Men, Love & Birth: the book about being present at birth that your pregnant lover wants you to read

First published by Pinter & Martin Ltd 2015

Text copyright © Mark Harris 2015

Illustrations copyright © Jon Lander 2015

Mark Harris has asserted his moral rights to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

Text in appendix 2 © Katie Whitehouse, reprinted by kind permission of the author

Photographs in appendix 2 © Kate Mount

All rights reserved

ISBN 978-1-78066-225-1
Also available as ebook

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade and otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form or binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Printed and bound in the UK by Ashford Colour Press Ltd, Gosport,
Hampshire

Pinter & Martin Ltd
6 Effra Parade London SW2 1PS

pinterandmartin.com

To my Gorgeeeeee
‘We found love in a hopeless place’

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

INTRODUCTION

1  BIRTH FROM AN EVOLUTIONARY PERSPECTIVE

2  EVOLUTION, LANGUAGE AND MEANING-MAKING

3  THE MASCULINE AND FEMININE DANCE OF BIRTH

4  A CONVERSATION WITH MEN

5  COFFEE BREAK: SEX IN PREGNANCY

6  THE CONVERSATION CONTINUES

7  BREASTFEEDING

THE LAST WORD

APPENDIX 1: EXERCISES

APPENDIX 2: MASSAGE TECHNIQUES

FURTHER READING AND RESOURCES

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

INDEX

FOREWORD

Men, Love & Birth is a unique contribution to the literature on contemporary childbirth because it speaks into the experience of tens of thousands of men who now accompany their partners for the labour and birth event. The expectation that male partners should be at the birth is almost routine in many high-income countries. And, like many other practices around childbirth, the benefits or disadvantages of this practice are unknown, at least from a research perspective. This is of little comfort to the many men who have trod this path, usually with some trepidation, as the expectation that they are there has become culturally embedded. At last there is a book written just for them, and no one is better qualified to write it than Mark Harris. He has the important advantage of seeing this experience from both sides of the fence – as a father of six children and as a midwife, working within the NHS for a number of years.

Mark’s style is direct, candid and self-disclosing, distilling an incredible breadth of reading and experience into punchy, accessible chapters that range over in-depth childbirth physiology through to love-making positions for pregnancy and of course labour and birth itself. Prepare to be amused, informed, challenged and moved by his self-deprecating anecdotes and colloquial language. Mark achieves the tricky balance of explaining complicated theories and ideas in a straightforward way and then offers practical tasks and exercises to apply them to real life. He draws on a range of theorists and theories in building an approach to birth that seeks to maximise women’s potential to birth safely and healthily. For most women, that will mean natural, normal birth. His midwifery lens shines through everything he writes and he is therefore able to demystify the terminology of labour that can obscure a fundamentally physiological process.

He introduces the concept of male and female energies that both men and women possess and describes how men can channel those energies for the benefit of their partner, illustrating this with lots of practical tips and advice. Building on his interactions with many men through his Birthing For Blokes website and workshops, he details a typical workshop discussion towards the end of the book that captures much of his teaching in extended conversational extracts.

This book is intended to help men engage in a positive way with an experience outside of their comfort zone that, let’s face it, has the potential to be upsetting for them and counterproductive for their partners. But by understanding the purpose behind evolutionary processes and how birth hormones work, we can change that dynamic so that it is exciting and rewarding for them and enabling for the one they love. It may even help to change the way we manage birth in the twenty-first century and rescue it from unnecessary medicalisation, something midwife researchers like me and my colleagues have been trying to address for decades.

Denis Walsh
Associate Professor in Midwifery
Nottingham University

INTRODUCTION

People always struggle to guess what I do for a living. I’ve won more than one round of drinks playing that game. When I finally reveal, three pints later, that I’m a midwife, people still don’t believe it.

It’s not much different when I’m at work. I walk into the birth room and the woman says, ‘I called the midwife, not security’, to which I reply, ‘I am the midwife’. She then shouts, ‘SECURITY’!

I do understand that response. Imagine your partner is in the throes of the birthing process, just about managing the intensity of the uterine tightenings, and in walks a 20 stone, shaven-headed, biker-looking bloke doing jazz hands. (I do my best not to do the hands thing, but it’s become a bit of a habit).

When I first started out as a student midwife, there were only 61 male midwives out of 36,000 in the whole of the UK. I remember standing at the foot of a woman’s bed, having been asked by my mentor to do my first vaginal examination. My mind was racing, and more than a little panicked, I thought, ‘Please, please let this not be the first time I stumble on the clitoris!’

