are medical-grade).
A LOT of people whose entire job was promoting breastfeeding told us things like "don't worry too much, the important thing is the baby gets fed" and one which really stuck with me which was "nobody ever looked at an adult and said 'well that person must have been bottle-fed'"
On #1 my sister tripped all sorts of safeguarding conditions when she was having her second child, because she arrived the hospital sporting a huge black eye. The staff kept making excuses to get her on her own and ask where the bruise had come from, and while she actually had walked into a door, apparently that's quite a tough sell as it's the same excuse a lot of abused people use. She appreciated the effort though, if she had been in real danger there was lots of protocols in place to help. Her husband thought it was hilarious, she's a kickboxer and HEMA practitioner - if things ever came to violence he'd be a small greasy puddle on the floor and she would barely break a sweat.
#2 is bullshit. We did it for our first, whom breastfed just fine. Nipple confusion is not really a thing.
However, for our second, we didn't because we were already overtired (transition to 2 is hard folks!) and the extra commitment of pumping when breastfeeding was so easy sounded like too much. We changed our mind a month in, to try to give mom some more sleep. Kiddo #2 then refused to take a bottle....ever. Not being able to do a night feeding meant mom suffered ever worse sleep cycles.
Pump and have Dad do some feeds people. Everyone will sleep better and having an emergency stash in the freezer helps a ton if mom ever needs to go get surgery in the first 2 years.
This speaks to me on a personal level. I'm from the US and there's thing about when the dad is home taking care of the child. Culturally, when the dad is out without Mom and baby, they ask if Mom is home caring for the child or something like that. When the Mom is out without the child and dad, they ask "is Dad babysitting?" My wife responds "no, he's caring for our child".
My wife understood early why that question bothers me. It implies no responsibility or connection, that moms are caregivers and dads are temporary babysitters. Maybe in some cases that's true, but not ours. My wife's mother still struggles to understand that 2 years later.
Sorry for the rant. The delivery wasn't nearly as bad for me as for you, but I get your frustration.
Another guy from the US here, and it’s a bit amazing (in a bad way) how much the attitude prevails that men are inept at anything relating to children or household that doesn’t involve tools.
I’m not yet a dad but when I was in high school in the late 2000s, when my widower father offered to help with cooking for an event being held by my senior class, the mothers of my classmates who’d also volunteered didn’t take it seriously, as if men are incapable of cooking. They were flabbergasted when not only did he bring in the promised dishes, but also some extras, and they were all prepared well and got eaten before anything else on the table.
I’m not sure if bumbling sitcom dads are to blame or something else but it’s frustrating.
I think TV tropes are part of it, but also generational differences, cultural differences, and (maybe even more prominently than the others) class/income differences. Across all of those areas fathers have traditionally taken on different roles.
My parents were boomers. My dad did most of the "outdoor" cooking (e.g. grilling), while my mom did most of the kitchen cooking. That meant on the whole my mom cooked more often than my dad. But he could and did cook in the kitchen occasionally.
In my own family, my wife and I share the kitchen cooking duties pretty evenly however I still do all the "outdoor" cooking. So on the whole, I probably cook more often than she does. Either one of us is capable of finding a recipe and following it to produce something edible.
All that said, I personally would rather be your dad showing up and kicking ass than it be expected that I do something at a certain level of expertise.
I think that perhaps, in the US, this became particularly an urban-suburban divide, with the middle-class suburban ideal becoming extremely strict and normative in the the 1950s, developing rules that would persist for several decades, and still heavily influence cultural views in the US today.
And that "inside"/"outside" gender distinction in cooking seems to have been part of it. I can distinctly remember being astonished by a television commercial in the US where the major message, beyond whatever kitchen product it was selling, was, explicitly, that men should not be allowed in the kitchen: that there was a strict and innate outdoor/indoor gender divide in cooking, with a woman's place in that indoors, and a man's place outdoors. I seem to actually recall that it promoted this so severely that the scenario being presented as unacceptable was a husband who was cooking outside on a grill but tried to go into the kitchen to prepare something for the grill; he apparently should have had them prepared and passed to him by his wife. This wasn't a mid-century advertisement: it was in the 1990s, when there seemed to be a resurgence of a new suburban normativity.
