Becoming a parent is a joyous time for most. With never truly knowing what to expect, it is expected to just go with the flow. While women are in pain doing the work, fathers are left to fend for themselves and some reactions are quite hilarious. In this piece, doctors share the most hilarious thing a father did while in the delivery room. Keep in mind stories were edited for clarity.
“Where Is She?”
“One day, a man came running down the ward hallway screaming for help that his wife was in labor, and they needed the docs to come quickly! The nurses looked around curiously and asked him ‘ok… so where is she?’
The color from the man’s face drains for a second as he thinks this over…
‘OH NO!’ and he legs it out of there.
Forty minutes later he returns with wife in tow. In his initial rush, he’d packed change of clothes, the car seat, camera gear, high tailed it to the hospital and left the missus at home!”
Lights Out Doc
“A doctor was delivering the baby via ventouse, a vacuum extraction. He was pulling, and you do honestly have to put some muscle into it, those babies are stuck pretty fast in there sometimes. Anyway, the suction cap came off the baby’s head, this happens a lot. The father of the baby thought that the doctor had pulled so hard that he had pulled the baby’s head off, so naturally punched the doctor in the jaw, who went straight down to the ground like a felled tree. Much yelling ensued, people holding the father back, him realizing that the baby was fine once we pointed out that the head was still inside, unconscious doctor being pulled into a chair, another doctor coming in to do the delivery, the mother crying hysterically.
We had to have a quick and frantic conversation at the midwives’ station about whether to allow the father to remain in the room. We decided that from his vantage point it may have appeared that the baby’s head had been, uh, removed and that he had a momentary loss of reason. He was also hugely apologetic and took responsibility for his actions. The doctor who got punched took every opportunity afterwards to tell that story as often as possible, and we all laughed.”
Surprise!
“We hired a Douala for our first kid four years ago, and she told us a story that we still laugh about.
She was with a couple that had been told they were having a daughter as their first kid. So like first time parents they outdid themselves with everything pink, sparkly and frilly, the whole nine yards. The mom goes in to labor, and they call the Douala to come in to be there for the birth. The mom’s pushing, the dad is cheering nervously.
The baby pops out and the Douala notices that the sonogram tech that said they were having a girl messed up. The dad was too busy to notice anything is amiss. So the Douala tells the dad to do a finger and toe count to clue him in. So the dad looks at the baby, see 10 fingers and 10 toes, and something he wasn’t expecting.
This guy had been told that he was having a daughter for the past six months and saw an extra appendage, and the first thing he screamed was, ‘OH MY GOD! MY DAUGHTER HAS A WILLY!'”
A Crazy Mix Of Events
“This happy couple. Both of them blond, blue-eyed, happy people. Like most of it. They seem like the most All-American couple possible. The wife is pregnant. They tell the news and tell their good friend, who is a dark skinned guy.
They have the baby. It has a dark complexion.
The wife said, ‘I didn’t want to tell you me and him were having an affair…’
The husband looked, and said to his best friend, ‘You cheated on me with my wife?’
All things considered, everything seemed to go happily for it: They realized that their friend swung both ways and was cheating with both of them at the same time. They had a laugh, and at last check all three of them seem to be pretty happy when I see them around.”
Dad’s Delivery
“I was in labor with my son for a total of 35 minutes. I had my first contraction, and he was out 35 minutes later. Obviously, we didn’t make it to the hospital.
I had what I thought was a contraction (this was my second baby) and told my husband I thought I was going into labor. Could he please get our daughter ready (she was 13 months at the time) and grab the bag I had packed for the hospital. By the time he came back downstairs, I’d had two more contractions in about a minute. So I said we’d better get going. As I said it, my water broke and I had another contraction. So I told him he’d better call 911 for an ambulance, because I wasn’t sure we’d make it to the hospital 20-30 minutes away and didn’t want to have a baby in the car.
He calls 911 and tells them what’s going on. I only hear his side of the conversation. I later found out they were telling him to grab things – towels, shoelaces, etc. So I’m in active labor on the couch, waiting for the paramedics, hoping I won’t have to push until they get there. And my husband starts freaking out on the 911 operator. I hear:
‘That is your job. You need to get here. That is your job.’
Several times he says that. The operator was trying to get him prepared if the baby was born before the paramedics arrived. So he’s holding my 13-month-old (who was terrified because she had no idea what was going on) and screaming at the 911 operator that it wasn’t his job to deliver his son.