I am often asked why I became a midwife, given how unusual it is for a man to do the job. I do come from a large family – five sisters and three brothers – and now I have six children and six grandchildren. Maybe this is what has created a love of pregnancy and birth in me? It does mean that my contraceptive advice is probably crap.

My sons grew up in a household where a man being a midwife was normal. In fact they wanted to be midwives like their dad until they realised that being a midwife was considered a ‘woman’s job’. Then, when their friends asked them what their dad did for a living, they would say, ‘Oh, nothing, he’s unemployed’.

My mother left an indelible mark on me: she gave birth to eight children with little medical help. After having her last child aged 46, she went on to adopt a child too. In many ways I have followed in her footsteps, gaining a deep faith in a woman’s inner power to give birth.

It’s impossible to underestimate the power of a mother and father’s influence on a young child’s developing personality. My mum teased me mercilessly about my weight. For as long as I can remember I have struggled to lose weight and have been self-conscious about my size. She used to say that my first school photograph was an aerial shot, and that she took me to school in a wheelbarrow. (A little harsh, methinks.)

Being a male midwife is one thing; looking like an extra from Gangs of New York is another. I did look after one woman, who once she had calmed down after the birth said to me that I looked like an actor. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘You know – it’s on the tip of my tongue.’ I was thinking, an overweight Vin Diesel? Or a plump Bruce Willis? Finally, she got it. ‘SHREK!’ she exclaimed.

My mental battle with size was brought into sharp focus when, not long after joining a new midwifery team, I was invited on one of those ‘Outward Bound’ team-building days. All the others had done their abseil down the side of a bridge. It was a long way down, and I was more than nervous. ‘Has that rope got a weight limit?’ I asked. ‘You’d get a minibus on this rope’, the weathered instructor said, encouragingly. By now I was properly scared, desperate to get out of doing it without losing face. ‘Have you ever had a minibus on it?’ I asked, wanting to keep the conversation going as long as I could. ‘Nope’, he said, ‘You’re the closest we’ve come’!

My weight has never stopped me from playing sports: cricket, football, rugby, and tennis, anything with a ball really. These skills have come in use at least once in my midwifery career. I was once looking after a woman having her seventh baby. She chose to birth standing up, a position that makes perfect sense from an anatomical and gravitational perspective, which makes birth easier.

Given it was her baby number seven (all born vaginally), she could probably have given birth while doing a handstand. She stood, rocked and then gave birth to her baby. He shot out and I had to dive to my left like a fielder in the slips to catch him. I resisted the urge to throw him in the air shouting ‘Howzat?!’

I have been registered as a midwife since 1994 and as a nurse since 1991. I love being around people and this has influenced the choices I have made in my professional life. In addition to my midwifery training I have trained and worked as a teacher in further education, hypnotherapist, NLP (neuro linguistic programme) trainer, outreach youth worker and nurse in a secure mental health rehab unit. I still work as a midwife, offering birth education through a programme called Birthing For Blokes^*. Work and play often merge for me.

Why did I decide to run birth preparation classes for men? I knew there was already at least one company providing education and birth preparation classes for men, and I was undecided about the benefits of it. I remember mentioning the idea on Facebook. One of my midwife friends felt very strongly that there was no need for it, and that any focus on a man in this context was time wasted. My time, she felt, would be better invested in being with the woman. She makes a good point, particularly when midwives in hospital are hard pressed to find the time to be intensely focused on a woman’s needs, and are pulled in many directions, often looking after more than one woman while also being asked to complete a never-ending pile of paperwork.

Nevertheless, I decided to run some experimental classes for men whose partners were pregnant. The more I thought about it, the more I felt there was something unique that I could offer these men. In over 20 years as a qualified midwife, my observations of how men respond to the intensity of the emotions in the birth room, generated by the hormones released into their bloodstream as birthing takes place, has taught me a lot. Being present at birth provokes a wide range of behaviour in men, from angry, confrontational shouting, to becoming withdrawn and playing games on a tablet.

The decision to start the Birthing For Blokes workshop sessions was profoundly influenced by the death of my wife of 20 years, Diane. She died from cancer on
19 March 2008, the day before my birthday. As I was registering her death I knew that my life would never be the same; I resolved then that I would only ever do work that I wanted to do, that I felt made a distinctive difference to the lives of others.

The day after my birthday I woke to a colourless world. My life had been ransacked. I was responsible for five children. Home-schooling, providing for them and doing my best to love enough for two people more than occupied my time. Through tears I remember how desperately bleak the future looked then, but bad as things were I knew they would get better. My new-found determination to share what I had learnt from my experiences of being around men as their lovers gave birth would give direction to my future plans.

