Of course the father should be there. Both for the most intense emotional high he’ll ever experience (I’ve cried - tears and all - exactly three times in my adult life. Every one of those times were when I drove home from the hospital after the birth of one of my children), and for the emotional support for the wife/partner.
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I never ventured down below her waist, though, and stayed adamantly at her side. I didn’t even want to cut the navel cord. I’ll admit that the thought of seeing the wide open, bleeding vagina of the one I enjoyed sex with sort of put me off my lunch (pun intended). That was a mental picture I could do well without. But staying out of the delivery room? No way!
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OP: this whole thread has me thinking about your thoughts on breast feeding. Just curious, would that ruin the “mystique” of your partner’s breasts for you?
My husband was with me during the delivery of our two children and cut the umbilical cord both times. Our first born had the cord wrapped around his neck and forceps were used. (He was fine after being on oxygen a few hours) It was very scary, and I can’t imagine my husband not having been there for me and our son.
In the legal sense, they actually do that in our country. It’s called the “pater est” rule, by default establishing the mother’s husband as the legal father regardless of biology.
Present for both births. First an emergency C-section, second a scheduled C-section. Never considered not being there.
If your wife is going under the knife, **do not say **“Wow, they’ve got you opened up like a turkey.” Twenty-one years later and she still won’t let me forget it.
Yes, its important. Labor is hours and hours - and its hours and hours that you want support from the person who is supposed to be supporting you. And its hours and hours that don’t actually have that much to do with the vagina. Moreover, in most modern hospitals, L&D nurses aren’t staffed to be there every moment, and you want someone there with you to help you into the rocker or off the ball and into the bed.
The last twenty minutes or so have lots to do with the vagina, and that is where all the gross stuff happens. And that is where many woman are happy to have their husband paying attention to them when the MD staff pays attention to their vagina and the baby.
But I also think that women who expect their husbands to be good labor coaches (the job reserved for husbands) should make sure their husband has what it takes to be a labor coach and, if necessary, get another one. Dad can sit by her head, hold her hand, give her support, and hold the new baby, but many husbands become fairly useless in terms of labor coaching (mine did, and it doesn’t seem to be uncommon) when their wife is in pain. A doula, a female friend who has been through it before, even borrowing a girlfriends husband who has proved himself an effective coach.
ETA: Don’t adopt merely to avoid labor and delivery, or even pregnancy. Frankly, the idea of outsource childbirth to the poor or the third world because its inconvenient or might ruin some sexual mystique is kind of offensive.
That may have started to change back. A few years ago when my second child was born the waiting room was quite large with two TVs, computer terminals, and what seemed to be 3 full extended families all having picnics. If I had to theorize based on that one anecdote, maybe it’s more common for grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc. to wait at the hospital now than it was in the past.* Did families not do that as much 30 years ago?
Our families didn’t; they stayed at home and waiting for the phone call.
I don’t fault him for asking, either, and this is a conversation that should take place between him and his wife. Not that I am ever going to have children, but if I was, I’d definitely want him to be there. But then blood and ickiness barely fazes him. He can stay up by my head, though.
But picunurse’s story makes me want to shrivel up and hide. No wonder sometimes moms want the “princess” treatment when they have a baby; it’s got to be better than having a whole bunch of young men staring at you at nineteen.
Hey Spoke, as a guy who had similar doubts to you, as well as my general squeamishness, being in the room is no big deal and IMHO a good idea. Brains can compartmentalize information pretty well, so the image of my daughter’s purple head sticking out of my wife’s vagina as the doctor vacuumed out her lungs, while impossible to forget, doesn’t pop up at inopportune moments either.
And while you can set up matters so you don’t have to see anything, the temptation to take a peek is overwhelming. Especially if they set up a big mirror so your wife can watch what’s happening down there.
And if they ask you if you want to cut the cord, be aware its thick and gristly, so approach it like cutting tips off a chicken wing, and not like cutting a piece of paper. You’ve got to give it some muscle.
With each of our three children, my wife had a very simple paternity test: Whoever is with her, is the father. I’m 99.44% sure that each of our boys was not from an anesthesiologist.
I, however, had a simple rule of my own. I would worry only about what was going on Up Here, and let the trained medical professionals worry about what happened Down There. When something came out from Down There, and was brought Up Here, then I would start worrying about that, too.
Well it’s certainly a recent development and not some age-old tradition. In the past this would have been handled by a midwife and/or a doctor, and the father was not expected to be in the room.
