Well, yes, according to Michael Odent, a leading obstetrician. He also reckons men’s presence in the delivery room can lead to caesareans, marriage break-ups and mental illness.

Apparently if your bloke’s in the room wiuth you, his anxiety and stress (oh! Diddums!) can osmose into you – and your labour could be longer and loads more painful as a result.

But what about sharing the beautiful moments of joy as your baby is born? What about men trying to be useful in some way (ie being a human punching bag, for instance) to women in labour?

According to Odent, “the ideal birth environment involves no men in general.” Read the article here and tell us what you think!

Photo: MomLogic

Do you remember seeing this on What’s Good For You on Channel Nine? Nup, we must’ve missed it, too – but not this time!

Starting out with the provocative statement that research shows men can stand a lot more pain than women, a doctor begins an experiment in gender bending that makes for a pretty enjoyable watch.

Using electrodes that simulate contractions (whose accuracy is vouched for by a mother of four), the father of twins sets out to see if he can withstand the pain of childbirth. Two hours in, he couldn’t care less about which gender can withstand more pain. And even assuming these contractions are realistic, this man’s “birth” experience is clearly nothing like the real thing, which could only be posted on YouTube at the risk of an obscenity trial.

Still, it’s kind of fun to see how the experiment ends.

So, do you know of any men who’d willingly experience simulated contractions? On camera?

As for how she got here? I can thank Anna Wintour.

Resigned to being overdue, I made plans to see Vogue documentary The September Issue at the movies at midday, secretly hoping that I’d jinx myself into labour. Sure enough, 15 minutes in to the movie, just as Paris Fashion Week was in full swing, I clocked the light contractions I’d had all morning at 6 minutes apart. The regularity convinced me that this could indeed be ‘it’ so I figured I needed to leave while I could still drive home, so rang my husband and had him meet me back at the house.

At home, I practised a few techniques from Active Birth to get me through the increasingly strong back contractions. Vocalisation (”Ahhhh”) worked well, stamping and bouncing on a fitball not so much. Just like my son’s posterior labour I found the greatest relief under a scalding hot shower by candlelight. Strangely, contractions usually came on when S. wasn’t in the room, giving credence to Michael Odent’s recent theories on men and labour.

Once the contractions were four minutes apart, I called the birth centre and asked if I should come in. The midwife’s advice was to hold out until either I couldn’t take the pain anymore or I ran out of hot water. Whatever came first.

I held out for another hour or so in the bathroom before the faint promise of pain relief became an overwhelming need. So at about 7.30pm we headed off to the hospital, me screaming through two contractions in the front seat and again out the front of the hospital. I think i may have frightened some small children…

At the birth centre I was examined and found to be 4-5cm dilated – promising, but I still thought I had a long wait ahead, based on my last labour which was about 17 hours long.

But back under the blissful double hot water jets, The frequency and force of the contractions, which had slowed as my body adjusted to the new environment, kicked back in with great intensity. I summoned for the gas and clamped down on the hose like a demented animal.

The next hour and a half was quite a blur of shouting, sucking on gas and sobbing as the contractions started to come right on top of each other. I frequently told my partner that I couldn’t do it anymore, he responded each time that I was doing it and that she’d be here soon. I felt really strong baby movements and could actually physically see my stomach distorting as she changed positions from posterior. No natural “pain management technique” was useful anymore, all I could do was hang in there for dear life.

The next thing I knew, the new shift Midwife, Sue, had me on my back in the bath and my waters broke. She took my crack pipe gas hose away said that if I felt like pushing, to go right ahead.

Woah, steady on! I was only just getting my breath back from going through transition. I announced that I was not ready to push and wanted to get out of the bath. Intense emotions are common at this stage of labour and in my case I was shaking and in denial. Sue and my husband kept up the encouragement and sure enough, the next contraction (thankfully these were not as fast and painful as the earlier ones) were accompanied by the urge to ‘bear down’. Having had an epidural with my son the feeling was unusual and scared the crap out of me.

Within only two rounds of pushing, her head was ready to crown. Terrified, but overwhelmed now by the incredible, primal urge running through me I bore down several times in quick succession and several excruciating seconds later the worst was over and her head was out. All too quickly I was being told to give just a couple of small pushes and she slid out, scooped out of the water by Sue and placed in my arms. Squealing ‘my baby, my baby!’ it was a moment of utter joy as Shane and I held our beautiful screaming girl for the first time. I felt the flood of oxytocin that I’d only read about and all pain was forgotten as I cradled her. Here is the magic moment.

It was 10.30pm, only 12 hours since I’d gone into early labour. The midwives marvelled at her size and the skipping-rope length umbilical cord. At 4.33kg she was almost half a kilo bigger than my son who was born 10 days later in gestation, with the same big head size of 37cm (yes, I needed stitches, lots of them, let’s not talk about it.)

