Matt, a pregnant Cara and their first child, Hugo.
Matt and Cara Foulk are in the midst of a pregnant pause.
"I guess it's a little bit like waiting for a flight," he says, between bites of salad at the kitchen table of their east Toronto home.
Cara's mother came down from Sudbury for the birth; she had to go home. Matt lined up two weeks of leave from work; he hasn't taken it yet. Cara is ready and a little worried for the health of her baby, who is now five days past due. But birth happens when it happens, and no amount of habanero peppers and walking will start it.
It isn't unconventional for a father to be involved in birth, any more, and hasn't been for quite a while in North America. But welcoming a journalist to follow that process as Father's Day draws near – that's a bit different. It reflects an openness and warmth that shows in the way they talk to each other. Matt stresses again and again that he isn't the star here, Cara is. The story is about you, though, she says.
In his daily life, Matt is a vice-president at one of Canada's biggest advertising firms. Here, he sees himself as support staff for Cara, an X-ray technologist who's taking a year-long maternity leave.
Their first child – Hugo, three and a half – is napping upstairs. They were in Chicago when he was born, having both left other countries – Matt England, Cara Canada – to start a family more than two years after a chance meeting on a bike trip down the Pacific Coast Highway. They didn't have a midwife for Hugo, but an obstetrician and a doula.
Matt describes first seeing Cara as "a religious experience." He describes seeing her in the pain of a natural childbirth as incredibly difficult. After Hugo was born, he followed the baby to the scale and watched as his eye drops were put in.
"You were pretty out of it," he says to Cara.
"Yeah, it's not like you see in movies," she says with the chuckle that always seems near the surface of her voice. "Well, it wasn't for me anyways."
She was in so much pain after having Hugo that Matt was the first to hold him after getting to cut the cord – an experience he hopes to repeat with their second child.
"I always want to be as good a dad as my dad was to me," Matt says. If he can manage that, he maintains he'll have done well. His dad, John Foulk, was the first parent to hold him after he was born by caesarean section. ("Overwhelmed," was how John recalled feeling in that moment, in a phone call from England.)
On Monday, an ultrasound goes smoothly.Tuesday is quiet. Wednesday, though, a text message from Matt arrives at 4:10 p.m.
"At hospital for stress test. Keep you posted." Cara went in for an ultrasound and it looked like the baby needed to be born. Matt left work to join her and one of the midwives broke her water to help induce labour.
Birth is one of those universals: More than 1,000 babies were born on Wednesday across Canada. Somehow you can feel that in the lavender room on the seventh floor of Toronto East General Hospital, where Matt and Cara's child is born: a woman and a baby lying on a hospital bed set diagonally in the middle of the room, and a man standing barefoot beside them in shorts and the same shirt he was wearing when I met him on Sunday.
Matt did get to cut the cord, his normal squeamishness completely lost in the need to be vigilant of his family, to watch out for Cara, to do something active in a situation where he cannot be part of the main event.
She is only a few minutes old, lying on Cara's chest. Matt catches my eye as I peer around the medical curtain and I slip in.
"This is Olive Elinor and she was born at 7:15 p.m," he says slowly, as if memorizing a fact of great importance.
"You missed seeing him be all supportive," Cara says. Their moods are written across their faces. She is in a state that calls to mind the British expression that suggests women never perspire, only glow. He is clearly enamoured, delighted, but you can see the strain of supporting her through such an ordeal – though, in the end, it was a rather normal birth – has taken its toll.
"Generally the baby's lifted straight up onto the mom, and hangs out there for the first hour, before we do any of the weighing or anything else," says Esther Willms, one of the midwives. For them, there are things to attend to. For Matt and Cara, it's an opportunity to meet their daughter and take a few first photographs.
Olive is small and red and looks slightly fuzzy with the dried fluids of birth. She's strong, wiggling around on Cara's chest, and she's hungry. As mom gets down a bite of brownie and a sip of coconut water, the baby settles down to nurse.
The midwives need to apply some analgesic gel and give Cara a stitch to help her heal from the birth. "Should I take her?" Matt says, whipping off his shirt. He hasn't held Olive yet. But they say best to leave her where she is, so he tosses it back over his neck.
Matt stands beside the bed with his shirt over his face. He's just, for a moment, the Dad: not caring or even thinking about anything beyond when he'll get to hold his daughter and how he can help his partner. In its own way, it's just as vulnerable a state as the one Cara is in.
"Why does it never end," she groans a moment later, wrapping her hand around the back of his head at a contorted angle. He's bent over the bed, her other hand in his.
"Almost there," he says, in the manner of someone who has said many similar things already that evening. During the birth, Cara was disoriented, saying she didn't know what she was supposed to do. He listened to the midwives and tried to reinforce their instructions, tried to get her through it. In the end, they both think this second childbirth was much easier than the first.
When Matt follows Olive and the midwife to the baby scale, they all start taking bets on how much she will weigh. Cara thinks about eight pounds.
"What do you think, babe?" Cara calls to him as he comes back from washing his hands.
"Ummm… seven-ten."
Seven pounds, 11 ounces, the midwife reports – he's the closest.
Another moment: Matt is asked to give Olive his pinkie to suck on. Cara asks me to snap a few photos on Matt's iPhone, and the shots I frame are of a man completely absorbed in the tiny human on the scale.
"I'm your Daddy," he says. "It's okay." Then when he finally gets to hold her: "I've got you."
You can feel them happening one by one, the firsts – one of the most special, when Olive first opened her eyes, is already gone by the time I show up. Some of life's first indignities – a shot of Vitamin K, eye drops – are over soon too, with little more than a bit of crying and a wince from Matt.
I left them at the hospital entrance: Cara sitting in a wheelchair surrounded by the midwives, Olive snuggled in her carseat and Matt headed out to bring the SUV around. He hasn't reached his parents in England, where it's the middle of the night, or his grandmother, who doesn't yet know the baby is named after her. Hugo, sleeping at home, hasn't yet met his sister. Tomorrow is going to be such a big day for Olive and her family – her first full day. But their first time together is over. In the warm evening smelling of wet pavement, that seems a little sad. But that's life, as Matt says. Its consolation – there are so many firsts to come.