How Not To Miss Your Wife's Labour
The baby was due a week ago and each day since we have awoken tense that it may appear and laid down to sleep disappointed that it hasn’t. The little boy cries wolf once too often and we are lulled into believing that he has abandoned all attempts at escape.
This is a dangerous trap. It meant yesterday morning I thought it ok to arrange to meet Jane in a place and at a time while neither of us were carrying a mobile phone. I mean, what could possibly happen to interfere with our plan to meet up? Why would we need a phone? I’d just see her at the spot at 10.30am, surely.
If such planning doesn’t sound ill-sighted, then further consider that we were organising to meet after a midwife appointment where they would be trying to invoke labour.
About 10 minutes after me being at the certain spot and with no sign of Jane, I began to worry. The first doubts surfaced that it may not have been such a clever idea for us both to be uncontactable this morning. However I’d been recently endowed with a better understanding of probabilities and could rationalise that she was most probably only held up.
After 40 minutes had passed though, the chances that emergency labour had begun did seem to appear slightly higher. I figured this was still not the most likely explanation, however when calculating a risk one must consider its magnitude along with its probability.
I learnt this from the Effective Altruist community, a forward-thinking gang of benefactors who pose utilitarian questions such as whether it would be worth sacrificing a billion humans today in order to avert a 0.1% chance of complete extinction tomorrow. While a 0.1% chance sounds small, there are potentially trillions of unborn lives to be saved, so - according to (some of) them - the calculation of risk times magnitude means it makes sense to sacrifice a billion people.
The parallels in this case with my own situation were quite clear; the risk that I was missing labour was low, but the consequence of it would be total extinction of my marriage.
And beyond divorce, there would be an irredeemable loss of street cred. A friend of a friend missed his wife’s labour because he went to a party and didn’t check his phone. Friend of a friend stories are not often impactful, but in this case the message is actually amplified. The only reason one finds about about this guy is because he did that. That’s all he is now; a fable for husbands.
My story would instead be that I missed the birth because I forgot that a birth might happen. Though I exaggerated in saying this would lead to divorce. The reality instead would be losing every argument that you ever have with your partner from that point onward (arguably a worse fate).
Some glimpses of the future played before my eyes:
“I disagree, our boy would do much better at another school…”
Well it’s nice of you to care about your son’s future, when you weren’t there at it’s start.
“I can’t believe you’re thinking of missing my mum’s birthday”
That’s rich coming from the guy who missed his wife’s labour
“Sex? Tonight?”
So you can not be there at another birth?
It should probably be noted that somebody else in a similar scenario would be worrying more about their wife than about losing all arguments in the future, but well, they are a very short-sighted person.
Regardless of how selfish or selfless the worry is, the important thing is that the correct action is brought about; in this case borrowing someone’s phone and calling the hospital.
At this point we can cut to Jane. She’s sitting somewhere in King’s College Hospital maternity ward when a midwife barges into her room to usher a warning about unfolding external circumstances.
“We’ve just received an unusual call from a suspicious man using the landline phone of a Peckham leisure centre,” she begins, “do you think you might know him?”
“Oh yeh that definitely sounds like my partner,” responds Jane.
She calls me back and tells me that all is ok. A routine scan was required and it held her back, which was of course what we predicted to be most likely all along. I sigh in relief.
So let us now cut to a week later, where much more importantly than all this preceding nonsense, I have a second son. And I was there at the labour, standing proudly with my warrior wife who gave it hell. I’m at home today awaiting them to return from hospital after a week in the trenches, upon which the celebratory request is ragù and a bottle of wine.
Here is its recipe, one to recuperate the body of even the most war-trodden, and something so tender in its preparation that I wonder if it alone could have (almost) salvaged our marriage if things had gone differently, and I had missed labour by sitting about clueless in that Peckham leisure centre.
Return-From-Hospital Ragù
To give a recipe for ragù does not do the concept justice. Ragù and braises are expressions of a cook and so change with differing mood and circumstance. This is but one way of going forward, and a way that fulfils the needs of my wife after being deprived (due to the ever more strict NHS guidelines) of wine (shocking!) and liver for near a year. It’s something to take slowly, to revel in its layering of flavours, and through its entire preparation to be imagining something good (be it news, friends or fortune) to celebrate.
It is important too to make more than you need. Today’s ragù with pasta is tomorrow’s lasagne, soup noodle topping, pie filling, mince n’ tatties, toastie… the list goes on. The ingredients are rough proportions, don’t sweat over them, sweat only the soffrito instead.
Ingredients
1 kg beef mince
250g pancetta (best quality, not some sad cubed number from the supermarket)
200g chicken lives
2 onions, 2 large carrots, 3 sticks of celery
1 bottle of white wine (something cheap, don’t be silly about wasting good stuff)
750ml of stock (preferably homemade, but you can buy fresh stock from butchers or supermarkets usually - a tin or two of beef confit for example)
Sprig of rosemary and 2 bay leaves
a nob of butter, plus more for serving
This is my favourite kind of cooking. Asian preparations are all chopping up front then brisk frying at high heats, while these European braises are the opposite, all gentle heat and chopping as you go.
Put some music on, a bit of Joe Tossini would be my recommendation, and pour yourself a glass of wine.
Get a big heavy-bottomed pot that will fit the whole ragù on a medium heat (preferably a cast-iron le creuset). Chop the rind of your pancetta and dice into cubes, add both rind and pancetta to pot. That will start warming up and sizzling, releasing glorious fat.
In meantime start dicing the vegetables, the finer the better, but don’t kill yourself over it.
When the pancetta is nicely browned and a little crispy, remove it with a slotted spoon and keep the fat in the pot. Turn the heat up and add the mince with a couple of big pinches of salt. Leave it for a couple of minutes so it colours, then turn it all over. Give it another couple of minutes, then remove it all with a slotted spoon to a bowl with the pancetta.
The fat may have all been absorbed at this point by the meat, in which case add a nob of butter and dump in your soffrito (all the diced vegetables). You have two options here based on what you can be bothered with. 1: fry on medium heat for 10-15 minutes, stirring as you go until golden and softened. 2: Put on lowest possible heat, cover with a lid and cook for about an hour. The second approach gives a richer caramelised base as the sugars breakdown, but both will do.
Pulse your chicken livers in a food blender so that they are not quite a pureè, alternatively mince them on a chopping board with a knife. Add them to your soffrito with the pancetta (and rinds), mince and a bottle of wine and then the stock. Add more stock if the whole thing is not submerged. Taste for salt and add a little more if needed, place you sprig of rosemary and bay leaves gently to one side.
Once boiling, reduce the heat to lowest setting so it barely pips away. Leave the lid slightly ajar so some steam can evaporate and cook for two to three hours, topping up with more stock or water if it is starting to dry out. It is ready when the mince is wonderfully soft and the sauce is reduced. At this point remove the rinds and herbs.
To serve with pasta, boil pasta until al dente and reserve the pasta cooking water. Then in a pan that can hold both pasta and ragù, add your ragù (about 100g of ragu per 100g of pasta) and pasta and cook together with some more pasta water (if not saucy enough in body) for a minute until the sauce is homogenous. Take off heat, grind pepper over and vigorously stir in a few nobs of butter, preferably tossing the pasta in the air if you have the right pan for it and the knack. This mixing phase is almost the most important part of making pasta, don’t neglect it.
Enjoy with another glass of wine and something to celebrate xx
yum, chicken liver ragu. Thanks again :)