New fathers staying overnight in hospitals? Only a man would think of this News just in - Labour would like you to share all the gooey details of your labour with complete strangers. Yes you read that right - just after giving birth it is proposed that you will have to recover on the Labour ward next to other people's husbands and partners. In a speech yesterday by some policy guru called Jon Cruddas, he said, "We need to encourage change in maternity services to engage the whole family and include fathers. We should learn from hospitals like the Royal United in Bath, which is working towards allowing dads who want to, to stay overnight during and after the birth. Only a bloke could think this is a good idea. Now this might sound reasonable at first, but let's think it through. I have been lucky enough to have had two wonderful births on the NHS. I delivered Annabelle in the Royal Free Hampstead, and Matthew at King's College London. I could not fault the care I received but as I have had these experiences I know this idea will hinder not help new mums. First, of course dads can stay during the birth. Dads can stay with Mum for all of the final stages of birth and they do not get kicked out of the labour room just because the baby is crowing at midnight. However, after you leave your private labour room, you are moved to a labour ward. This is a ward - not a room. Now, this is shared with about six other women and babies. Visitors are coming and going and you have a curtain for privacy. But it is a curtain only. On the labour ward visitors leave at around 6pm so mum and baby can get some sleep, shuffle to bathroom (and it is a shuffle), establish breastfeeding and cry (and you do cry). Now this bloke Cruddas may be some genius policy wonk but I know he has never and will never give birth. So he will never have an episiotomy, or a third degree tear, or leaking nipples, or leaking from other parts of ones body. Now we have to do this parade in front of every man and his dog not just during the day but at night too, and have some strange man snoring on a chair next to us. Cheers Cruddas. This policy really is just to make Labour look nice and fluffy and treats mums and dads the same - not just equal but exactly the same. Well, the last time I was dilating at 10 centimetres it was pretty obvious we are not the same after all. This philosophy of sameness needs to be dumped in the closet of defunct ideas along with communism and phrenology. Now, there are some hospitals that might work on a very ad hoc basis and if Mum really wants Dad to stay overnight (maybe as a result a very traumatic birth), or at least stay late into night discretely on chair beside mum no one would object to this. But it should not be enshrined as a right - hospitals should have discretion to say no. If this was made policy I would seriously have to consider a home birth for any future Perrins. At least I will only have to put up with my own dear husband snoring after just having given birth - and not my neighbour's husband too.