I left my regular paying job in the NHS and started to work for myself. There was no money coming in unless I created it. I was afraid of not being able to pay direct debits, but amazingly liberated from that horrible feeling of not wanting to go to work, of dreading working with others who seemed so overwhelmingly bland and hamstrung by the way they had always thought. In the main the ‘caring types’ I have worked with over the years have meant well, but the demands of the organisations they work for, and the sheer volume of people they need to see, have worn them down.

I now ensure that all I do is completely down to choice. Of course I’ve always had a choice, it’s just never really felt like it. When the children started to arrive I always felt that I had to work, and leaving a job with nothing else to do was unthinkable. Yet looking back, some years on, surrounded by grandchildren and another beautiful child of my own, with a wonderful partner by my side, it’s hard to believe that life is so different.

I met Trez in a pub by accident. I was learning lines for a little theatre play I had been cast in, slowly getting drunk over my Guinness – which was probably the only reason I had the courage to ask for her number. I feel enormously grateful to have met a woman who knows me as she does, yet offers the kind of unconditional love that requires no change in me.

why have I written this book?

Having been a midwife for 20 years and a man for longer, I have experience that I know is useful. I have insights that will help both first-time fathers and those becoming fathers again. Being both a man and a midwife has helped me to realise that, as a man, I have to yield to a woman’s innate knowing when she births. The powerful dance of the feminine cannot be resisted; learning to dance with her is what this book is all about.

Blokes have often said to me, ‘I felt left out, I didn’t know what was going on, I felt powerless’. That feeling of not being able to do anything to protect your partner when she needs you most can be too much for many men. When the woman you love is crying out, as the intensity of the birthing process takes her close to the edge of panic, being told to ‘calm down’, or worse, ‘stay out of the way’, is guaranteed to generate huge amounts of adrenaline in you. This hormone has evolved over generations to create the energy for a ‘fight’, to equip you as a warrior, ready to protect your lover from predators. It can be difficult to handle in the modern-day birth context: the ‘predators’ you now need to protect her from are not wild beasts, but the feelings of fear that will slow the birthing process down.

I have found over the years that an understanding of how evolutionary forces have shaped our responses to the birthing process as human beings is often all we really need to help us discover the brilliance that lies inside ourselves as men, a brilliance that has been tried and tested over 200,000 years or so of human existence.

I hope to put the prospect of imminent fatherhood in the context of being a man, and explore how your presence at the birth of your child can be a rite of passage. Our culture has lost many of these ‘coming of age’ rituals, although they survive among indigenous groups elsewhere in the world. They can be powerful, almost theatrical ceremonies, in which boys become men. Women, of course, have physiologically in-built ‘rites of passage’: periods (girl–woman), and birth (woman–mother). But what ‘rites of passage’ do men have in modern society? Our voices break, we grow facial hair and we might play a few risky games on the PlayStation! Birth, for a bloke, can be a rite of passage too. When it is, a MAN does the fathering! It feels a little cheesy to talk about blokes becoming warriors. I don’t mean fighters, or violent types, I mean strong MEN who are able to manage life and fatherhood.

I love being a father. Watching my children grow, change and mature as they experience life is never boring and often exhilarating. Fatherhood, when built upon the warrior-like support you give the woman you love as she gives birth, provides a foundation of tender-hearted strength. A solid base helps build the kind of strength needed for good fathering to take place in the future.

who is this book for?

This is primarily a book for men who are about to become fathers. I want to prepare you by giving you an understanding of the environments that are truly supportive of ‘good birth’. I mean both a woman’s internal environment (a quiet mind), and her external environment, the place where she is to give birth (a quiet place).

Too many men I have been with in the birth room over the years have left it with mixed emotions. Often they feel very tired, both physically and mentally. Of course they are elated – witnessing the birth of your baby will be a profound experience – but these feelings of elation may be tempered by a sense of regret or shame at not being able to ‘do anything’ when the woman they loved seemed to need them most.

By reading this book and doing the exercises, both on your own and with your partner, you give yourself the best chance of being ready when the whirlwind of the birthing process takes hold of her. You will be able to create a safe space for her, so that she can ‘lose’ herself in the ancient rhythms of birth that have served birthing women for countless generations. Your task is to facilitate in her the development of a quiet mind, and in the external world a quiet place for the birth of your family to unfold. The rest of this book will help you discover the inner resources that you and your lover already possess.

