Could your man handle the pain of childbirth? Photo / Thinkstock
Could your man handle the pain of childbirth? Photo / Thinkstock
This pain in my stomach is so extreme it doesn't seem right to call it pain. It's far beyond anything that I've ever experienced.
It's all-consuming, searing and intense, I'm exhausted by the sheer effort of enduring it. It's as though I'm no longer myself: my body's sole purpose is to cope with wave after wave of agony as the contractions come thick and fast. It's hard to take.
Especially because I'm a man, and what I'm experiencing is the pain of giving birth.
At home one night with my partner, Jenny, and our six-month-old son, Leo, we had reminisced about Jenny's labour.
"The worst thing was having to stay in hospital for 24 hours after he was born," I said, remembering my sleepless night on a plastic chair. As the words left my lips, I realised my mistake. "You think that was the worst thing about the experience?" Jenny asked.
Of course, I had seen Jenny barely able to hold herself up, her face contorted with pain. I'd seen her push with everything she had to get Leo into the world and I could see it was deeply painful.
How had she put up with it, I asked contritely. "Women are just better at enduring pain," she said. But are they? It seems to me women are always claiming this to be the case and going on about childbirth as the proof.
But it's unfair. I mean it's easy for them to say that because a man won't ever get the chance to prove he can deal with it just as well as they do. Or so I thought.
When I said this to Jenny, her eyes lit up. She then spent several minutes searching for a news story she'd seen about a machine that could simulate the sensation of contractions and was the closest a man could get to the experience of giving birth without actually producing a baby.
"If you really believe you could cope, then give it a go," she said.
The next morning I Googled the clinic and found they had an appointment available the following week. Now, I'm up for a challenge. Thousands of women give birth every day. It's obviously not unbearable. Many of them decide to do it more than once, so how bad can it be?
I agreed to give it a try. Just as I had been by Jenny's side during the birth, she would be by mine. In fact, she was almost too keen to suggest she come with me to hold my hand.
Perhaps it's not surprising that there's nowhere in Britain that allows men to be tortured in this way. For this particular Torquemada-esque ordeal, I'd have to go where they allow you to do most things that perhaps you shouldn't: Amsterdam.
The Birth Hotel is in a quaint-looking street in the Dutch capital. It's basically a private birthing centre, designed to give women the most natural birth possible.
It's here that I meet Ilona, who will act as my "midwife" during the experiment. She's delivered around 2,000 babies, so I should be in good hands. However, the prevailing mood seems to be "women do this all the time, let's see what you've got"; not, as I had hoped: "You're a brave man."
Kim, an expert physiotherapist, is the woman who will be at the control of the birth-simulation machine, prosaically known as RSQ1. She normally uses it to help athletes recover from serious sports injuries, albeit at a much lower frequency than she's intending to use on me.
"When people have pain they are unable to contract muscles properly. This machine uses electrical currents to force the muscles to contract from outside the body. It's a way of building up strength. No other machine in the world has the intensity of contraction. It's perfect for simulating the uterus contracting with similar levels of pain."
So why is it that Kim and Ilona are so willing to help me with this project? "We do it because we want men to know just what women go through."
Increasing sympathy and understanding among the male of the species sounds a plausible reason, though I have a nagging suspicion they may just be sadists.
When I told female friends I was doing this, it was largely treated flippantly. "Ha! Good luck. You have no idea what you're in for! It's like pain from another world," one said.
"It's the most excruciating thing you'll ever go through," said another, and followed it with a cruel laugh.
My friend Juliet simply dismissed the whole thing. "It won't be the same. You won't have been pregnant for nine months. Labour is like climbing Everest after running a marathon."
I kept wondering why, if it really is so bad, they all seem so keen for me to do it. Surely they should be saying: "Don't do it. It's crazy. I wouldn't wish it on anyone."
Somehow their tendency to focus on the unpleasantness strengthened my resolve to prove that I, a mere man, could do it, too.
I'm shown to the birthing room. It's light and airy and there's a double bed with a bright white eiderdown. The room has a giant bath for water births, though due to electrical currents passing through me, I'll have to stay out of it.
"It's a shame, because it really eases the pain," says Ilona, unhelpfully.
Soon enough I'm lying on the bed and four electrodes have been attached to my stomach.
Kim will steadily raise the frequency of electricity to simulate contractions. She will vary the intensity, length and time in between as if I had gone into labour.
She explains that in Holland they divide labour into three stages before the baby is pushed out. For obvious, biological reasons I will not be replicating this last bit, but I will go through the three stages that come before. And throughout I will check my experiences against Jenny's.
Kim explains that stage one is when contractions begin. They are often too light and too far apart for the hospital to admit you.
Jenny's contractions with our son, Leo, had started at 6am. The pain was relatively minor, and as the contractions grew closer together, Jenny began to think she might be one of those lucky women who seem to pop out the baby after a small stomach cramp. Boy, was she wrong.
