Finally, a man experiences the pain of childbirth

WHEN I meet Henry McKean in The Humble Bean café on Aungier Street in Dublin he has the gait and face of a man who has just been through hell.

In a way, he has. He has just returned from Amsterdam where last week he ‘gave birth’ to Baby David after a labour that lasted over two hours.

The Geboortehuis Private Maternity Clinic offers men the opportunity to go through labour, or at least simulated labour, with the help of a machine that induces pain through electrodes attached to various parts of the patient’s body. It is, according to McKean, the closest thing men get to experiencing labour.