So for those of you who have done it all before...tell me about the DP's/DH's and labour!

[Kelerina]

My DP is briliant in pretty much every way however he himself is a bit concerned about the actual birth, he is a squemish type and anything blood/needle related is difficult for him to say the least! (I am much less squemish!- luckily)

What are people's experiences of your other halfs during labour? Any fainters? It get too much for any of them? And anyone have a really fantastic supportive partner during birth?

Just interested really!

My DH is a squemish type. And said he wouldn't be cutting the cord. In the middle of everything I looked at him and he was as white as a sheet. I thought he's going to faint. But he didn't.

My dh is horribly squeamish and missed the birth of my step son, 12 years ago, as a result. I thought he was going to be terrible and prepared myself that he wouldn't be there or would pass out. I arranged for my sis to come too so it didn't matter if he couldn't hack it. But he turned out to be totally amazing. I went into labour at midnight on the Sunday and finally had our son on the weds am at 5.30 am and he never left my side the whole time, even when I was being stitched. He even watched ds come out and cut the cord. not sure why it was different this time round, maybe he was just older and wiser or regretted missing out first time round.

Mine has been a bloody rock minus a blip at the beginning of dc4s pregnancy. He's do e just the right things when I've been in labour, bathed me when I've been too weak to look after myself. Stood up for me. Driven five hours in the night so that I wouldn't be alone in a strange hospital miles away from home... You get the drift

Only bad thing I can think of is that he forgot the memory card for the camera for one birth

Mine was great too. Makes you realise why picked them to start off with!
I did have quite a long labour the first time and it got a bit icky in hospital, which he found very worrying and took some time to get his head round afterwards. He is pretty rubbish without sleep and not the best with squeamish things, so I was very proud of him!

We were very lucky as my mum was also there for the later stages - I had no idea what was going on by this point and my mum was supporting DP more than me. It took some time for the bruising on his hand to go down as I didn't let go for quite some time, apparently! It's all going to happen again shortly, but this time my mum will be looking after DD, so I really hope it's quicker for DP's sake as much as mine.