Spain Dad, a baby blog

“If I told you giving birth wasn’t painful, I would be lying to you.”

I should have thought something was up when our midwife said this. I think she was trying to give a disclaimer for the the VHS tape she was pressing into the VCR. She pressed play.

The film appeared in black in white on a small television sitting on a shelf in a cupboard at one end of our classroom. April and I sat with two other women on folding chairs.

The only reason I could think of that they would show us such an outdated film was because in the old days they would show things they just wouldn’t show anymore.

The film began with a pleasant image of an pregnant English woman walking through a pasture in the evening wearing a wool sweater and softly rubbing circles on her belly.

In only a matter of minutes, however, things got out of hand. From the next room, you wouldn’t have known if we were watching a birthing video or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Our pleasant English woman was strapped to a hospital bed, bracing herself, and full-out screaming. She made Neve Campbell in Scream sound like a kitten.

The close-up of the baby’s head emerging from inside his mother did not help matters. I caught myself about to say out-loud, “Go back inside! This isn’t working!”

But, of course, over time with lots of pushing and panting and pleading the baby was squeezed into this world. The camel had passed through the eye of the needle.

I had the thought I imagine every new father thinks but doesn’t say, “How did that come from there?”

Pain. That’s how.

I’m not sure if this will sound far-fetched, but the only way I feel okay about sending my wife into the painful experience of childbirth (and not scheduling a c-section tomorrow) is thinking about April and I walking the Camino de Santiago together last summer.

The Camino de Santiago is a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in the northern province of Galicia in Spain. People have walked to this town from all over the world for centuries, and last summer April and I walked around twenty kilometers a day for eleven days through rain and sunshine, from morning until evening, and through forests, mountains and villages to reach our final destination.

The experience of walking to Santiago is one of my most cherished, but only because it was one of the most difficult things April and I have ever done together. Within two days, April was limping because of a bad knee, and I was hobbling on a sore arch. We spent hours each morning sticking band aids, wrapping ankles, running needle and thread through blisters and massaging cramped muscles. We experienced pain from the beginning of the trip to the end. It never let up. We often thought about giving up and taking the bus back to Madrid, and at least once every day we said we would never do this again.

Something about difficult experiences, however, brings people together. I am thankful for the opportunity I had to see April persevere through such a physically-demanding adventure. We helped each other along the way, sometimes arm in arm, sometimes just walking side by side in silence, but somehow growing closer together and learning so much about each other, if not just the fact that we could do it, we could walk all that way.

I trust April will handle the pain of childbirth okay because I’ve seen her handle pain before. I know she can do it. And I imagine going through the difficulty of childbirth with our baby girl will only bring us closer together.