Becoming a father can bring on all sorts of shifts of consciousness. I tape recorded my thoughts (of which the following are extracts) during the weeks before and for about a fortnight after my child's birth last year. Terri and I share childcare, but do not live together.
A funny thing happened to me last night. I was lying in bed awake, imagining how it would be at the birth. I imagined myself watching, helping Terri give birth, and proudly, emotionally looking at the two when the job's done, but manfully holding back the tears. And then it happened. I began to feel myself laughing - as I sometimes do when I'm happy and emotional at the same time - in fact I wasn't sure if I was laughing or crying.
My stomach was going in and out as if I was giving a belly-laugh, and I was feeling very happy and joyful at the prospect of this little kid, and at me and Terri and the way we had produced this little one. There was this new life emerging and the world was wonderful - like the peewit flying over the moors. And I could feel water coming into my eyes and I thought: 'Am I laughing or am I crying?' And I sort of laughed some more of these stomach convulsions, and I doubled up in bed, and laughed, and was tearful a bit more and water came onto the pillow. And I thought: 'This is great, I'm crying!' Maybe it's the homeopathic pills I started taking yesterday that's unblocked my emotions. I don't know what it is, but it's the idea of the baby that brought it on.
First time I've cried since I can remember. So I thought, well, if I don't manage to cry when the baby's born, at least I can tell Terri that I've done my crying for it a couple of weeks beforehand. That I have cried for the baby and if I can't manage it in public in the hospital, then anyway I've done it all the same.
One day before official 'due date', and Terri and my relationship is normal: that is to say, it's up and down.
Terri accused me of not minding our child having a Jewish name if it was a girl (Terri is Jewish; I am not), but not wanting to give it a Jewish name if it was a boy. I was stalling on saying a boy's name that I liked. There may be some truth in what she says. What emerged was that it bothered me that the child wouldn't have much of me in it, and I felt left out (we'd already agreed it would have Terri's surname).
I actually do find that I would like something of me in this child. It emerged that I could identify with a child as a miniature me if it was a boy, but this was rather difficult if it was a Jewish boy, because I'm not Jewish. If it was a girl, it was more of an 'other' - a separate being - and could therefore be a Jewish being. But if it was a boy I saw it as another me. It's obviously a pretty dangerous thing to do. It's nice to have an affinity with another being. But if I start going round thinking it's a little extension of me, the poor little sod is going to be lumbered with a lot of unnecessary and undesirable hidden agendas in its dealings with me by the looks of it, especially if it's a boy.
On another front entirely, I'm already involved in childraisers' campaigns. My contract at work gives 20 days paternity leave (the reason being, that I drew up the conditions myself). Now I've had to battle with the Management Committee to honour these rights. The Committee - working-class shop stewards whose own work conditions, holiday entitlements and wages are less good than those of us, their Research Unit who spend the GLC grant on their behalf - show resentment in some quarters. There was open conflict in the last meeting, where the validity of the contract was challenged. One member demanded that I at least show proof of paternity. I suspected this of being an anti-gay sleight: I don't look a macho man, and it's known I'm not living with or married to the mother - so maybe I'm not the father? This, he implied, would remove my right to paternity leave (even if I am to look after the mother and child, and give them assistance in the immediate post-natal period); if I'm not the father, I shouldn't have the right to this 'holiday'. It's no holiday. Obviously the man has no concept of men's potential with regard to joint childcare.
Anyway I stood my ground. I regret to admit the gay thing riled me. I responded in like manner by sexual innuendo - by offering to slap my 'proof' (by which he'd appreciate I meant my prick) on the table. That shut him up - it's a language he can understand. What a pathetic way to have to do dealings - to work on people's prejudices, in order to establish childcare, whether by men or by women, as an important part of work.
The incident does throw up the issue of class. Middle-class people can campaign successfully in their unions, etc., for paternity leave and all the rest of it. Working class men, apart from seemingly having a low consciousness of the issue, have low opportunity to do anything about it. They may not get 20 days holiday a year, let alone paternity leave. It's a big fight against the System, not just against the lack of consciousness of the working-class.
At 2 o'clock in the morning on the 15th Terri went into labour, and stayed up all night - having been at a friend's party in the evening. I wasn't woken until 6 o'clock in the morning by her housemate Liz, who came round to get me. All three of us spent the morning at Terri's in the company with first one midwife, then the second who was to carry us through. At teatime we went into hospital, and at 4 minutes past 9 in the evening we had a little baby. Who's yet to be named. A boy.
...The day was emotional and draining. Terri said no, she couldn't face going home, though we'd planned to, she'd sleep there. The midwife hassled a room for us. The baby was then to be taken away, as apparently hospital babies are, to the Nursery to be washed and would be brought back. It was agreed I'd stay, but when Terri found out that it was going to be in a chair next to her bed, I think she thought I'd just keep her awake, plus it wouldn't do me much good not to be able to sleep (I don't sleep well in chairs) - so she more or less sent me home. I hung around in the corridor wanting to leave her in peace, but wanting to see the baby safely back. They seemed to be taking a long time. So I went to the Nursery and found a harassed orderly (annoyed I should be bothering her) washing our baby. When I say washing it: she was treating him as she would a piglet - holding it up in the air - the baby was screaming, and blue with cold. She was treating him very roughly, grabbing one limb then another, and scratching about with soap and powder. The baby's second trauma of the day, and he was making that known.
