It’s Not the Birth I’m Afraid Of

I couldn’t understand what the midwives were telling us.

Induction, membrane sweep, dilation, assisted birth…

When you’re getting ready for a birth in England, there comes a point where you start to suspect it’s not your English, it’s that you need a separate dictionary just for birth.

So, both to learn these words and to have a bit of fun while learning them, I started turning the English words used in childbirth into videos.

The videos really took off.

I now have, in all seriousness, a circle of midwives.

Midwives like the videos and send them to each other. Midwifery associations get tagged, the posts get shared in stories. The midwifery department of a medical school even asked me to share more information and content.

At some point I stopped and thought:

Mate, how did it come to this?

Turns out Instagram isn’t such an empty place

We may be being a bit unfair to Instagram.

Of course there’s a part of everyone that wants to be liked, to be heard, to keep up with the trends and the times. I’m not entirely free of that either. I’m the kind of person who sees a number, can’t help himself and turns it into a challenge.

But people also have a wish to learn, to be informed and to send what they’ve learned on to someone else.

I used to think informative content would be boring. That’s why I was trying to make more entertaining videos.

Now I see that the point wasn’t to run away from information.

It was to put information and fun together.

Along the way my Instagram algorithm, as you might guess, changed completely. In the last week alone I may have watched more than a thousand videos about pregnancy, birth, doctors, newborns and “I’m one week away from giving birth”.

My phone now knows who I am better than I do.

But all this content has also raised my awareness enormously. As I learned how a woman’s body changes through pregnancy, what the placenta does, how labour progresses and how the body keeps on working even after the birth, my own thinking started to change too.

At this point, let me share a secret.

I didn’t want to be at the birth

In fact, I found the idea of witnessing a birth pretty off-putting.

I was going to be there because Elvin wanted me by her side.

Then I started learning.

Almost everything I learned was about how extraordinary a woman’s body and the process of birth are.

From conception to the delivery of the placenta, the body works for months without stopping, for a new life. Organs move, hormones change, the body changes, the mind changes. Meanwhile everyday life goes on; work gets done, decisions get made, fears get dealt with.

What’s more, mental health in pregnancy matters just as much as physical health.

The more I learned all this, the more my view of birth changed.

Now I haven’t just got used to the idea of being at the birth.

I can’t wait to witness it.

I already knew Elvin was strong

I had seen it when she faced her biggest fears.

I had seen it when she gave up smoking.

And when she stood up for herself against me, she reminded me that the beast inside her was right there.

But pregnancy and birth are something else.

Carrying months of physical and emotional change, living with uncertainty and getting on with your life while all of this is happening takes a truly great strength.

Call it creation if you like.

Call it Mother Nature if you like.

Or, if you like, just say “Wow!”

The one thing you can’t say is “You’re exaggerating.”

Because this is not something that can be exaggerated. I say it sincerely: a new life starting from a single cell and making its way to birth is an absolutely miraculous process.

I will never belittle it. And I’ll keep telling everyone around me about it at the top of my voice.

Now I’m waiting impatiently for labour to start.

I hope everything goes well. I hope we all carry on with our lives together in good health and enjoy this unique experience.

I can’t say I’m not afraid.

I am afraid, but it’s not the birth I’m afraid of…