Jonny McCambridge: ‘It’s a boy’ - Ten years on from the day that I will never be able to forget

But May 24 and 25, 2013 are burned indelibly into my memory. They are among the very few dates which I cannot forget.

Exactly 10 years ago today I brought my wife in the early hours into the maternity unit of the Ulster Hospital. Like any soon-to-be first-time parents, we were both excited and a little afraid. Suitably, it was a sunny Friday.

Our child was already two weeks overdue, determined to delay his or her arrival into the world for as long as possible, until mummy and daddy’s nerves were stretched beyond repair. We were being given a tiny aperitif; a taste of how our lives would be from now on.

In the hospital my wife was given a bed. Then we were told to wait. So, we waited. The environment was unfamiliar to me. Perhaps I’d been in a hospital five times in my life up to that point, visiting sick relatives and always hurrying out as quickly as I could.

I remember my impression of the place. One of controlled panic. Almost of wartime stoicism as doctors, nurses and midwives rushed around trying to deal with problems which were arising quicker than they could be solved. I asked one midwife if this was a particularly busy day. She said it was just average.

We stayed in the same spot right through the Friday without anyone paying us much attention. I suppose we were too timid and polite to raise much fuss, to add to the obvious burden. I watched midwives start and finish their shifts. My wife was becoming more and more uncomfortable and afraid. I felt totally useless and foolish.

Eventually in the early evening a midwife came to check on my wife. She was reassuring and lovely and told us that our child would be born on that day. On the Friday. Then she left and we never saw her again.

Later, a machine was rolled to the side of the bed which would monitor the baby’s heartbeat. I sat there for hours watching the machine slowly spit out a long roll of white paper with coloured lines scratched onto it. Nobody ever seemed to come to check the lines.

Close to midnight I was asked to leave the hospital. Dads weren’t allowed to remain on the ward overnight. I stayed instead in my car, in the car park directly outside the maternity ward. As I struggled to sleep, I remember thinking that this was not how I imagined the best day of my life would be.

I returned to the hospital ward before the birds had found their voice the next morning. After a few more hours my wife was moved to a small room on her own, which seemed like progress. There was a little radio and I tuned it to Radio 2 and we listened to Graham Norton. He proved to be more successful than I had been at helping my wife to stay calm.

Things felt a little brighter. One of the nurses told me to take a break, to get something to eat. It hadn’t occurred to me until that moment that it was more than 24 hours since I’d eaten.

I went to the canteen. Half an hour later I walked back feeling refreshed by coffee. I was met close to my wife’s room by a senior nurse with a serious expression who told me there was nothing to worry about. Naturally I started to worry.

The baby was showing signs of distress. A doctor was taking blood samples from the unborn infant’s head. After our son was born, he had little scratches on the top of his scalp for the first few months of his life where the blood had been removed.

The decision was taken that a C-section had to be carried out urgently for the safety of the child. I have a blurry recollection of having a gown and mask thrust at me and having to be helped into them. Within seconds I was standing confusedly in a brightly-lit room.

Then I heard a cry. I saw a tiny purple ball of rage which resembled nothing. I focused hard on the object.

“It’s a boy!” I tried to shout. “It’s a boy!”

The child was cleaned up and weighed. Then he was wrapped in a blanket and given to me. I braced myself for a weight, but he was light as foam. One of his eyes was swollen shut and through the other he glared at me as if everything in the world was my fault. It’s a look I’ve become familiar with over the years. I placed the child on his mother’s chest.

The doctors and midwives congratulated us and then got ready to move on to the next family. But hang on, I thought. It can’t be this way. You’ve shared this enormously emotional experience with us, been through the same journey. We’re linked in spirit now. You’ll have to move in with us, watch our son grow, help him to blow out his birthday candles, wipe away his tears.

Except it didn’t work that way. The wonderful doctor smiled patiently as she extricated her fingers from my grip.

And then we were back in the ward and within an hour people began to arrive with balloons and teddies. On that first day my son didn’t make a sound. He just watched everything, taking it all in.

I went home that night to get some sleep. As I travelled back to the hospital the next morning I was thinking “This is going to be alright. I can do this”.

But I heard the noise before I had even reached the bedside. The crying had started. A sound that once it began, I feared it would never stop.