GQ's chronicler-on-call plots the meagre distance from hell to maternity, and withdraws with libido in tatters.

A friend of mine worked as an obstetrician and was frequently required to address those awful parental classes, usually held in grim hospital basements next to where they sort out the medical waste. My friend's Health Authority removed this imposition upon him, though, after his advise to the expectant parents became ever more flippant. On one occasion, a dad politely enquired how lone one was required to wait after the birth before attempting sexual intercourse. "Well," my friend replied, "a gentleman would wait until the afterbirth has been removed and the midwives have left the room." Cue silence and open mouths.

Despite all those droll Fifties Doctor films with Dirk Bogarde, the health service is not notably possessed of a sense of humour. My mate was strongly reprimanded and never allowed near prenatal classes again, a blow he took with equanimity. But then, prenatal classes are universally quite appalling. Some superannuated member of the medical clergy shovels honeyed lies at the gathered throng, the point being to convince the women that childbirth will be a breeze, no more inconveniencing than a spot of shopping. Just follow our advice: no drugs, don't lie down and don't even think about a Caesarean. Then you mull this over for a bit and eat some biscuits and the other doctor or midwife stands up and tells you more utter lies. Your minge will snap back into place straight after the birth with the speed and precision of a spring-loaded man-trap; your weight will slough off within 24 hours. You will never find out better than this. Yeah, right. Later you will find out that something like 90 percent of doctors and nurses book themselves an elective Caesarean as soon as the tenacious little sperm has penetrated the ova.

But listen, you want a genuine prenatal insight? Sneak into you local hospital maternity ward - it will probably be called a "birthing garden" or some such euphemistic new-age wank - and wander the corridors at random. You will hear screams the like of which would have chilled even Dante. Listen well to those screams: do they sound as if they are emanating form someone doing a spot of shopping? If your feeling really brave, push open the door to one of the private rooms and peek inside. Have you seen many Sam Peckinpah films or Brian De Palma, Scarface for example? Get one out on DVD so that your acquainted with the term "bloody carnage". And after you've pushed open that door, close it quickly before you're hit by a corporate spray of an indeterminate colour.

These days, most hospitals have succumbed to political correctness and thus maternity wards are, as they say, "midwife-led", rather than "doctor-led". This is both politically correct and, luckily, a hell of a lot cheaper for the hospitals. In practice, it means only two things:

First, if something goes wrong, your wife or girlfriend will die, unless the midwife presses the red panic button quickly and the golf course is situated nearby.

Second, throughout the duration of labour you will be talked down to by working-class people instead of by middle-class people. Rather than being bamboozled by medical jargon you will be made faintly nauseous by the recitation of down-to-earth aphorisms. And the midwife will refer to your newly arrived son or daughter as "babby:, with cloying familiarity you may feel is inappropriate. And to my original question - just how soon after birth can you resume sexual activity? Well, that depends upon who with, really. As far as your partner is concerned the answer is probably never. And bearing that in mind the experience she has endured, one is tempted to be sympathetic. After all, there is only one proven, 100 percent, method of birth control - not to have sex. The Catholics are dead right about that, at least.

As the brighter among you have inferred, I have recently welcomed an addition to my somewhat unorthodox family. In fact, right now, she's screaming like a fucking banshee in the bedroom five yards away. She is clamouring for my girlfriend's breasts at a decibel level which would have shamed the Who. I might Clamour equally loudly for what good it would do. The whole place reeks of stuff, that sickly sweet smell of moist wipes, overlaid with the sharper tangs of sour breast milk, urine and, of course, excrement. The truth is, nobody in this place wants to have sex, least of all me. I want to sleep, to dream of being 17 and ignorant of almost everything, especially childbirth. Now, there's the rub.

Story Written by ROD LIDDLE for the British GQ Magazine.

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