The paramedics did make it, with about 30 seconds to spare. One came over to me on the couch and told me not to push if I was able. He just got the words out and I said I had to push, pushed once, and my son was born.
My husband was so terrified and panicked. He’s a good guy and a great dad, but he did not want to deliver a baby. Really didn’t want to deliver a baby. I was laying there hoping the paramedics would make it, and he just screamed about how they needed to be there. It was not reassuring. We brought a bunch of homemade goodies to the fire station, and they promised they’d bring a plate to the dispatcher. I’m still so sorry he yelled at her.”
What Is Happening To My Wife?
“I remember assisting with a delivery as a medical student working with a family resident physician. Usually, they let the student do a lot of it to get experience, but I remember the attending physician, referring to the resident, telling me, ‘No, no, let her do it. She needs the practice. You just watch.’
When an attending physician says, ‘No, no, She needs the practice,’ it’s not a good sign. Luckily, the baby itself got delivered, and I thought all is good.
After a baby is born, you have to deliver the placenta by applying gentle traction on the cord to encourage progress. While the attending physician was distracted by the new baby, I watched in horror as the resident YANKED on the umbilical cord.
Of course, it snapped. She had this look of dread on her face and with good reason. Then, we had to take drastic measures. The attending physician explained to the husband what would happen next.
Attending: ‘We’re going to take her back to the operating room.’
Father: ‘She’s having surgery?’
Attending: ‘Hopefully not, sir. We’re going to extract the placenta manually.’
Father: ‘How are you getting in if there’s no surgery?’
Attending: ‘Well, sir, we’re able to enter through the birth canal.’
Father: ‘You’re gonna put some tool inside her?’
Attending: ‘No sir, we’ll be doing a manual extraction.’
Father: ‘Manual?’
Attending: ‘With a hand. And arm.’
Father: ‘You’re going to stick your ARM up my wife?’
Attending: ‘That’s about right, sir.’
Father: ‘You mean to tell me you’re going to fist my wife?’
The conversation sort of went on this way for a while. When we got back to the operating room, I watched in horror as the attending physician put on a glove that pretty much went to her shoulder, and just dove right in.
She was in past her elbow, manually scraping the placenta out. The wife was loopy but not ‘out’ during the procedure and was providing colorful commentary.
‘I swear to God, I could feel them pressing on my lungs,’ the woman said to her husband after we had finished.
‘I thought they went in from below,’ the husband said.
In beautiful theatrics, she grabbed his shirt, pulled him towards her, and said, through clenched teeth, ‘They did.’
As for me, I decided to go into psychiatry.”
Prepared Like A Quarterback
“A young couple were in to deliver their first child. The mom is pushing and the dad is doing this awkward jig wanting to be helpful but not really knowing how to be helpful. At one point I say, ‘Okay, we can see the head now’ (still awhile to go) and the dad jumps up, runs to the counter, puts on rubber gloves, and gets into football receiving position, like 10 feet away from his wife’s legs.
We all burst out laughing, and he was very embarrassed to learn that babies do not shoot out across the room to be caught like a football.”
Don’t Look!
“I’m an emergency nurse but was once up in labor and delivery assisting in a birth. A couple was expecting their first child, and mom was pushing. About half of all women poop during birth, and in this case mom pooped a little, and also had a pretty nasty hemorrhoid emerging. The dad was up near the mom’s head and couldn’t see all this.
As the baby was crowing, the doctor said, ‘Come look, you can see his head.’ At this time there happened to be a mushy bloody turd dangling from mom’s enormous bloody hemorrhoid. In an instant, I immediately thought about how no woman on Earth would ever want her husband to see her in that state and I shouted, ‘NO, WAIT,’ as the dad was coming around to get a glance, causing all three of them to look at me like I was insane.
I think this scared dad into looking at the area even faster and before I could at least wipe the mess away and the look on his face was one of shock and horror.
They had a cute baby though but I’m pretty sure they never made love again.”
Just Breathe Dad
“Because of my glorious epidural (am also an anesthesiologist) I was able to rest and save my energy for the pushing stage of labor. My husband (not in the medical field whatsoever) refused to believe I was actually progressing in my labor because of how comfortable I appeared. He was under the impression that women must scream and thrash around and go through horrendous pain during childbirth, so I must not ACTUALLY be having the baby. Please note, I love OB and it is my favorite part of my practice, so I knew what my body was going to experience– thus choosing an epidural early on for pain control.
