Having a baby is a process in which a woman, her baby and the people who care for the woman are actively involved so that everything goes well. And when the delivery is by caesarean section, too.
The great forgotten, for obvious reasons, are husbands, couples, who come to accompany the woman to support her in the process and to see her children born. That's why almost nobody usually asks them how they are, or what they have felt. And there is a type of birth that affects many people greatly: when you have a caesarean section that you did not expect and you are left alone without knowing what happens.
Men also cry ... and we suffer
You know, we are all very brave and very macho because they have educated us like that, but when it comes to entering a hospital, there are many who have anxiety and even feel as if the knees lost strength. Yes, men also cry, more would be missing, and yes, we also suffer.
I confess that the first time a man told me how bad it had been in his wife's delivery, I was a little surprised. But, if she gives birth is her! I thought. The one who has the most right to suffer, complain and cry is she, who loses control over her birth and suddenly does not stop, but "stop her".
However, I soon understood. I am a nurse. I have seen many things because I worked for a long time in the ambulances of my city, attending emergencies. I've seen quite a few things in the hospital, and… well, the fact of caring for people in a state of anxiety and suffering makes you more able to have temper when you're in that world, as a patient or companion.
But this work of a health service has not been experienced by most men, but only a minority. And there are those who can't stand getting a vaccine, drawing blood or just seeing a needle, or a procedure that is unknown.
Yes, there are women like that and they give birth the same way, but men live it in the third person, and they trust that everything will be fine until someone tells them: "We have to do a C-section. Now. Wait here. , please".
Those minutes that look like hours
It happened to me with the first one. We were young. She was young. The baby weighed little, was not very large and the pregnancy went perfectly. Nothing made us think that everything would end in caesarean section. And yet it ended.
"Look, there has been a problem. The baby is doing bradycardia, so we suspect he may have a cord twist. We're going to have a C-section already ... Wait here, please. Quiet ..." Y it is enough that a person in a white coat says "calm" to stop being.
And I got along pretty well, if necessary. I was nervous, of course, but I waited patiently. Other men, on the other hand, suffer much more. Fear, anxiety, the uncertainty of not knowing what the real risk is, what the emergency, if the couple will leave your partner with your baby, or only one of the two, or ... yes, it sounds exaggerated, it happens very rarely, but it happens . And these things happen in hospitals, which is precisely where they are.
They're minutes. It's not too long really, but enough to suffer for the person with whom one day you decided to share your life and by that little person that you have been waiting for nine months to love without conditions, even though you haven't met her yet.
Enough to start thinking that something is wrong, to think that nobody tells you anything and to think that, when I tell you that you want another baby, you will tell him that you are going to think about it very much.
And even tears, when you finally see that everything went well
Because the tears if something goes wrong are logical, but many end up crying when they receive the news that "now you can see your baby for a moment ... everything went well." Thanking that person, the ceiling of the room, the God who believes or perhaps not and the stars that must have been conjugated to make it happen. And finally to her, for having succeeded, for being as strong as they doubt being able to be.
And then the protagonists are them, of course: mom and baby. And parents stay with that content suffering. Sometimes they tell it, they release it: "how bad I've had it". But sometimes they keep quiet because they don't feel it is fair to talk about their suffering, compared to what they may have felt.
And how to help them?
The first, preventing the father from being left alone, but this is not our business, but the hospitals, which should include in their protocols the accompaniment of couples in case of caesarean section.
And once it has already happened, well counting on them a little too, if the delivery has been like to feel fear. What usually helps are two very simple things to do and that very few people do: ask and listen. Well, three things really: ask, listen and not judge.
- Ask how is he, how he lived it, what he felt, in case one of those says that "uff, I have been left alone and I did not know what was happening ... I had a terrible time", which may lead to ask a little more: " Do you want to talk about it? ", In case it seems important enough to do so.
- Hear, because if they start talking, the logical thing and what helps is to listen to what they tell you, not to cut them off and do an exercise of understanding and empathy: what we know as active listening.
- Not judge, which is a summary of what many of us do: to give the judgment of "it is not so much", "well, but it is already", "bah, but if it went well, man", "well, I know one who it happened much worse "and avoid the advice" come, forget it, that it has been nothing ", but rather stay with a" well, if there is anything I can do for you, tell me, really ... and if at another time you want to return to talk about it, you know where I am. "
Why it is they who overcome it over time and as they talk to family, friends, partners and their baby. Yes, with him too, because when they take it, they hold it gently and finally look him in the eyes and feel his warmth they say "oh, how bad you made it happen to me, but how glad I am that you are here".
Photos | iStock
In Babies and more | The role of the father in childbirth: the mother and the baby need you, The presence of some parents in childbirth could make the woman feel more pain, Dad, so your wife is accompanied in childbirth