Having read this book you will:

from Chapter 1

• Learn how evolution has worked to make you and your lover perfectly equipped to experience the birth of your baby.
• Achieve an understanding of what is happening to her throughout the birthing process. This wisdom will enable you to offer the support she needs when she needs it.
• Learn how your body works in the birth situation: this will give you a head start in managing your fight, flight or freeze response.
• Create an action plan of ways that you can create a quiet environment best suited for fantastic birth.

from Chapter 2

• Be reminded that men and women are different not just anatomically, but emotionally and spiritually.
• Begin to notice how all human beings have both masculine and feminine energy regardless of their gender, and how these energies are lived out on a day-to-day basis.
• Discover how knowing about the expression of feminine and masculine energy influences your relationship, your sex life and the kind of birth your lover will experience.
• Discover the power that is released in your life as you learn to become fully present to your lover as an expression of your masculine energy.
• Have a sense of how you being present as she gives birth can act as a kind of initiation ritual, becoming a powerful stimulus to being a father.
• Learn exercises that will lead you into this sense of presence at will, which will prepare you for being fully present as she gives birth.

from Chapter 3

• Have an understanding of how human beings are ‘meaning-making machines’.
• Learn a new model of communication, through which you can make sense of the world. The ways in which you construct internal mental maps, based on the five senses, which you use to make sense of the enormous amounts of raw data received every second.
• Know ways in which this new knowledge regarding communication can be applied to create a quiet mind in your lover.
• Have a new appreciation for the work that your unconscious mind, and your partner’s does to keep your bodies and lives working well, particularly during the birthing process.
• Have an appreciation of the limits of your conscious mind and the vast resources that your unconscious mind possesses.
• Learn exercises and practices that enable you to unleash the power of your unconscious mind, better enabling you to serve your pregnant lover and prepare you for fatherhood.
• Have an understanding of how language is learned and processed unconsciously and the power of language to direct our meaning-making and that of others.
• Be able to break the ‘curses and spells’ that health professionals unwittingly cast upon your pregnant lover, casting your own spells designed to create a quiet mind in her.

from Chapters 4, 5 & 6

• Have answers to some of the most important questions posed by your lover’s imminent birth. Talking about these choices and making decisions should be done long before the birthing process starts. Some of those questions might be:

  -Is home birth safe?

  -What can I do if we want a home birth but our doctor or midwife is saying no?

  -What is the best position for the baby to be in before the birthing process starts and how can you help to make that happen?

  -What causes the birthing process to start?

  -How do you know that the birthing process has started?

  -What are the stages of the birthing process, and how will you know she is progressing well?

  -How will you know your baby is well, before the birthing process starts and through the birthing process?

  -What do doctors mean when they say your partner is ‘overdue’?

  -What does ‘induction of labour’ mean? If it’s going to happen to your lover, how might it be done?

  -If your lover is finding the uterine tightenings difficult to manage, what is available to help her with them?

  -How can your partner use different postures and body positions to facilitate the birthing process?

from Chapter 7

• How breastfeeding works and why it is important.
• How you can support your partner effectively.
• Why your role is important.

______________

* birthing4blokes.com

1

BIRTH FROM AN EVOLUTIONARY PERSPECTIVE

Evolution is no slouch. We come from a long line of successfully birthing women! You and I are living proof that the birthing process works perfectly. If it didn’t, we wouldn’t be here. It’s that simple. Women have a 200,000-year history of birthing well; men have only been present at birth for about fifty of those years. Evolutionary biologists tell us that changes to biological systems take many, many generations: this means that we effectively have Stone Age bodies now living in the fast lane of modern life. Our physiological responses are ancient, and adapted to a different context than the one we find ourselves in today.

From an evolutionary point of view, and looking at the biological and hormonal adaptations of human beings, the part of the brain responsible for a woman birthing well is the limbic system. This part of the brain is a lot older than the neocortex and has many functions, but the ones of interest in our discussion are those responsible for ‘thinking’ and ‘meaning-making’: human beings are meaning-making machines. It’s the very act that marks us out as different from other animals. We can produce language and we have the ability to think about thinking.

The limbic system is the mammalian part of the brain. When a woman who is giving birth is able to lose herself in the work of this ancient system, which is responsible for the hormones that start and keep the birthing process going, and when the thinking work of the neocortex is turned off, she is simply a mammal birthing, an animal responding instinctively. No meaning-making (talking, thinking) is required to make the birth of her baby successful.

As Fritz Perls (1893–1970), a German-born psychiatrist and psychologist, said: she needs to ‘lose her mind and come to her sense’. Your job, as her lover, is to be fully present, and through your presence to create a safe space in which she can truly let go. The next chapter will talk more about this.