My husband was so amazed by this and my calm demeanor that he was in some serious denial. When the nurses told me I was fully dilated and my OB came in to deliver our baby girl my husband was asked to hold my leg. He grabbed my foot, looked down, and immediately turned white and sunk to the floor out cold. He ended up eating my ice chips and breathing my oxygen while I held my own leg in the stirrup and pushed out our baby.”
Real Life Jerry Springer Episode
“I witnessed/heard a full on Jerry Springer episode in real life while also recovering from childbirth of our own.
So, we were in the hospital for few days already due to complications with our delivery, and had begun to notice that there were constantly people in the hall outside our room making very hushed phone calls. We would keep the door closed, but while these calls while hushed, were still kinda audible to us, especially when they got louder, and we got quiet to listen. There was a huge gap under our door.
Apparently they were our neighbors from down the hall, and our door was just far enough away from their room that they felt comfortable to speak right outside it. Initially the bits we caught piqued our curiosity, so we started to pay more attention. We learned the husband had left soon after the baby was born. Not sure when exactly, but the initial calls we heard were the family trying to track him down and get him to return to the hospital. It must have worked because about a day later we heard man and woman outside our door having a conversation.
It started with a sentiment similar to “I’m not sure where we stand, mom” and escalated to a direct ‘Forget This, Linda! Your daughter is a floozy! I’m divorcing her!’ [side note, this is the only name I remember of the family in question] This must have rubbed some people the wrong way, especially Linda’s husband (the guy’s father in law?) who came down to give him a piece of his mind. He began yelling at the guy about ‘being a man’ and ‘doing the right thing’. We were on the edge of our seats! Then the guy started yelling back about the dad being inebriated and a loser. I remember he was laughing incredulously about the suggestion of taking advice from (this is a quote) an ‘prick degenerate like yourself’ and that’s when everything broke loose I guess.
All we heard was grunts, bangs on the wall, a ton of ‘You prick’ and ‘You fool’, and Linda giving a mix of taunts and criticisms such as (another quote here) “Now look what you made him do, Little Man!” Not quite sure who that was for, actually. Of course, I wanted to look out there, but I was being held with a tight grip on the wrist and a glaring side-eye that kept me in our room.
The fighting went on forever it seemed. The hospital was tight on security, so I don’t know how this happened. It was probably only 30-60 seconds. But eventually we hear a woman yelling for them to break it up and ‘knock it off, DAD!’ (This was the new mom!) We were practically glued to the back of the door now, listening to the drama. She proceeded to explain to them all that it was okay that (I forget his name) didn’t want to sign the documents, because she was done with him anyway. She paused and her husband and parents tried to tell her to calm down, and she doesn’t know what she’s saying and to let cooler heads prevail later. Pretty insightful for two grown men who just threw down in the maternity ward of a hospital, but I digress. Anyway, she calmly confirms everyone’s suspicions, that it is NOT her husband’s child. Even though we were trying to be quiet, I’m pretty sure our gasps were heard through the door. This was intense! The wife then announced, quite proudly, that the baby was her husband’s brothers, and she had been sleeping with him since before they were married! The husband starts to lose it, repeating ‘are you kidding me?!’ louder and louder. Then we hear the parents too, saying the same thing. They’re all turning on her! Then dad says in a very annoyed tone, ‘Honey, we know its not (husband’s) baby, and we know it’s not his brothers. We’re white, your husband and his brother are WHITE, and your baby is NOT!’
We couldn’t hold back anymore and I remember saying out loud (very loud) ‘Oh my God!’ We were laughing so hard that they obviously heard us. They scampered down the hall to their room. Never knew what happened and got an update from the nurse a few hours later that they had been checked out.”
Heart Sinking Moment
“Not a doctor but my buddy who is very fair skinned and a soldier in the Army had gotten sent back home from his deployment to be with his wife as she gave birth.
His wife is also fair skinned.
The baby was not white, the baby was dark, very dark actually.
Long story short, the wife had fooled around with a guy right after her husband had gone out for deployment, when she found out she was pregnant she figured there was a 50/50 chance it was her husband’s and not her other lover. So she said, ‘I’m just going tell him it’s his baby and hope it all works out.’