All the other babies in the room - it seemed to be a roomful of abandoned babies - were fast asleep, totally ignoring him. They were either drugged, or exhausted after their day's labour. I was angry with this woman maltreating my child in front of my eyes, but I stood and watched and let her do it. My first view of what society does to its children. She seemed to be (and I've since gathered this probably is the case) only semi-qualified. Instructions had gone out from our midwife to the Establishment, which turned out to be the three people on duty on that floor at night, to do certain things not to give a bottle, and to bring some Epifoam (a remedial treatment for Terri's very painful stitches) - but neither of these instructions was carried out. I gather that night staff at this hospital are underpaid, undertrained, understaffed and alienated (often from private agencies).
Quite a few people have held our little kiddy now. It's nice. There are a lot of people here who really like babies. I hope he becomes more socialised than I was as a kid, as a result.
I feel privileged. These last two nights since he's been home, it's been me that's slept with him in my bed, simply because Terri doesn't sleep easily with other people, and he didn't seem very easy to settle on his own. So it's been me that's slept with him. It's been beautiful. Sleeping with such a sweet little bugger, getting to know his habits, learning how to soothe him, enjoying his snuffling little ways. There's something about a one- or two- day old baby. You're learning with them: as you learn how to deal with a baby, they're learning how to deal with the outside world. It's a parallel experience which won't repeat itself in either of our lives.
We've decided on a name: Josh. Both of us reasonably like it, plus it's Jewish, plus it's got a connection with my family, being my grandfather's name. Might please the family! I just hope he likes the name himself. Before, when he was a concept, a strategy, an achievement - before he existed externally - the name seemed to be a personal issue for me: my attachment, my possession of this creature. It's not an issue now. Now it's his possession, his name. He can do with it what he wants - including change it for another one.
I feel privileged. These last two nights... it's been me that's slept with him
Terri's erected a piece of intermediate technology as a baby-aid. It's a battery-operated two-way intercom system to stick in the baby's room so you can hear when he cries, when you're elsewhere. And it's bloody convenient. I remember hearing that 'an automatic washing machine is the parent's best friend'. That's no doubt true, too. Having babies throws up the whole issue of 'appropriate technology'. Male-dominated technology is often inappropriate high technology, but also includes useless silly gadgets. When you have a baby you find out what's needed and what isn't. Some things, like disposable nappies, two-way intercoms, automatic washing machines ... are good, appropriate, labour-saving technology. Whether they were designed by women I couldn't say, but if you did have teams of women (or childcarer?) designers, designing appropriate technology for domestic life, the world would be a better place.
Yesterday we went out for the first time with the baby; Terri walking very slowly with her painful stitches. Josh was curled up like a bug in a rug, in a sling on my chest, in foetal position. As we walked across the park I noticed a young guy sitting on the grass playing with his dog - a typical Bermondsey dog, a vicious looking white bull terrier with heavy studded leather harness. This young man was teaching his dog, and playfully fondling it on its back when it came dancing to him wagging its tail. And it occurred to me, this guy wouldn't be seen dead, acting openly in such an uninhibited, affectionate, almost sexual intimacy, with a baby.
Already we're involved in campaigns around baby health care issues! Terri's written a letter of support in favour of the Community Midwives operating in this Health District. They are being undermined by the administration, as is their 'G.P. Scheme' under which Terri was able to give birth with her own doctor. The Staff Nurse boss of Susan, our excellent midwife (battling away against the System), had been a pain up the arse. She's taken Sue to task, using Terri's case, which apart from the stitching was a complete success, saying Terri was taken to hospital too late in labour. So Terri wrote a letter to this nursing officer, in support of both the G.P. Scheme and Susan.
The other business is that the Health Visitor came round for her first visit (having taken over from the midwives) and said that our local health clinic is being closed down. It's just across the road in Council property; the Council doubled the rent recently, presumably as a measure against the cuts, and the Health Authority is using this as an excuse to close it and five other clinics. So I'm going to use the Labour Party network, and write to the Chairs of the relevant Committees to get them to bloody well take some account of health care issues (which they don't), and hopefully provide rent-free accommodation to the Health Authority. The Health Visitor turns out to be another excellent person: on the nurses action group, and the campaign to save another local hospital. (Postscript: we saved the clinic).
Josh's face is gradually changing. His little-old-man appearance when he emerged is now softening and he's getting a more chubby cherub babyface. The bone structure consequently is less visible and he's losing his tell-tale signs of what he'll look like in the future. He now looks like a baby, as opposed to like my brother and my father.
But thinking back again on the business of him looking like them - I realise now that it had quite an effect on me. It altered my concept of myself. I can no longer see myself as an independent individual. I must recognise now that I'm biologically part of a continuum that stretches from the generation before me to the generation after me, and beyond in both directions. I recognise that this consciousness of being part of a continuum is not much of a feature of contemporary left politics - which when you look at it is really pretty individualistic. I'm not the free-floating physical atom that both left and right politics assume.
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