In Chapter 4, we consider both women’s and men’s accounts of the birth of their first child. In our focus on birthing experiences, we consider both women’s and men’s experiences separately and explore similarities within couples. For women, we reflect on orientations to ideas of ‘natural’ birth, and for men we focus on accounts of emotional responses to the birth of a child, and their experiences of cutting the umbilical cord (or not). For both women and men, we focus on issues with receiving support while in hospital, experiences of traumatic birth, and men’s involvement in the birth of their child. Overall, this chapter highlights similarities between women and men within some of the couples, as well as marked differences for some couples. The chapter explores how in some instances birthing is naturalised, while in other instances it is seen as highly mediated.