On Decem­ber 5th, 2009, at 9:36am (GMT +8), Joshua Joel Con­nault was born in King Edward Memorial Hos­pital, in Perth. We have been wait­ing for him for over 8 years, so his birth is espe­cially poignant to us. We have had a long time to pre­pare ourselves for him. I found, how­ever, that there was no way in the world I could have been pre­pared for the birth experience.

Joshuas first day of life

Joshua’s first day of life

I thought I under­stood pain, hav­ing had what I call «my share» of it through­out my life. To com­pare my exper­i­ence of pain with what I saw Anne-​Marie go through, is like com­par­ing water with vegem­ite, a candle’s light with the sun, or the sound of a pin drop­ping to the ground with that of a jet plane tak­ing off. I never had the faintest idea of what «labour» meant, I thought it was just «pain­ful», and then baby was born and it was all forgotten.

I thought I had respect for women. Now, as I reflect back on this exper­i­ence, I acknow­ledge that there is no way I could have endured through this, I would have prob­ably reques­ted a total anes­thetic dur­ing pre-​labour! In my mind I ima­gined the bil­lions of women through­out the earth’s his­tory who were will­ing to suf­fer this so that a little child could be born, and the count­less bil­lions who were will­ing to do it again after hav­ing exper­i­enced it once! How noble! How inspir­ing! How awesome!

Now I know that most women have a tre­mend­ous advant­age over most men: the exper­i­ence of pain will­ingly taken for the most noble and beau­ti­ful of all tasks: the cre­ation of a new life. How much we have to learn from them! I have already learned a lot from Anne-​Marie, from see­ing her cour­age, her strength, her will­ing­ness to sac­ri­fice everything for our son. I hope I can one day have the same courage.