If 'special care' isn't required, we move instead to the female stronghold that is the maternity ward. You thought you felt uncomfortable and out of place in the delivery room? Think again. Compared to the maternity ward, the delivery room was like an old man's pub just before closing time. Though at least partly responsible for making these bright new babies, the few males who pass through the swing doors are given filthy glares by nurses, mothers, grandmothers and all the other 793 unidentifiable female relatives of someone or other who are milling around slightly menacingly.
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| How To Choose Baby Names Based On Numerology |
As I understand it, it's because they think we are going to stay five minutes and then run away, whereas what they'd like us to do is hang around for four hours cooing at the baby, fetching people cups of tea and telling the female relatives how much weight they have lost. But, of course, we stay five minutes and then run away, because the atmosphere there is so intimidating. Another chicken-and-egg argument. Somewhere in all this, of course, are your partner and your baby, but they may both be too out of it to care.
40 or so years ago, when I was born, my mother stayed in hospital for three weeks convalescing, even though there was nothing wrong with her. Nowadays the shortage of maternity beds is so fierce, and the chances of catching superbugs so high, that in some hospitals they have barely delivered the baby before they are giving you directions to the bus stop. Twenty-four hours of in-hospital care is fairly standard, 48 hours a miraculous gift from a generous management.
There's one obvious advantage to all this rush and bluster, which is that mother and baby will ingest the absolute minimum amount of hospital food. But the quick turnaround does place a lot of pressure on Exhausted New Dad. You may have had it in mind to go home and get 20 hours' sleep to make up for all the stresses of the past few days. In addition, you may have heard of the legend of Wetting The Baby's Head, which requires father to go to the pub with his friends who will buy him drinks for as long as he promises never to show them the video footage of the birth.
Sleep, then drink; or drink, then sleep; either would be just about perfect. And both are impossible. The twenty-first-century hospital birth allows no time for anything. Before you can think of a good reason to object, you will be driving them back to the sty of your home, hoping that your partner, whose stitches may still be a bit tender, doesn't hemorrhage all over the back seat of the car. Don't laugh: I'm told the stains are impossible to get out.
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They will ask you how much it weighs, whether the labour was long or short, how the mother is doing, does it have your eyes. And then, almost as an afterthought, they will ask the killer question. 'Have you thought of any name yet.?'
My, have you thought of some names yet.
While the baby is still born, most parents will give it a temporary name, which may or may not be a joke. Two good friends of mine threatened throughout their pregnancy to burden their forthcoming daughter with the name 'Yoda', partly to amuse their friends but mainly to annoy their parents. They called her something else in the end, of course.
Even so, in my four-year-old's class at kindergarten, there was a Luke, there was an Obe (pronounced Obi) and there was a Lya (nearly pronounced Leia). I suggested changing our daughter's name to Grand Moff Tarkin to help her to fit in better. For strange things have happened to children's names over the past few years. Blame the parents of Kylie Minogue, of Beyonce Knowles, and of all those actors called Ethan.
For a while I suspected that it was a London thing, and that elsewhere in the country parents were still calling their little ones sensible things like John and Susan. But no. Given the freedom to choose anything, parents have started to choose anything, whether it is a recognized name or not. To find out more, you can check out How To Choose Baby Names Based On Numerology.