The next couple of hours were idyllic as the placenta was delivered without incident and we were left alone in the home-like confines of the birth centre for skin-to-skin bonding time and a brilliant first breastfeed, after which Lucinda fell into a massive seven hour sleep.

I couldn’t believe how amazing I felt after a natural birth. Too wired to stay in bed, I woke at 5am, put on lip gloss, made some toast and read Grazia magazine while my new family slept. Such a civilised way to recover post-birth.

The exhaustion has caught up with me a few days later, but now that I’m home after a short hospital stay I can sit on my own couch, eat chocolates and take endless photos of Lucie. We’re getting the hang of the whole feeding thing, her brother is getting used to not being the centre of the universe anymore (anyone got any tips on sibling jealousy?) and I’m remarking at how it is indeed possible to function on only 4 hours of broken sleep a night.

Thanks for following my journey to this point and I wish all my pregnant readers the best of luck with their own births and baby moons. So, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go take a nap.

To say that such a long pre-labour is frustrating is an understatement. But now that I’m due tomorrow, I know that the end is in sight (well, no more than two weeks away). My son was born at 42 weeks so I’m under no illusion that due dates mean anything.

The other benefit of being due this week is that now when random strangers tell me that I look ready to pop, I can actually reply, “yes.. any day now” instead of  ”err… I’m actually about two months away”.

The texts and emails have started, and if I don’t update my Facebook status daily you can be sure there’ll be a query on my wall. It’s nice that people are interested, even if I feel like screaming SHE’S NOT HERE YET at the top of my lungs.

Among the advice I’ve been given to bring on labour this week have been the following:

- Bumpy bus ride

- Long walk followed by a curry

- Sex (semen contains prostaglandins which induce labour, apparently)

- Nipple stimulation

- Fresh pineapple

- Fancy restaurant reservation or hair appointment (acts as a jinx)

- Acupuncture/chiropathy/Bowen therapy

- Castor oil (did that last time, disgusting and ineffective)

- Brazilian waxing (ouch!)

But really, unless I’m staring a medical induction in the face I think I’ll stick to my regime of chilling out, nanna naps and life uninterrupted by a three-hourly feeding schedule for as long as I can.

Tell me – how did you bring on your labour?

But leading UK obstetrician Michel Odent says we might be doing the wrong thing by expecting men to be the key support person during a woman’s labour.

Writing for the Sunday Telegraph, Odent said:

Having been involved in childbirth for 50 years and having been in charge of 15,000 births, I feel it’s time to state what I – and many midwives and obstetricians – privately consider the obvious: that there’s little good to come, for either sex, from having a man at the birth of a child. I’m convinced that the participation of fathers is one of the main reasons for long and difficult labours.

He claims there are psychological reasons for this, such as the need for women to switch into “primal” mode, which men may interrupt by chattering away and asking annoying questions. Another reason is that the father’s release of the stress hormone adrenalin as he watches his partner labour may cause her anxiety and prevent her relaxing, as stress hormones are able to be “felt”.

Odent claims that he has been with many women as they struggled to give birth, with their partner at their side. The moment the partner leaves the room, the baby arrives.

Hmm. It’s all quite interesting and I agree that anyone who is not a help in labour is a hindrance. Yet I have many friends who had a fabulous birth support person in their male partners and I couldn’t fault my own husband at all (even if he did look a little green when they pushed in the epidural needle.)

The other issue I have with the article is that I don’t see how a male obstetrician, or random midwives who the  labouring woman does not know really well, would be any different from a trusted, loving partner when it coems to distracting a woman and slowing down her labour through fear and mistrust.

What I am going to take from this article is an increased desire to be the boss of my own birthing suite. Did your partner attend your birth? Would you have him or her there again?

Dear Just,

Women do have non-medicated births in hospitals. They really do. It happens. It’s happened to people we know. It’s happened to people we know who had hard labors, back labors, long labors, hellish inductions and lousy labor support. So it’s not impossible.

But going to the hospital and not taking the epidural can be like going to a pizza place on a low-carb diet. It can be frustrating. As one woman we know put it, “the only way I won’t get an epidural is to be far the f*ck away from it.” This is one reason women who are adamant about avoiding medication plan to give birth at home or in birthing centers where epidurals are not available.

The epidural is the hospital’s big offering when it comes to pain relief. When the agony kicks in, the resident will probably not suggest changing positions, massage your lower back and offer gentle encouragement. There probably will not be a tub. Unless you brought a birthing ball, you won’t have one to rock on. And the foetal monitor will likely be strapped around you for some period of time, limiting your ability to lean or sway or rock through contractions. But you will be offered medication. Probably more than once. The hospital staff wants to help, after all. And they all see, time after time, the relief on their patients’ faces when the drugs kick in.

What they don’t see a tonne of is a supported non-medicated birth. So, if you want that kind of experience you need to bring your own alternate labor strategies. These can include a really good labor doula, a supportive and knowledgeable partner, an understanding of and trust in birth (including the part about it hurting like hell) and whatever other tools for relaxing and focusing you may have gleaned from books, classes, or anywhere else. If you do birth in a hospital and definitely don’t want meds, stay at home until you are clearly in active labor. The later you get there, the less time there is to consider various interventions.

