'It's not a war zone': why more men are labouring in the delivery room

© Independent.ie
It used to be so easy. Mum was wheeled into the labour ward and emerged, some hours later, in a pretty nightgown with her little bundle of joy. Dad might have wondered what went on behind the closed doors, but busied himself by lighting a cigar and popping down the local to wet the baby's head. His arduous role in the event had ended nine months earlier.
But these days, fathers are expected to live through every contraction, mopping brows, issuing instructions to push and cutting the cord. Never before have they been so involved in the births of their children, but how many of them actually want to be there at all? Or don't know where to draw the line?
Take John McAuley, for instance, who decided to intimately film his baby's delivery by emergency caesarean section, suing the midwife when she asked him to stop playing Steven Spielberg while she cleared the infant's airways. He saw her actions as a breach of the contract he had with the hospital to allow him film the birth in its entirety.
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