I think we are also unique in the animal kingdom in our current insistence that the father be present at birth. As I mentioned I grew up on the farm, and a cow about to have a calf would separate from the herd and go off by itself to give birth. (Unaccompanied by the bull, of course.) Boars weren’t much for watching piglets come into the world either.
A lot has changed with normal birth practices in the last century. Google a graph of maternal/ neonatal mortality, for example (here’s one, but I’m not sure how good it is). The “good old days” (say, the 1950) gave me a 10x chance of dying in childbirth compared to now, so I’m not prepared to be all nostalgic for the practices before I was born. Also, women have more choices and control over childbirth than they’ve ever had, and modern birth practices take a lot of the anxiety out of the whole thing. As it’s become less dangerous, women have more control, and men are increasingly involved in childrearing, it stands to reason they’d be more involved in the birth.
Oh be a man. Stand there and watch what you have wrot. Watch your child being brought into the world. However, if the OB reaches for what looks like a pair of scissors and mentions something sounding like ‘episiotomy’, go sit in a corner and cover your eyes. Your ears too if at all possible.
Without reading the thread I say good idea. I was the most reluctant father, particularly about being in the delivery room. It turned out I had a role - I was my wife’s coach, and her advocate against The Evil And Only Semi-Competant Medical Establishment. I do not regret being in the delivery room. Quite the opposite! Holding my son right after he was born was the best feeling I’d ever had in my life to that point - and I’ve had a great life! My regret is that I was not a better advocate for my wife. And that I didn’t kill at least one doctor. Educate yourself and be ready to fight for your wife and child!
You are making an implicit assumption that the OP’s hang-ups will let him have anything to do with a hypothetical wife during her pregnancy. It’s not uncommon for men to take a 10-month vacation from anything sexual with their wives, starting right about the time the pregnancy is discovered. The motivation for these men is probably along the lines of “maintaining the sexual mystique”…or maybe the Madonna-whore complex. I’m not assuming how the OP will act either way, but if his hang-ups which keep him out of the delivery room also keep him out of his wife’s underwear during the entire pregnancy, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised.
I’ll admit that not being in the delivery room was never an option for me…unless I wanted divorce papers to immediately follow the birth certificate. But that was never an issue, because I genuinely wanted to be there. You couldn’t have offered me anything to keep me out of there. Not unlike 2square4u above, about the only time I’ve ever cried, with tears, in my adult life was when I saw my son for the first time. And maybe that still would have happened if he had been brought out to me in the delivery room…but I would have missed the “magic” of hearing him cry when he hit the air. And I would have missed the indescribably powerful moment that followed a minute later. The nurse placed Evan on his mom’s chest right away, and I was kneeling beside the bed looking at him. After just a moment, he opened his eyes for the first time, and immediately made eye contact with me. It occurred to me right then that not only was it the first time he saw his dad, but that I was the first thing he had ever seen. That will always be a powerful memory for me…locking gazes with this brand new person, and knowing that I will have been “there” since the moment he first drew breath.
Now, I’ll also say that my delivery room role wasn’t what I expected it to be. I had planned on being there beside my wife at the head of the bed, lending support and coaching. I planned on completely avoiding everything below the equator, because I’ve got a low threshold for gore when it involves people I love. But when it came time for my wife to start pushing, the nurse ordered me to “hold a leg!” And the mechanics of holding an ankle on a leg whose knee is bent back near chest level prohibit you from staying in a position where you can’t possibly see anything. When the baby started to crown, I was encouraged to take a peek at “all the hair”, and I found that curiosity overwhelmed seamishness at that moment. So I looked, and saw a sight that wasnt nearly as traumatic as I has prepared myself for. I think they pick the worst of the worst examples in those childbirth videos, so as to modulate expectations.
Then, the nurse (or midwife, can’t remember which) asked if we wanted to feel his head. Both of us, beforehand, had decided the answer to that was “no way!” But in the moment, curiosity won out again for both of us. That wasn’t icky…just weird. After he was born I did, however, stick to my earlier resolve to not cut the umbilical cord. I wanted no part of that, and followed through with it. At least one thing went to plan.
FWIW, I would be highly offended if my husband refused to touch me sexually for the duration of my pregnancy, too. Certainly, if I’m sick or on bedrest or something, that’d be an entirely different issue, but my understanding is that generally pregnant women = hornier than normal women.
