Considering the intensity of labor pains, being at the birth of my child violates my number one rule: Never be with your wife when she has carte blanche to tell you exactly what she thinks of you.
◙
The sound of the episiotomy made my skin crawl. When I think about it, I cross my legs in pain and I don’t even have a vagina.
◙
I keep expecting the baby to come out yelling, “THIS… IS… SPARTAAAAA!”, which is weird because I’ve only seen it happen once before.
◙
If I show up for the first seconds of my child’s life, he’s going to expect me to be at his birthdays and little league games.
◙
The miracle of birth is always immediately followed by the mundane bloody horror that is the afterbirth.
◙
When the baby crowns, it looks like the eye of a blind cyclops. My baby was born okay, but I had six months of cyclops nightmares to contend with.
◙
At childbirth, the mother should be the center of attention. If I’m there, I might draw attention to myself, ruining her overall experience.
◙
If I’m there, the doctor may ask me to help with the birth… or, even worse, to comfort the mother.
◙
You might screw up as a birthing coach and tell her to breathe in when she should be breathing out and out when she should be breathing in. That’s got “lawsuit” written all over it.
◙
Just after birth, the doctor smacked my baby’s behind. I felt obligated to take a swing at him, even though I suspected he was just doing his job…
Potatoes and the Promise of More Potatoes 
Having attended four of my children’s births, I really understand these sentiments. Missed two because they were Caesarian, but the last one of our six, the doctor allowed me to be at the Caesarian birth, if we promised to stop having children!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Funny!
I was at the births of both my boys and I was retroactively glad to be there…
LikeLike
I love this Charles, especially the bit about ruining the mother’s experience 😆
LikeLiked by 1 person
My ex waited so long for the pain to get unendurable that she made it to the hospital with only ten minutes to spare…
LikeLiked by 1 person
Lucky you. 19 1/2 hours with my first. 6 with the second and most of them I was alone. My mum wouldn’t look after my son, she was going to the casino, so my husband couldn’t be there until the last 30 minutes
LikeLiked by 1 person
Good lord! You win!
LikeLike
From the sound of this post, I’m surprised the doctor… and your wife…. didn’t slap you instead.
😉
LikeLiked by 1 person
Well, that is pretty much a constant danger…
LikeLiked by 1 person
I was there…but being an empath and a very sensitive human being on top of that, I spent most of my time praying I did not “heave” and I kept one eye on the exit just in case.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I saw things that I can only describe to a psychiatrist…
LikeLiked by 1 person