My very suburban US grandparents certainly followed that division strictly, to the point where my grandfather would not cook in a kitchen even if my grandmother was bedridden, and as far as I can tell, my grandmother had never touched a grill. They always seemed confused as to how I didn't starve, living in city centres and thus, without a patio and lawn, having no means of cooking; regardless of how many times I explained to them that I did cook, quite a bit, in a kitchen, they assumed I always went out to eat. Nothing I could do would have changed that perception.
In fact, such was their strict division of basic tasks that after my grandfather died, she had to admit that, despite being a capable driver, she had never refuelled a car in her entire life, and would need to learn how. That was her husband's responsibility. She would give him the money. Once he stopped being able to see well enough to drive, she would drive him to the station. But it was his responsibility.
Congrats! Stay off the internet, sleep when the baby sleeps!
Congrats on your first child! It will change your life, for better or worse. :)
I'm in the US, and when my wife gave birth about 5 years ago, I was involved in everything like you. From the first visits through the birth. I was actually a part of the birthing process by holding her leg and acting as a second "nurse" (unexpectedly, I might add).
I felt welcomed and included in everything, but there were definitely some of the older nurses or doctors who made some side comments or little things about my involvement but I would say it was not the norm.
I also saw a number of other father's involved like me, so I think the way newer fathers are being involved is changing.
Again, congratulations! Don't let how others perceive you or your family effect how you view yourself and how you want to be involved. Fuck em!
I don't have anything beyond some generic sympathy to share regarding the harder parts of that experience, but I am very sorry to hear those things. Regardless of whether it was a specifically gendered matter, that sounds very hard to handle. I hope it hasn't diminished the beauty of the path in front of you too much.
Congratulations! You are a dad! I don't envy you in the short term, but that's really amazing news, and beyond should be proud of your son, your wife, and yourself for getting here intact.
Ok, this isn't specifically against you, don't take this personally, this is reflected in what most people in this thread seem to be echoing. You really don't even have to read it, it's pretty much just a vent.
And I'm sorry to be a downer when I know your and others' messages were meant positively.
Sorry for putting this in your subcomments but it feels worse to put it as a main comment of the thread since I feel like the main comments should focus on OP.
It feels like everyone in this thread is refusing to acknowledge it, so I'll say what I think.
It definitely feels unpopular to say but there really are a lot of biases against fathers/men in general in society ime that aren't even unpopular to hold, especially when dealing with women and children, and they're why I never plan to be intimate with anyone or to start a family.
Fathers watching their kids at the park get called pedophiles and the police called, custody/alimony defaults to the mother in many cases cases, it was and may still be police protocol to automatically assume the man is the perpertrator when a domestic disturbance of some kind arises, completely unsubstantiated claims can ruin a man's life because the court of public opinion are more inclined to believe the female victim even without evidence, and even if they get vindicated in court they can still have their reputation ruined, men and women both are abused at comparable rates but one is taken seriously and has government funding for shelters, one is laughed at and denied funding and forced to fund it of pocket till the founder [offs themselves from being driven bankrupt after being denied funding, and the harassment they recieved), etc.
I feel the need to be defensive and say that I'm not just raging and full of hatred, although injustice and unfairness does make me upset obviously, I'm sad and legitimately depressed about this and other things that make life not feel worth living/engaging with.
This is just something I felt I needed to say as sort of a vent.
You aren't wrong here. Men are the recipients of bias and discrimination just like women are. But the thing I think you're setting aside is the especially long history of men more or less being the ones doing the discrimination, and women receiving it.
I think that history leads to women very actively and overtly protecting things (like childcare, child birth, etc.) from the "influence" of men. It's a learned survival tactic.
Societal bias is something that takes a couple of generations to change, and those changes are not spread evenly across communities either.
I'll give an example. The other day my son and I were walking in to the grocery store. He's 5. As we're crossing the parking lot he grabbed my hand and was talking to me. We passed an older gentleman coming out of the store. He said to me "You're being a great dad." I said "Uh, thanks" and went on with our errand.
