Any fathers or fathers-to-be who have sat through the ritual of antenatal classes should be well versed in the litany of dos and don’ts we are expected to observe in the final crucial hours leading up to the birth. Do be patient and understanding. Don’t get in the way of the midwife. Do be prepared to offer lots of backrubs and massages. Don’t pop to the pub for a couple of hours to watch the match, that kind of thing. I don’t recall anyone telling me not to live blog the whole messy business to 2.3 million Twitter followers, but then I’m not Robbie Williams.
Over the course of 24 hours yesterday, Williams shared about a dozen photos and videos, mostly about 20 seconds long, of him and his wife, the actor Ayda Field, goofing around in the delivery suite. The eighth and final video shows the two of them happily and proudly announcing the birth of their second child, as yet unnamed, but a healthy 8lb 2oz boy.
It is probably fair to say the consensus of social media and internet comments has not been especially kind to the Take That star. It may be true that if you or I were about to give birth, we wouldn’t want professional cheeky chappy manchild Robbie Williams gurning at the bedside and hamming up songs from Frozen through our contractions. But the simple fact is that you and I are not married to professional cheeky chappy manchild Robbie Williams in the first place. I can only presume that Ayda feels rather differently about him.
People have widely varied experiences of childbirth, it can of course be traumatic and dangerous for many women and emotionally and psychologically draining for their partners. However, for those of us who were lucky enough to have relatively straightforward and trauma-free labours, it can be not only the most joyous day of one’s life, but frankly one of the strangest. When else would a couple spend 12, 24, 36 hours or maybe even longer in a room together, holding hands, chatting, gazing into one another’s eyes? When recalling childbirth, male partners tend to talk about the final stages – the bit with crushed knuckles, enough exploding gore for a Tarantino movie and the vocabulary to match – followed by that glorious serene moment of holding a newborn baby in your arms.
People tend not to talk about the interminable hanging around beforehand.
What do you do in those dilated hours? You laugh. You joke. You sing. You lark about. You play Scrabble (well we did. She bloody beat me too, despite being distracted every seven and a half minutes by agonising contractions squeezing the internal organs of her body like they were in a nutcracker. She’s competitive like that). You take a few photos. I do not doubt that if we’d had smartphones and Twitter when our sprogs were hatching we would have shared them with the world.
Basically you do whatever you fancy to pass the time, distract yourself from the fear and worry and enjoy every memorable moment of the most special day of your life. In that respect, the presence of a clowning male partner and a discreet cameraphone would appear to me far less problematic than the current vogue for recruiting a professional photographer to come into the delivery suite with a telephoto lens and a tripod but hey, each to their own.
Ayda appeared to be having as good a time as could be expected under the circumstances, not despite the camera in the room, but in some small part because of it. Live-tweeting a birth might not be everyone’s cup of tea with a slice of toast, but it appears to have worked for Ayda and Robbie. And for that they deserve not our contempt or our condescension, but our congratulations.
