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The mother reports: After the divorce, for various reasons, I still use my married name, and so throughout the entire pregnancy the question of which surname the child will have is a recurring one. The father's or mine (and thus my ex-husband's). It is clear that the decision depends on me, and since there are always challenges in the relationship, it is not actually clear what the child's surname will be until the birth. Only after the birth, in the birthing center, do I decide that the child should have his name.

That same night, my partner begins to have slight back pain, so that he has problems lying in bed with us. We put it down to him being in an unfavorable position during the birth.

It takes about four weeks until we get to the registry office to complete all the formalities. His back pain is still there, but not very severe.
When we finally get to the registry office and I have signed that the child will have his last name, the registrar leaves the room for a moment. At that moment he turns to me and says that he doesn't know what has happened, but he has just had a terrible pain in his lower back. He can hardly stand up or walk.
From that moment on, his unbearable back pain lasts for about another 5-6 months. Sometimes it is so severe that he can hardly move. After that, it slowly subsides bit by bit.

We didn't know about GNM at the time and luckily my partner didn't have any major tests done on himself.
When we learned about GNM, we realized that he must have had a loss of self-esteem at the very beginning of the pregnancy when I told him that I didn't yet know what name the child should have. He partially came to terms with it after the birth, when I had decided that the child would have his name. The final solution, however, only came (promptly) at the registry office, when the paper was signed and thus legally valid.