Not until later did I stop to think "Why would he say that to me in that moment?" There wasn't anything special going on. The only things I could pin it to was the fact that I was actively listening to him babble on about whatever 5 year olds talk about, and holding his hand. In my mind, just regular things I do as a father. In that gentleman's mind, it was probably regular "mom" things so seeing a man doing them prompted him to comment.
Was that experience harmful in any way? Not really. It actually felt good to be recognized for being a good father by a stranger. Was his comment most likely rooted in some cultural bias about how fathers and mothers should behave? Probably.
Anyways, I think that the biases men face are less common but also probably more overtly harmful when they come about, but I don't necessarily think that is unfair, per se. It's just the way that life is sometimes (not that that is an argument or excuse for allowing bias to continue in any way towards anyone).
That's one of the few situations where a gender flip makes for a good argument, so here it is: if a woman reported her difficulties in an environment dominated by men, would you feel compelled to question her assessment?
Have I mentioned I'm (mixed but presenting as) black, my wife is white, and my kid came out white? I'm pretty sure there was a racial component in the maternity ward already... I expect to have to show my documents on a regular basis in the future.
Yeah, as someone who's very often treated as a pest in public just for occupying space, I'm familiar with the brand of pain lou's had to handle in bulk through this period. I just didn't think this was the time to stoke any of those embers. I hope nobody thought I was minimizing anything.
I think we as a society don't know how to handle second degree trauma, people going through a traumatic experience who are not the first degree - the person that the trauma is directly happening to. The spouse of someone with cancer, the child of a dying parent, everything is about the first degree person, and everyone treats the second degree as some sort of entitled, unaffected bystander. It's insulting.
We fail to recognize that yes, the trauma is directly happening to the second degree traumatized as well. You had a different perspective of it than your wife did, but you did go through the same trauma. You should have been allowed to handle it as you saw fit. I'm sorry they treated you as some unaffected bystander.
Also, congratulations on a healthy baby boy!
Congratulations! Best of luck with the joys and struggles of fatherhood.
I'm sad they treated you like that.
I sympathize with most of your complaints (though of course it's hard to comment in depth without having been there or experienced something similar), but I think this particular one is not particularly well-founded. When someone is giving birth, the person or people they want with them is not necessarily the "father". Using a word like "companion" is the better and more inclusive choice here.
The actual word they used is not really important, I only used it here to convey the sentiment that I was treated as an irrelevant accessory and neglected in my role.
That's fair enough, I just think it's probably not great to use inclusive language as the example to reflect that sentiment. But I'm perhaps a little over-sensitive on that front due to my personal queerness, so I was probably reading into it a bit.
Congrats on the birth of your son, and best of luck weathering people's sexist assumptions going forward. That shit's rough and unfair, but pushing back against these expectations by being a caring husband and father is a sign of strength and good character in you imo. Your son's lucky to have you.
I see. I was not aware I was using special language with complicated or disputed applications.
This is not my first language and I was translating from my own.
And thanks! :)
Congrats on becoming a Dad. It’s a long road, but it’s as fun as it is hard. Or, “The days are long but the years are short."
It’s hard to comment on your situation without being there, but I’ll just say that however rude or off-putting the environment was – remember your wife just gave birth. Venting on the internet is fine, but I’d avoid bringing it up to her. ;)
I fully acknowledge that you are coming from a place of care and wish me all the best.
However, I do not believe that is good advice. Me and my wife are each other's main source of support. We share everything and she is the only person that was there with me I can talk about those issues.
She went through great hardship and that is something I always have in mind, but she is an adult and a strong woman and I know she can handle more than one thing at a time. There has been a few days since we got home too, so it's not like I was talking to her about that stuff in the heat of the moment.
So yeah, we had good conversations on this subject, she was very supportive and I am glad we were able to talk this through. I would feel incredibly alone otherwise. And it would be difficult to provide her with quality support if I was distressed myself.
I'm glad to hear that.
Fair, that was mostly an attempt at a joke but what I should have said was just be cognizant of the difference in magnitudes of your experience, which it sounds like you were!
I'm sorry. I'm really not in a moment when I can fully recognize and appreciate irony. It was rough :(