topic: All That Blood and Stuff, i.e. the Delivery Room

Michael: Watching my wife give birth to a baby is one of the most awful things I have been called upon to do. I long for the days when men were actually allowed to sit and smoke in some waiting room during the birthing process. I know, I know… How insensitive!

I understand the support aspect of being there with one’s wife. Sure, that makes perfect sense, I guess, but can we face facts here? Men are just in the way. Hospitals these days have nurses and doctors and interns and all kinds of other personnel for everything—one to hold the clipboard, one to hand out equipment, one to read the monitors, one to inject the drugs, one to deliver the kid, one to take insurance info, and one to size him or her up once the kid is officially part of this world.

Among the swarm that is these folks, a swooning, sickened or ga-ga-eyed father is best off out of site and out of the way. I can’t even count how many times I’ve had to say “Oops, I’m sorry” or “Excuse me, my bad” to one of them.

My wife doesn’t get it. “Why wouldn’t you want to be there for the birth of your very own child?” she asks, incredulous at my incredible callousness. I go on to explain why I never even wanted to become a doctor, you know, all that blood and stuff. And there’s the aspect that, well, you’re my romantic partner, right? She doesn’t connect the dots.

For our second child, she insisted on pulling him out herself! Yeah, I didn’t know you could do that either. It was all so unnatural that the kid came out looking like John Belushi in a “Coneheads” skit. She made me videotape it. She couldn’t wait to see the footage, but I think her reaction was, “Eww.” One month later I thought I saw a UFO in the backyard, and I taped over it. No one got upset.

After the birth of our most recent kid, just afterward a nurse held up a giant, bloody thing that looked like a cow’s liver and, as if she was seeing a prize-winning seatrout, my wife excitedly said, “Great God!! That was inside of me!!” I found out later it was something called a placenta. Gross.

Anne: The nurse said MY placenta was the largest she had ever seen! I was so proud. And I was also secretly thinking that losing post-baby weight would now be a couple of pounds easier. Cool.

With each baby I expected less of Michael as far as the delivery room was concerned. He was with me the entire time, of course, and he did what he could, but he's not really the sort of guy to be a hand-holding coach and play the sensitive husband while his pain-stricken wife goes through labor... 11 hours of it!

I experienced back labor with the last two kids, and he did rub my back whenever I asked, which was awesome.

Anything to do with "down there," however, he wanted no part of, so I really didn't want him cutting the cord or watching the actual birth up close if he wasn't comfortable, which CLEARLY he wasn't.

Preparation for our first baby's delivery began with us walking hand in hand through the hospital parking lot to weekly lemaze classes, and our last ended with him sitting on the bedside couch with a good book and a couple of magazines while I groaned. By the third kid, I did "get it."