Poor DH, Hindsight tells me he did a great job but at the time I assumed he the worst of intentions for me!

Firstly he could never massage my legs and back the right way, would spray the water in my face at the wrong distance and never aim the shower nozzle at me in the right direction.

Worst of all after a very long labour and 2 nights of no sleep, my labour seemed to be stalling in the hospital and I was getting increasingly desperate for sleep. I finally consented to try some pain killers to enable me to get some rest and begun sucking down the gas like it was a lifeline. My poor DH looked increasingly worried as he began to assume that I showing signs of drug addiction (he had not done any research about labour and did not know how the gas worked and what it might do to me or the baby).

I got really frustrated with him because he kept telling me to stop sucking so hard on the gas, and that he was really worried about me, and that I shouldn't use so much of it. He even told me that I looked like a mad woman and a drug addict.

I was soooo frustrated and desperately, between contractions I concentrated really hard and attempted to explain to him that I needed to suck the gas in such a way so that I could make sure I would have enough of it in my system to take effect when the contraction peaked. I couldn't understand how he couldn't understand and why he kept giving me such weird and unsupportive looks.

it was only 2 days later, when I attempted to debrief with him about how upset I was that he was so unsupportive that he told me that what I had said to him in the labour ward was not the rational explanation for the use of the gas that I thought I had given him, but that I had whispered to him in conspiratorial tones that I had to suck the gas really quickly so that all the other women in the other beds didn't use it all up... as I gestured wildly at the empty room..!

Apparently the lack of sleep and the gas turned me into a mad woman who was imagining things and he was completely right to be worried!!

I now realise he did a brilliant job!!