Fathers and feet

Carl and I spent a good deal of time in the car yesterday on the way back to Ottawa talking about how he's experiencing the team at Mt. Sinai, and especially the psychiatric appointment. He talked to one of his coworkers too, who's an expectant dad, and it's increasingly clear that the dads are given one message: support your wife (emotionally, financially).

I suppose this is related to a degree of reality - lots of men probably need to hear that - but it's kind of awful. I said to Carl if he felt like keeping a journal maybe it would be helpful if we ever wanted to do something about that as a team, or if he wanted to as an individual.

For us I think it's unusually stark because we both lost Emily; it wasn't about who can breastfeed or not, but two of us having more or less the same parental experience. And in fact, in "caregiving hours" Carl was with Emily more, because he went with her to Sick Kids that first day and I did not, I stayed at East General.

In many ways Carl was in the harder position in labour - not physically or perhaps in terms of fear, but because as the person who wasn't flat on their back, he carries more guilt about not asking more questions and being more demanding. And he could use some support in doing that this time, and so far it's not forthcoming. I might find a way to ask about it. He won't; he said the lesson to him is that he's on his own, and being Carl, that would be the lesson all right.

So I'm annoyed on behalf of my husband. What's more I know that I won't be able to support him during the labour. Labour is all-consuming; once that baby starts to move there is nothing else to the universe but getting the baby out - and that's how it needs to be.

We'll have to work something out. What, though, I don't know.

Talking about the labour, and also tasting the disappointment around the supports that I kind of feel we were offered but didn't entirely deliver, now has me scared again. I was feeling confident in this hospital but now I'm less so, and now I'm back to thinking about a c-section because at least there you go in, get hooked up to things, and then it just happens. But I don't know. I'll have to think about it a bit more I guess.

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This morning on Baby Stories they did have a couple who had lost their first child at delivery and it was interesting. They seemed to handle the labour okay, but a few days after they took their newborn to the gravesite of their first child and were really upset. I was glad to see someone in what will hopefully be our circumstances (hopefully about the healthy newborn).

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I believe I've seen witch baby's feet sticking out of me. They're small but foot-shaped and it hurts. And I don't care. Our nurse called movement communication and it's true; we communicate through my body. Even if everything were to go horrifically wrong, again, here is a moment of life, somehow: feet and skin and belly.

Next appointment we may learn whether we have a warlock or a witch.