Mother and baby are doing well

Any woman who has given birth and anyone who has witnessed a birth will know that this rote phrase encompasses pretty much any situation in which all main players are drawing breath at the end of the saga no matter how many midwives, obstetricians, tongs and vacuum cleaners were required to get there. Thanks to the power of television and the internet there must be few in the UK today that have a baby without ever having watched a birth on screen.

But watching a birth on screen is like watching parachuting on screen. It shows but it does not feel and really it's all about the feels. Such is the magnetic appeal of appearing on the box there seems, astonishingly, no shortage of women willing to be filmed in what is almost certain to be their most undignified moment.

What I find surprising is that no hospital seems to offer the chance to watch birth live from behind a two way mirror as in a police station. This would be the real service to expectant mothers and fathers, not the edited clips of One Born Every Minute. All hospitals, absurdly, offer tours of their maternity units which are as useful as a tour of the Somme in peacetime when 4 weeks later you're being sent over the top with your Lee-Enfield.

Truth be told I was a lot more anxious about birth this time around as first time ignorance had proved to be bliss. Obviously as second timers there were no classes for us and so I did what I always do when something is making me anxious which is pretend that it isn't happening. Consequently there was a real moment of vertigo when my wife woke me up at 1 o'clock in the morning to say that actually it was happening and such was my level of denial that she had to remind me to put the child seat in the car when we set off for hospital.

One of the most unsettling things about labour is that you have no idea how long it will take and so mentally you don't know whether you're settling in for a YouTube clip or a viewing of every Harry Potter film back to back. In fact this time around the whole thing was over in 3 hours which is about the length of a standard superhero film these days, aptly in my wife's case, as it allowed her no time for the administration of any pain relief.

It would be fair to say that our interaction with the midwives was extremely brisk bordering on the brusque and despite the large notice on the door reminding them to introduce themselves we did not have the faintest idea of the name of any of the women that marched in and out of the room where my wife was valiantly trying to put into practice her hypno-birthing visualisations.

Eventually the boss midwife turned up when it was clear that new life was, quite literally, at hand. She stood at the end of the bed as if she was breaking a disobedient puppy, fixed my wife with a fierce eye and commanded: 'When I say go you GO! When I say stop you STOP!' It would be fair to say that I have seen police directing traffic with more politesse.

Notwithstanding that my wife got the baby out in remarkably little time it was plain that the midwife was not impressed by her adherence to her orders. She rebuked her loudly: 'I told you to stop BUT YOU DID NOT STOP!' It was all my poor wife could do to murmur a weary apology for her insubordination. It was at this stage that I realised that the exorbitant cost of the Lindo Wing and the Portland is simply to ensure that one's wife is not addressed like a calving cow. I asked the midwife once the dressing down was over how many she'd delivered; she said she had stopped counting at 600.

One constantly reads in the newspapers about NHS bed crises which makes it all the more remarkable how astoundingly difficult it is to get discharged from hospital. Indeed there were some startling similarities between our day and night on the labour ward to my early days in the magistrates' courts. Eventually, with some substantial wheedling and determined lurking at the nurses' station we were sent on our way.

And so to home where our 3 has become 4 and our 2 year old is slowly becoming used to the realisation that his brother is forever. I feel that a balance has come into our home and that while it is possible to drive around on three wheels a Robin Reliant family just isn't properly weighted.

Most importantly: mother and baby are doing well.