Confessions of a GP

Babies

It was my first night as a medical student on the delivery suite and I was excited at the prospect of helping to bring a new life into the world. To my horror, the first baby I saw was the lifeless body of a stillborn. I had stayed away from the traumatic birth but the whole unit could hear the dead infant’s mother wailing in grief as she pushed out her stillborn child. The midwife asked me to keep her company as she cleaned and dressed the body before it was taken down to the morgue. I can still clearly remember looking down at him. His features were perfect but his lips were almost completely black and the rest of his body a shade of dark purple. He had never had the chance to breathe in oxygen and turn pink. The pregnancy had apparently been normal and the baby was a healthy size. Mum was two weeks past her due date and as she and Dad eagerly anticipated the onset of labour, their baby just stopped moving. A scan confirmed that the heart was no longer beating. The devastated mum went into labour knowing that her son had already died.

Ten years later I was holding the hand of my wife, nervously waiting for the birth of our first child. It was one of those times that I wished I wasn’t a doctor. I could not get the awful memory of that dead baby out of my mind. The other dads-to-be in my antenatal class had different concerns. Mick, a plumber, was worried about his mother-in-law coming to stay. Matthew worked in advertising and was fretting about the financial implications of dropping to just one income. My only anxiety was that my baby was going to be born dead. I didn’t share this with the group, or even with my wife, but it dominated my thoughts for the last three months of my wife’s pregnancy.

It would appear that I’m not the only doctor who has been affected by what they have witnessed in obstetrics. The number of female GPs and obstetricians who choose to have Caesarean sections rather than natural births is much higher than in the general population. Doctors also tend not to allow themselves to go too far overdue before having labour induced. It isn’t so much that medics know more than everyone else, it is just that we have seen more than anyone else. Doctors deal with the births that go wrong. Thankfully, these are a tiny minority but anyone who has witnessed a really traumatic birth can’t help but be affected by the memory when embarking on that journey themselves. When my newly born son gasped his first breath, I was awash with joy, but far more powerful was an overwhelming sense of relief.

During the first few weeks of his life, the enormous responsibility of being a parent dawned on me. What sort of person was this baby going to become? What could I do to give him the best chance in life? If I was a rubbish parent, would he grow up to be like some of my chaotic and troubled patients? During my working day, I see an unfeasible amount of human suffering in one form or another. As I looked down on my innocent son, I wondered if I could really protect him from all that. What if one day he told me that he wanted to be a doctor? Would I try to put him off? In spite of everything, I love my job and have no regrets. I’d turn to him and say: ‘Go for it, Son! Being a doctor is an honour and the greatest vocation there is.’ However, if I had the slightest inkling that he could be a professional footballer and one day play for West Ham…