It didn’t.
He said his heart sank when he saw the doctor’s eyes. The doctor saw the baby was black before he did, and the doctor knew it was about to get a lot more messy than it already was.
My friend ended up divorcing his wife, who ended up becoming a complete mess. The biological father was nowhere to be seen, so my friend ended up adopting the baby that his now ex-wife had given birth to. The child is 6 years old now, and my buddy is remarried to a lovely wife. None of us have a clue where his ex-wife is or who the real father is, and it doesn’t matter.”
Hunger Is Not Something To Joke About
“When I was being born, my dad kept complaining to my mom (while she was giving birth) about how hungry he was and that his stomach hurt. She just kind of gave him one of those ‘Seriously?’ looks which made him more mad, so he went outside and ordered a pizza to be delivered to the delivery room.”
Delivery Mishaps
“I have several of these kinds of stories. Where do I start?
I have one in which the baby daddy and the grandma were in the delivery room. We were setting up the table to deliver.
‘Okay, Dad, want to cut the cord?’ I cheerfully asked the father.
He lost his cool.
‘Not if this she-devil is in the room!’ he said, and pointed to the grandma.
They got into a yelling match. Meanwhile, the patient and I made awkward eye contact while the nurse and the other resident tried to calm them down. We delivered the baby and I cut the cord.
I once had a couple with no prenatal care show up in labor. They ended up needing a C-section. After we got the baby out, I was closing up when the father started yelling at us and accusing us of being not real doctors. We kept on going and ignored him. He demanded to talk to the CEO of the hospital and kept on standing up and looking over the drape.
At one point, he was behind me until the nurse got him to sit down. Finally, we finished up as he was yelling at us. The mother never showed up for follow-up appointments, but later ended up with a surgical site infection. They tried to sue us. I always wondered if there was some underlying abuse there.
Another time, I was doing an initial prenatal visit for a mom on Suboxone, a narcotic.
Good for her, trying to get over her addiction.
She seemed motivated. She was excited. The child’s father seemed excited. Both seemed like a cute couple. I was doing a quick ultrasound in the room and he randomly asked me a question:
‘So, can you tell me who the dad is?’ he asked.
‘You need a DNA paternity test for that,’ I replied.
The mom looked shocked.
‘Well, let’s do it,’ he said.
‘We don’t do them until the baby is born,’ I explained. ‘The method for doing it before delivery has risks associated with it so we don’t do genetic testing unless we think there’s a risk of a birth defect.’
‘Then WHY am I here?’
The mom was bawling at that point. I asked him to leave.”
Threats Always Do The Trick
“I’m not a doctor. This was my husband’s birth in 1944. His mom was in labor in a small town birthing home. It was literally in the local doctor’s home. His mom was in a back room with the doctor and a nurse. My husband’s dad was in the waiting room (living room).
The doctor eventually came out and told his dad there were complications: he could save mom or save the baby and my dad had to choose. My father-in-law got up, walked out, got a weapon out of his truck and came back in. He pointed the barrel at the doctor and said both better live or the doctor wouldn’t. He then sat down on the couch with the weapon in his lap.
I’ve tried to imagine that doctor’s state of mine at that moment. He went back into the room with the laboring mother and ended up pulling the baby out with forceps. Mother and baby both lived. So did the doctor.
My husband’s skull is a testament to this story. It’s like craters on the moon. I’m grateful he’s never gone bald.”
It’s Showtime!
“No one was responding to the call button as my mom was giving birth, so she yelled ‘DO SOMETHING HONEY!!’ so my dad ran out into the hallway and screamed at the top of his lungs
‘IT’S SHOWTIME AND I’M NOT A VERY GOOD CATCHER!'”
Dad Instincts Kick In
“A woman had a baby, and she didn’t want her constantly inebriated father to know. He showed up on labor and delivery, absolutely smashed out of his mind demanding he meet his grandchild. We denied his daughter was there. He started to yell, and the baby’s father heard him and came out to ask him to leave. He (the belligerent grandpa) became very irate and started to smash the windows in the doors and nursing station. The father of the child tackled him, grabbed him by his collar and dragged out of the unit, onto an elevator then dragged him outside. It’s sad how many inebriated people show up demanding to see the new member of the family. It’s a regular occurrence.”