This is ultimately your choice. The hospital can’t force you to get an epidural. In fact, you’ll have to sign a consent form to have one. If you don’t want it, you don’t want it. The women who get epidurals get them because they want them — whether that was in the original birth plan or not.

We’re all about the real deal when it comes to what to expect. So we can see why your friends are giving you this “just face it” rap. It can be very disappointing to spend nine months mindfully meditating on your glorious drug-free birth and then come up against an environment that is not conducive to your plans. Being set up to fail is not good for anyone.

What is incredibly important is to remember that there is no failing here.

Your ideas about your birth before the fact are real and important. They’re also happening before you enter an unpredictable experience. So we urge you to be open to whatever means of coping seems right to when you get there. Meds are one of many tools for dealing with pain in labor. Learn what your options are and then do what you need to do at the time, whether or not it was what you had in mind in advance. Trust yourself: you’ll make the best decision you can based on the birth you get and what tools are available to you.

Have a question? Email parentaladvisory@babble.com.au. Questions submitted may be used for publication.

Epidurals as a gateway to child neglect?

Dr. Denis Walsh, a senior midwife and associate professor in midwifery at Nottingham University, writes in an article for the journal Evidence Based Midwifery, published by the Royal College of Midwives, that labor pain is purposeful and prepares “a mother for the responsibility of nurturing a newborn baby.”

Of course this guy’s full of shit and here’s what bugs me: his miscalculation in equating the amount of pain endured with the quality of parenting discredits his other points — many of which are actually true. He thinks women should be better prepared for the pain of labour and that hospitals should be better equipped to help labouring women. He also thinks how childbirth is depicted in pop culture is scaring women away from non-medicated births and that normal, non-interventive birth, is in danger of no longer being possible.

But he’s blaming women for being too wimpy to abstain from pain relief, rather than a system that steers women toward epidurals and doesn’t fully and predictably support women who want to attempt birth without.

I know plenty of women who wanted to do a trial of labour without getting the epidural. They took childbirth classes, came up with techniques, got their partners on board, all of it. But for one reason or another — usually an induction but also being forbidden from moving around, the inability to really change positions, unsupportive nurses, too many internal exams — they wound up with the epidural. These women weren’t wimping out. And they knew a bullshit birth scene in the movies when they saw one.

But they got the epidural because, based on Syntocinon or hospital protocol or being surrounded by scared or unsupportive people, they were experiencing pain the human body wasn’t equipped to help them endure.

Dr. Walsh’s mentality — that how a woman laboured and gave birth says something about how much or how well she loves her kids– only makes everybody really defensive and, anyway, is just an opinion. Where’s the study that shows epidurals are a gateway to neglect?

And what does equating pain-free labours with responsibility for a child say about mums who adopted, fathers and step-parents? They should probably go shut their pinky fingers in a car door just to be in the game of good parenting.

Photo: i.ehow.com

But according to a LilSugar survey this week, only sixty-three percent of women are adament that dad be there for the big moment. I’m not sure if the other thirty-seven are just aware their partners might have extenuating circumstances or really don’t want them there at all.

I think most of us are well aware it’s not always POSSIBLE for your partner to be there. Life gets in the way. Or in the case of a lot of military families these days, an ocean.

But as the days got closer to my due date, if my husband dared put his office phone on “Do Not Disturb” to get some work done, he got a ration of ranting out of me. He wasn’t overseas, but I was terrified he’d be anywhere BUT the hospital when it was time.

In the end, he was there, and he barely left my side for fear that he’d miss something. I would have been pretty P-O’d had he chosen some place else to be, but he wanted to be there – this was his moment too.

So I wonder – other than those moments when life just makes it impossible – how a guy could want to be anywhere else, or a woman NOT want him there? It’s definitely not THE best day of your life, but it’s right up there as one of the most important.

Would you have given him an out ladies? Dads, would you have wanted one?

Source: LilSugar

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But what’s a first in sameness for British doctors is their time of birth — it, too, is exactly the same: 4:31 p.m.

The girls were born only 10 seconds apart.

When I first read the headlines, I had visions of that ping-pong ball scene in (NSFW!) Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Pow! Pow! The babies are here!

The Down girls were, however, born via c-section. Still, there’s usually a two-minute lag between the time the first baby comes into the world and the second. It’s unclear why there was such a rush in this case, but it’s the first time in Britain that twins have the same recorded birth time.

A spokesperson forthe Multiple Births Association confirmed the uniqueness of surrounding this birth.

“Usually twins born by caesarean section are around two minutes apart. Them being exactly the same weight is no more unusual then two single babies of exactly the same weight, but it doesn’t happen often. “But at the same time too is not something we have heard of before.”

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Photo: Telegraph.co.uk