My own first thoughts were 'Fuck! It's a baby!' God knows what I had thought had been in there all this time. Then, because my girlfriend had had pethidine, it turned out that the baby wasn't breathing. The next six seconds were the worst of my life. My girlfriend knew nothing about it, which was just as well.
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| Wonder Of Babies |
But I could see the baby being taken to the resuscitation machine in the comer and brought back to life: efficiently, without panic, skilfully. I just stood there and watched it, unable to react or, indeed, breathe. Four ... five ... six seconds, and then the baby inhaled a gobful of glorious hospital air. And so did I.
CUTTING THE CORD
They will ask you if you want to do this: it's traditional. Many men are delighted to do so. I didn't want to; I can't really tell you why. Possibly; I realized that I had had so little to do with the birth that it seemed little more than a token gesture: The One Thing The Dad Does. But then, I had just experienced the worst six seconds of my life. It was all a bit much. So I said no.
But it's more than symbolic. For nine months the umbilical cord has fed and nurtured the growing foetus. (It is tougher and more gristly than you might expect.) Its length can vary prodigiously - from seven inches to 48 inches. No one knows why. (The average is about 20 inches.)
In some tribal societies the cord was believed to have magical properties. It was often ceremonially eaten, or carried as a lucky charm, or buried, or placed in a tree. In some cultures it was carefully preserved and then ritually entombed with its owner when he or she died.
We just throw it in the bin. The foetus is now a baby and out here with us. In a few months it will be able to smile, and not long afterwards it will be able to operate the remote control. So cut the cord if you want to: it is a significant moment. And with one bound the baby was free.
BABY
Blimey. Who's this little person, then?
It's different for everyone. The hippopotamus gives birth underwater. The immediate thing a newborn hippo does is float to the surface and take its first breath of air. The giraffe gives birth standing up. Out comes the baby giraffe, and falls six feet to the ground. A meadow vole is ready to reproduce only 25 days after it is born. It has anything up to 17 litters a year, each of up to eight young.
Humans generally have it much easier, although not always. Gorgias of Epirus was born during the funeral of his mother. The pallbearers heard crying in the coffin. They opened it up to find young Gorgias, who had slipped out of the womb and was not just alive but thoroughly cheesed off.
In 1939, Miss Lima Medina, aged five years, eight months, gave birth to a healthy baby in Lima, Peru. In Alexandria, Virginia, USA in 1969, an unnamed ten-year-old girl gave birth to a healthy baby boy.
Of multiple births, many strange tales are told. A German liner called Grosser Kurfurst sailed from Bremen to New York in 1906. On the voyage, three women gave birth. The woman in first class had one baby, the woman in second class had twins, the woman in third class had triplets. Between 1849 and 1957 anyone who gave birth to triplets in England was entitled to a payment from the Crown of £3.
Of carnivores and primates, the hyena is the only animal other than man not to have a penis bone. A gorilla's penis, when erect, is just two inches long. A spider's penis is at the end of one of its legs. A flatworm's penis comes out of its mouth. It has spikes on it.
Koala bears, as we know, eat eucalyptus leaves. Baby koalas are weaned on a eucalyptus leaf soup that comes out of the mother's anus. To find out more, you can check out Wonder Of Babies.