I saw my wife give birth, it was both gross and fascinating but mostly I was grateful that she went through that for us, so yeah I also thought it was beautiful.
It’s so cool to see. The head comes out so slowly but then once the shoulders are out, the baby just pops right out. Amazing.
I’m a bit squeamish, so I arranged myself so as to be seated basically next to my wife’s head, facing the wall, and was laser focused on holding her hand and maintaining eye contact with her.
Meanwhile, the delivering doctor was narrating a play by play as our kid went from just barely crowning to head fully out in three contractions, and then she just had to maneuver his shoulder free and he popped out on the fourth push. Three random things I will never forget from that night:
- The doctor seeing the umbilical cord and announcing “That’s a man that likes to eat!”
- The doctor further complimenting my wife that she “rocked that thing out like it was her job”
- One of the nurses looking into the hazmat bucket they’d packed the placenta into and muttering “Jesus Christ…”
Overall, 10/10, never doing it ever again.
The cord was much harder to cut than I thought it would be. Like it wasn’t hard, just more effort than I thought it would have needed.
Like cutting rubber foam with dull scissors.
Yeah, that’s pretty accurate. I thought it would be like cutting some chicken skin with alright scissors haha.
Edit: not sure why you were down voted.
I was amazed on how much blood there was.
My wife was super out of it on Epidural drugs during real labor, but I love telling her the sound of the blood hitting the floor after the baby came out.
It was baby then SPLOOSSHH. I’ll never forget that noise.
My wife is preggers so I’ve got all this to look forward to .
Don’t bail out on watching it. It really is fascinating to see.
But for sure don’t prioritize watching over helping your wife out. Pushing on her upper back while she’s pushing helped my wife out a ton. There was a clear difference in the baby’s movement through the birth canal when I helped out.
But have fun! It’s such a wild, exhausting time. Your wife is going to struggle so be supportive!
Sorry for the unsolicited advice, we had our first kid a couple months ago, so it’s still fresh in my mind.
It’s our first kid as well. Shitting bricks but I’m almost certainly less worried than her so I think my role is to basically support her as much as possible. Thanks for the advice!
I’m dense… can someone explain?
“that thing” is her vagina
You are adorable. Really. Stay that way. I admire your flair of innocence and curiosity.
I delivered my baby and for sure about 35% of my thought process in that period was “holy shit she’s really stretched out” lol
Had a friend when I was a kid whose mom was… eccentric. Very hippie old lady who worked as a “tantric sex couples therapist”. One time when I slept over I woke up and had to go pee. I bumped into the mom who was walking around the house completely naked and she hugged me and asked if I wanted a cup of tea, I was still half awake and said yes for some reason. When I came back from the toilet she was sitting with a photo album and asked me to sit down next to her so she could show “the birth of her daughter” (my friend). And the photos were incredibly explicit. My reaction was exactly like this comic, really not something a 13-year-old boy like me should see. I’m lucky it didn’t give me some birthing or pregnancy fetish or something, being at a prime age at the time for something like that to develop.
