If pubs can open, why can’t fathers be present at the birth of their babies?
‘I’M FACING into dropping her off at the front door and not being allowed in... But I’ll be able to go around the corner and have 15 pints with my friends.’
They are the words of an anxious expectant firsttime father sitting on the steps of Dublin’s National Maternity Hospital as he told his story to the Irish Mail on Sunday this week.
‘I won’t be able to support her as she goes through induction or labour,’ the man said. ‘But I’ll be full of booze so I’ll be happy out I guess... I don’t understand the reasoning.’
The man, who did not want to be named for fear of annoying the hospital in advance of his wife giving birth, told how the ‘hardest part’ is watching his wife go into the hospital, with no support, terribly worried she’ll get bad news.
‘The worst day was actually sitting, literally here, on these steps the last time and watching her come out in floods of tears with just the emotional rollercoaster she is on,’ he said. ‘It took me five minutes of her crying to figure out there wasn’t anything bad and we were OK. My heart goes out to people who are getting bad news.’
A few minutes later, another father and his pregnant partner rushed up to the doors of the hospital clutching an overnight bag, but he was stopped from going any further than the front steps.
The worried and confused taxi man told the MoS he was at a loss as to what to do now.
‘She’ll be in there on her own now and it’s a lonely place,’ he said. ‘We were here two years ago with
‘I’m due in three weeks and terrified to be alone’
our first baby and we were together all the time and it was lovely. It’s OK having the nurses and doctors there, but they’re not your family. You need somebody in your corner.’
As he headed back to his taxi, a heavily pregnant woman walked from the hospital alone. Joan Kenny had previously suffered a miscarriage and was worried going into the hospital alone that the same would happen again.
‘I have to go to all my appointments on my own,’ she explained. ‘It’s been OK, but I’m lucky and the baby is healthy. But I have had a miscarriage in the past so if I had to go on my own for that, it wouldn’t have been good.
‘I have had a baby since the miscarriage, but still you’re nervous going in for scans.’
Another young father told how he had to stand outside in the rain and sleep in nearby Merrion Square park, waiting to get the call to say his baby was nearly here and he could come inside.
‘It doesn’t matter for me, I am grown up and can handle cold weather and rain and sleeping in the park,’ he said. ‘But it was stressful, I was just thinking of my wife and baby.’
The stories reported are just a snapshot of the worry and trepidation facing pregnant mothers who are being forced to go it alone as a result of an unprecedented pandemic.
Even as other parts of the lockdown restrictions are gradually lifted, women still cannot have their partner or anyone else with them in hospital until they are just about to give birth, which is leaving them feeling lonely and isolated.
A lot of mothers and their partners told how they ‘fully understood’ the need for the restrictions when the country went into lockdown, but the government’s commitment to opening the pubs changed all that. An online petition to relax the restrictions at maternity hospitals has been signed by tens of thousands of women, while Dublin Lord Mayor Hazel Chu, who has taken up the cause with gusto, said she received 700 emails over two days from pregnant women and their partners.
One woman, who is 37 weeks pregnant with her first baby, told the MoS: ‘It makes me angry every day people are giving out they can’t go to the pub and I’m like, “my husband could miss the birth of his first child very easily.”
‘Just the fact the partners haven’t been allowed to be around, the anxiety is awful. I’m due in three weeks and I am terrified to be alone all the time. The 12-week scan was hard.’
The anonymous father who spoke with tongue in cheek about being able to drink pints with his friends while his wife is in labour said some women may ‘never recover’ from the trauma of having to go it alone.
‘Partners will do anything to get in there, full PPE gear, anything I will be fine with,’ he said.
For Laura McGinty it is a topic she is very passionate about.
‘It’s my second baby, I know the routine, but he hasn’t even heard the heartbeat or seen the baby. We’re going for a section now in two weeks and he’ll have minimum time with us and then every day after that he can only come in for two hours. I had a few complications last time, so I really needed him and I’m afraid that’s going to happen again.
‘I signed the petition, I emailed the lord mayor and she got back to me too. I’ve had a pretty good experience generally, but I know a lot of women who haven’t. For women who miscarried, it’s been very difficult. Especially the bigger scans and then not having the support after the birth is going to be hard.
‘It’s so frustrating listening about the pubs. I hope everything lifts in two weeks, we’ll see,’ she said.
Natalia Klimecka is also annoyed at the discussions around the pubs opening. ‘It’s very difficult,’ she said. ‘I’m 36 weeks, my partner has never been at a scan. It’s our first baby. I started considering maybe organising a home birth. I’d like to be with my partner. But I’d prefer to give birth in a maternity hospital if something were to go wrong.
‘My partner has never been at a scan’
‘The midwives on the ward were so good’
‘That is what’s really annoying me that we open pubs and it’s a partner that’s really important. There are women losing babies and having to do it on their own. It’s such a controlled environment, there should be a way.’
Doting new dad Ray Angelo Ngalot said he would have liked to be able to help his wife more in the hospital. ‘We were just discharged yesterday. They’re only allowed in for two hours for, the dad, and then I’d get the bus home and that wasn’t helpful for my wife. Only women were allowed in the labour ward, but when she went to the delivery suite I was called in.
‘So far the baby is good, a little boy called Seán Angelo. We wanted a combination of my own name and an Irish name.’
Siobhán O’Brien, the mother of pre-term twins Cian and Amy, said the staff were ‘absolutely fantastic’ and added that the mums on her ward were ‘there for each other’.
‘I ended up in an emergency after going to what I thought was just a check-up even though my husband couldn’t come in, but they were so good to me. My babies were in intensive care for four weeks and he was allowed in to see them, he just couldn’t come up to the ward.
‘The care was amazing. The midwives on the wards were so good.’
Ms O’Brien added that while some mothers were ‘really upset’, the women were supporting each other. ‘I think actually the other mums are talking to each other more than they would have before. I got to know everyone, we could feel for each other.
‘I think that probably changed in that more mums were open to talking to each other.’
New mum Corey Cannon had to hand her five-week-old baby Fiadh over for a hip ultrasound and was a little taken aback because ‘it was the first time I’ve ever had to hand my baby over, I wasn’t really prepared for that’, she said.
She said she was one of the lucky ones because she stayed at home as long as was possible and gave birth soon after being admitted to hospital. ‘She came really quickly and then we got to go home.’