In the corner

There's a version of this story where I tell you about the miracle of birth, the overwhelming rush of becoming a dad for the first time, and how I cried happy tears the moment my daughter arrived.

That version is true. But it's not the whole truth.

Jodie has written about all four of our children's births with an honesty and courage that I genuinely don't think I could match. She goes to the places that are uncomfortable to visit and she stays there long enough to tell you exactly what it felt like. Reading them back, I am in all four of those stories — the gas and air moment, the green face, the phone calls — but always at the edges. Supporting cast.

Which is, if I'm honest, exactly where I was.

When Mollie arrived — our first — I walked into that labour ward carrying more than I knew what to do with. Three months earlier, I'd lost my dad. He was gone before any of us had a chance to process it. I hadn't really dealt with it. There hadn't been time, and honestly I'm not sure I knew how.

On top of that, I had been out of hospital for four weeks myself. Seven operations in five years. My body was still finding its feet. Scarred mentally and physically.

And now here we were. First time parents. No real idea what was coming. A few antenatal sessions under our belt and absolutely zero experience. Not for me anyway, Jodie had experience of looking after her little brother. Looking back we were pretty young to be going through this. Married at twenty-three, dad at twenty-four, I’m sure we will come to that at a later date.

I didn't tell Jodie any of that mattered. Because it didn't. Not in that room, not at that moment. She was the one doing something extraordinary and painful and frightening, and my job was simple even if it wasn't easy: be there. Be steady. Be whatever she needed.

So I folded everything else up and put it in my pocket. I'll deal with it another time.

I think that's a male trait, if I'm being honest. Not wanting to burden the people around you when you know they've got their own weight to carry. So you manage yours quietly. You reach for a joke when the silence gets too heavy — hence the gas and air incident that Jodie has never quite let me forget — and you keep your face calm even when your insides are doing something altogether different.

It's not bravery. It's not even a conscious decision most of the time. It's just what the situation requires, so you do it.

What nobody really talks about is what's going on underneath all of that. Because in that room, watching Jodie go through something I could not take away from her, my brain was doing something I felt guilty about for a long time afterwards.

I wasn't thinking about the baby.

I mean — I was. Of course I was. But underneath everything, the only thing that really mattered to me was that Jodie was going to be okay. When the doctors came in and the atmosphere shifted and faces became serious, every worst case scenario played out in my head and none of them were about our child. They were about her. Because I already loved someone in that room, and she was suffering, and I couldn't do a single useful thing about it.

I felt awful about that for years. Like I'd failed some basic test of fatherhood before I'd even started.

I don't feel that way any more. I think it makes complete sense. But I wished someone had told me it was normal.

When Mollie finally arrived — all the chaos and the bright lights and the five people at the end of the bed — there was a moment where everything just stopped.

A warm wave hit me. That's the only way I can describe it. Like I suddenly understood that from this second, life would be different forever, and that was not a frightening thing but the most brilliant thing. An elation I'd never felt before and haven't felt since, except the three more times when her siblings were born. The fear stepped back for just a moment and I was completely, utterly present. She was here. She was ours. The most important thing in my life had just arrived, and I was holding her.

And then almost immediately, my first thought was that I wanted to ring my dad. But obviously I couldn't.

So I rang my mom instead, who'd stayed overnight at my sister's to be closer to us, waiting for the call. It was wonderful and heartbreaking at the same time. The biggest moments in life have a habit of being both things at once.

I've thought about that early morning a lot over the years. About standing in that room carrying grief and fear and someone else's pain, and finding that on the other side of all of it was the greatest moment of my life. The relief that it was over. That a new chapter could start. That we could put the past few months behind us a little bit.

Nobody covers that in the antenatal classes. That becoming a dad doesn't happen in a bubble. It happens right in the middle of your actual life, whatever state that life happens to be in at the time. With all its mess and loss and unfinished business sitting in your pocket.

Life and death arrived within weeks of each other that year. I stood right in the middle of it and didn't really have the words for what that felt like.

I'm not sure I fully do now.

But I came out the other side, a dad.

Quietly holding everything, as usual.

Completely and utterly changed.