Tuesday, 28th June 2005.

Joshua. You are Josh. Josh you are.

I'm still shattered, but I imagine that Emily is probably more tired, so I'm not complaining. (Actually, the simple fact of the matter is that when your partner is in the middle of labour, you try not to think about any of your own problems: you figure they pale into insignificance when compared to those of the woman sitting next to you. In fact, if you suddenly experience cramps, tiredness, dizziness or nausea you just wind up feeling guilty.)

Let me tell you why they call it the miracle of birth. It's less a case of evolutionary processes - the body's nervous system adapting to carry this tiny life form for the better part of a year - and more a phenomenal magic trick. There's a lot of pushing and then all of a sudden someone else literally appears in the room - someone who wasn't there ten seconds ago. What happened in our case was that the head forced its way out and then as soon as it was clear, there was a loud, throaty scream from Emily, and then this person suddenly materialised onto the bed, fully formed. There's a gasping of breath and then our son amply demonstrated the presence of his lungs, and the midwife is saying "He's here, you did it!" before we barely even knew what was happening.

I'd reached the hospital at about seven twenty a.m. under a brilliant blue sky, the CD player choosing "I Want To Break Free" as the first of that morning's random selection. It was an uneventful drive to Oxford, apart from the white van I inadvertently cut up on the ring road, and the car park was almost empty. Emily was sitting upstairs in the bedside chair, a half-eaten roll sitting on the table nearby. She'd been having contractions of a sort for a couple of hours - or if not full-blown contractions, the sharp twinges that indicate something is at last starting to happen. We'd both slept, after a fashion - I better than her, I suspect, although it was strange lying there without her familiar form next to me. I'd shuffled over to face north, as I knew that was roughly where she would be.

I sat with her on level five for about two and a half hours before they took her down to the delivery suite - a large, windowless room near one end of a long corridor. I initially get a little claustrophobic in rooms with no natural light, but it's surprising how quickly you get used to it, and at least it wasn't stifling, like the one we had visited on our tour of the ward. Emily made herself comfortable while I unpacked what we needed, and shortly afterwards I was sitting beside her again as she grasped my hand through the blossoming of another contraction, her fingers clenching a little tighter with each successive twinge. She was wired to the drip that fed hormones at an achingly slow pace, its frequent error bleeps sounding like a form of Morse, or perhaps an archaic mobile ringtone. Elsewhere, a nearby computer produced heartbeat readouts, while the Tens machine left dark circles on her back. She looked like the controller in the other week's Doctor Who: this child, covered in cables dangling from every limb. At least she could use the toilet.

One of the most annoying things about watching babies being born on TV is that while the delivery position is usually fairly accurate - upright on the bed, legs bent, arms rigid - the actual positions for labour seldom are. The fact is that very few women go through the bulk of the early stages of labour - that build-up of contractions - lying on a bed; they're more likely to be sitting, squatting, standing or even wandering around, which is exactly what we did. After a few hours of unsteady contractions they built and grew into a rhythm and the midwife brought out the gas and air; Em no longer needed a hand to squeeze, so I lingered behind her and rubbed her neck lightly, while she breathed in and out of the mask in a manner not dissimilar to Darth Vader.

Halfway through this the intercom rang and a voice announced that Emily's parents were here. Stunned, I wandered along the corridor to find them in the end room. Mrs Knight jumped out of her chair and threw her arms around my waist, declaring "We couldn't wait any more!". While I was in there with them Elizabeth's mobile rang twice: both the Knight siblings wanted to check on developments. Anxious not to leave Emily too long I fobbed them all off as quickly as I could, and then said that I would need to be in the delivery room for the rest of the time, and that we'd see them later. They agreed to visit the canteen to get lunch, and then come back further along the afternoon. It would be easy to be cross about this impromptu visit - a distraction I really didn't need - but in defence of my in-laws, they had only intended to find out information about what was going on, and then get out of the way until the baby had arrived - instead of which they were frog-marched into the waiting room before the nurse on duty buzzed us to let us know they were here.

I wandered back to the delivery room, still slightly disconcerted at this set of events, but tried to put it out of my mind for the moment, and concentrated on dashing round providing all the help I could: neck rubs, hand squeezing, bowl-fetching when she vomited. You're supposed to time contractions by the clock, but I found myself timing them by how long I had to do things between them - the minutes (and eventually seconds) before Em would shut her eyes and start to breathe heavily, as the pain gathered its momentum. By half past two my routine had deteriorated from squeezing her hand, leisurely refilling her cup and buttering and eating a slice of toast to dashing to the water jug for a quick refill before hopping back just in time to be there for the next contraction.

Eventually Ricky arrived back and told us that she would measure Emily at four o'clock. This seemed ludicrously late given how quickly she'd come on, and she could obviously tell we didn't like the idea, so not long after three my wife was hauled up onto the bed for examination. Ricky looked down and said "Right, we're almost ready."
"I really, really need a poo," said Emily.
"What you're going to have soon is an awful lot of pressure down there, and the overwhelming desire to push," answered Ricky. "And that's what we need to do. You need to stop using the gas and air now if you can, and instead concentrate your breathing on the pushing part."

If you've done this, you'll know roughly how the next bit goes. If you haven't, it's almost impossible to describe: this overwhelming sense of something awesome happening that you can't quite put your finger on. Emily's breathing increased in intensity and then her face turned beetroot red, as she grunted and groaned.