Kim presses a button sending the electricity hurtling down the wires and into my stomach. It's very uncomfortable and lasts about 30 seconds. I feel a tingling all over.
Kim asks me to grade the pain on a scale of one to ten. I say two, thinking it was probably a three. I'm worried about the lack of control. This is already unpleasant and I have no idea how bad it's going to get or if I will be able to cope.
Seven minutes later I have another contraction. The mood is the room is jovial. Even baby Leo is laughing. "Nice family day out," I say.
In real life, this stage of Jenny's labour was more challenging. After eight hours her waters broke. We'd thought we might not be able to tell when this happened, but we needn't have worried.
I've seen similar scenes before, but with horses in fields. We arrived at the hospital to be told there was meconium in Jenny's waters - a substance held in the baby's bowel, and released when it is in distress - and we were rushed into the ward.
The staff were worried Leo was in distress and the umbilical cord might be wrapped round his neck. The situation changed from exciting to extremely stressful.
For women, the contractions open the cervix. For the baby to come out the opening needs to reach 10cm. My induced contractions are mimicking that process. Ilona tells me I'm the equivalent of around 2cm.
This is a real disappointment, I was hoping for more. In some cases, this stage can last for days.
Once I've experienced a few of these milder contractions, we agree it's time to move to stage two.
Stage two
Kim will now set the contractions around five minutes apart and they'll be 45 seconds long. She will also whack up the intensity.
The mood of the room, which has been high-spirited, is brought crashing down by the next contraction. It feels as if someone is pushing hard on my stomach; every sinew in my torso is strained.
I try to breathe through it, but at one point I yell out. When the pain subsides, the relief I feel is immense. I look up. Little Leo is staring at me in shock. He bursts into tears.
Everyone's face, including Mark, the photographer, has drained of colour. What was a bit of a light-hearted fun has suddenly become quite real.
Jenny takes Leo out of the room. The contractions continue, and each time the electrical charge is higher.
At this stage in Jenny's labour, she stopped dilating. Leo's heart rate dropped dangerously low and a team of medical professionals rushed into the room. There was mention of an emergency caesarean.
Jenny continued to have stronger and stronger contractions, but the cervix refused to open because of the stress. All in all, Jenny went through 20 hours of contractions before giving in and asking for an epidural.
I'm only aiming for a three-hour labour, and emotionally there's no comparison. I don't have a baby inside me in a life-threatening situation. But I will go on for longer because I intend to see labour through - drug-free - to the bitter end.
Final stage
Kim says it's time for stage three. The contractions will now come every three minutes and last a minute. They will increase in intensity - 500 pulsations a second.
It hits me like a train. It feels as if my stomach is being so violently compressed it's going to come out of my back.
Then a searing pain strikes that is so aggressive it becomes impossible to think. I feel tears coming from my eyes. I grab Jenny's hand, who is telling me to "breathe through" the pain. "You breathe through it," I shout.
If I was thinking straight I might have added: "Don't touch me! You got me into this mess." As indeed she did when she was in labour.
I shout out and swear in the same way I've seen women do while giving birth in TV dramas. When it subsides I am exhausted.
Kim asks again what pain level I would consider this to be, if one is uncomfortable and ten is unbearable. I say nine because I'm still going, but I can't imagine what ten would be like. I tell Kim I don't like her any more.
Throughout my labour I shift position. On my back, my side, crouching leaning over the bed. None of it seems to help.
I think back to the hypnobirthing class Jenny attended - a way of alleviating the pain by mediation and visualisations. If someone told me to imagine a sunset, I'd kill them.
The contractions come so quickly there's barely time to grab breath. Ilona offers me gas and air, but I've come so far I want to do it without.
Jenny asks me to stop, telling me I don't have to prove anything any more. It's a small victory.
As the next agonising contraction begins, I comfort myself with the thought that I've delivered a blow in the gender war.
All I know is I've got to get through each contraction. I lose my sense of time, space, the people in the room, and why I'm doing this. Ilona says I'm 8cm dilated and it'll soon be over.
As a man watching a woman give birth, you feel slightly helpless. You are the ultimate spare part and I found myself wishing Jenny couldn't see me like this. There's nothing she can do. She's getting upset, I'd rather deal with it on my own.
Unlike mine, Jenny's "final stage" was quite a happy one. By then, the epidural she had asked for had taken effect and she spent the last few hours waiting to be fully dilated.
It had felt as though everything that could have gone wrong during her labour did, and so it was with some surprise she managed a natural birth.
She had pushed harder than I've ever seen anyone push anything for 40 minutes, and there's no way of me ever knowing what that felt like. Judging by her face, it was tough.
Playful competition with Jenny aside, this experience has made me appreciate all the more what women go through when giving birth. It has also made me understand how the human body will look after you in extraordinary ways.
