There is a circle of women in the room, and the woman I love is in the middle. There's the grandmother, the friend, the midwife, the nurses and all the other medical Wise Women who will help my son enter the world safely.

It's the sort of group that might scare a man. These women, who know each other to varying degrees, seem to have perfected a form of wordless communication, a way of handing information back and forth via glances and gestures that hints at some greater gestalt. I stand where I'm told, do what I'm told and generally try to stay out of the way.

No matter how vital I was to the start of this whole shindig, right now I am about as useful as luggage. Well, that's not true ... luggage doesn't provide moral support.

I've never known whether or not the whole moral support thing is for real, though. Do they really want us there, getting our man germs all over the conclave, muttering words encouraging them to do what their bodies are going to do, have been doing for eons, completely without our verbal encouragement? Or would they prefer we just get out of the way and let the women handle things? Could the old '50s stereotype of the men smoking furiously in a lounge until notified of the baby's presence have been yet another brilliant female invention designed to steer us men away from that which we had no business being in the middle of?

But the time is growing near, and that first cry will soon echo around the room.

The midwife (if there's a Nobel for caring, she gets it) hands me a pair of scissors. I look at it like a caveman finding a monolith blocking the entrance to his cave, then one of my few remaining functioning synapses connects and I remember I've got a cord to cut. I have a Job! I have Something To Do! The fact that it could be done by anyone else standing in the room doesn't matter; it's my job and by the gods I'm going to do it ... as long as it's OK with all the women.

Then, he's here. For the second time, I am there when my son takes that first breath, and the world pauses, birds suspended in flight and waterfalls in mid-cascade, waiting for that first wail, that music as old as human ears that tells us that all's well and that the newcomer would like to be put back in now, please.

I had been scared it wouldn't be as miraculous the second time, that having seen the whole show before would take a bit of the lustre out of the proceedings and taint the wonder with familiarity. I need not have worried. When this little wonder was laid in the warmer, and I leaned over to sing to him while all the women attended to his mother, the eyes that looked up at me were just as spellbinding, and the tiny hand that gripped my pinky was just as unshakeably strong.

Two hours later, the new big brother arrived. He ran across the room to where I was holding his baby brother on the couch, hugged me, then planted a kiss on the little guy's forehead. I know the sibling relationship won't always be that smooth (and, in fact, just two weeks in we've seen rumblings of discord), but it was a great starting image.

The circle of women helped bring this boy to me. Now my real job, more real than keeping house, testing recipes or even, dear readers, writing this column, begins all over again. I'm sure this isn't the last you'll hear about. If Dave Barry is any indication, we columnist types have an annoying habit of including our kids in our work with fair frequency.