"That's it, you're doing so well!" I said, for about the fifteenth time in seven minutes. "But you sound like Yoda."

It's probably a good thing she was saving her strength for the pushing, or she would have hit me. I'm reminded of the episode of Friends where Carol gives birth to Ben, and as the head emerges Ross says "It's huge! Carol, how are you doing this?". If you consider the physical improbability of something that size appearing from a hole that small, then...well, you get the gist. First there's a microscopic, hairline-crack widening, and then you can just see a small tuft of hair peeking through, and gradually the hole gets a little bigger, and the midwife asks you if you want to feel down there - primarily for the benefit of Emily, who couldn't see what was going on, although they'd offered her a mirror.

Then all of a sudden it seemed to get stuck: "two steps forward and one back with each push", as Ricky described it. It was at this point that I realised we seemed to have skipped the transition stage - the moment everyone tells you is one of the worst parts of the experience for all concerned, as the woman feels incredibly cranky and her birth partner has to bear the brunt of the abuse, which frequently occurs in the form of a string of four-letter words, and sentences like "If you ever touch me again I'll kill you!". For whatever reason, this never actually happened: the torrent of bad language that we'd expected didn't seem to be coming out at all.

"We're almost there," Ricky said, examining the opening. "In a moment I want you to push like mad, and then stop, and then pant as quickly as you can, and then push. Can you manage that?"
Somehow, Emily nodded.
"Right, here we go!"
Push, push, push. Screams of pain, and it was here that I witnessed the extent of Emily's profanity for the day: "Ow, that really hurts!"
The intercom buzzed. "Hello! Just to let you know Emily's parents are outside -"
"WE'RE AT SECOND STAGE!!!" was the virtually yelled response.
"Come on," I said. "Nearly there - that's it, it's coming - "

The last push is like opening a stiff jar that's been sealed for too long: you're never quite sure if this is genuinely it or if you will need more rubber gloves first. The end was like an explosion - a scream, and then this slithering form that landed on the bed in a shower of blood and early screaming. At least his lungs worked. He was wrinkled, caked in slime and bawling, and we instantly fell in love with him.

The push-pant-push didn't quite work, and Emily damaged a membrane. The next thing I knew the room was full of people: surgeons and nurses and other midwives dashed about with needle and thread and God knows what else, trying to get things sewn up as soon as possible. I tried not to look too much, but it was a car wreck scenario where it's difficult to tear your eyes away, so I concentrated as much as possible on the warm packet of life that was lying on my wife's chest, tiny and untouched - simply miraculous.

They took him off her and put him in the trolley, and then out came the placenta: Shylock's pound of flesh, staining and spoiling the whiteness of a hospital sheet. As someone who can't even watch Holby City, I don't know how I coped with seeing it lying in that tray like a pile of chopped liver in an abattoir. They began to stitch Emily, using a local anaesthetic that didn't quite work, leaving her no choice but to get completely high on the NO2. Watching someone go overboard on the gas and air is a little like watching them get drunk, with the obvious exception that they tend to recover very quickly once the mask is removed. Soon she was giggling, and telling us she felt like a student, wide awake at quarter to five in the morning (despite the fact that it was actually quarter to five in the afternoon). It was surreal, but I was relieved - it had been an unpleasant experience watching her twitch and groan before the gas and air kicked in. She was out of it, but her pain threshold had gone up, and for that we were both grateful.

More calls from the in-laws, who were told to come back in an hour. Em recovered slowly as they stitched, and I mopped her brow and told her for the twenty-sixth time how much I loved her. It would be futile to even try to explain how proud of her I was, but any husband or partner who's been there will understand the sort of pride you experience - pride that usurps that earlier sense of guilt when your spouse is convulsing and screaming, while you play and replay a simple, recurring internal monologue: "What the fuck have I *done* to you?!?"

Eventually we let them in: there was assorted cooing, and Mr Knight produced a football "for his daddy to take him to the park". They also got out four cans of Guinness for his mother, which got a few raised eyebrows from the nurses. Ricky signed off, and received copious thanks from both of us - it was one of those hackneyed, clichéd "Couldn't have done it without you" moments, but I suppose that at times even those are true. I rang my parents, brother, Jon, Beth, and finally my Grandfather.

"How's Teresa?" he asked.
Teresa is of course my mother's name: it's not the first time he's made this mistake. I thought about explaining it again, but decided to just give up.
"She's fine, thanks."
"Is your wife's name Teresa?" he said. "Or Jesse?"
"It's neither," I said. "It's Emily. But let it go."
"I'll get it right one of these days."

He may have relatively few marbles left, but at least there are still enough rolling around to help him realise that he made it to great-grandfather status, which is no small achievement. This shuffling figure, barely in control of his limbs, sans teeth, sans bowel control, almost totally dependent...a hundred miles away and still loved, and physiologically closer to the newly-hatched Joshua than he might have realised. The realisation came swooping over now as the sun began its slow descent behind the buildings, and all of a sudden everything seemed to make a lot more sense, and the patterns of life took on a new clarity - and all because of this deep connection between Joshua and my senile, but lovable grandfather. I hung up the receiver, smiled at the irony, and then went back inside the hospital, to see my wife and son.