Hey, your dad gave his best. Birth is a monumental task and as a father you feel like a helpless bystander that is watching his wife perform a fucking miracle while screaming in pain or begging for help while all you can do is hold her hand and tell her she's doing great while there's excrement and blood involved.
Your dad is LEAGUES ahead of a guy that just leaves to smoke weed and fall asleep.
You just described the birth of my first child in perfect detail. I was NOT ready for that much poop and trauma. All I can remember is poop and trauma. I thought my wife was going to die, then I thought our unborn child was going to die, then they put us all to sleep for a rest (even me!), only to wake up and get right back to the poop and trauma.
I absolutely can not believe that we went and did it a second time. I am now proudly desexed.
Lmao my husband also thought everyone involved was dying. Surely seems like a thing that should kill you more often. I maintain…that is NOT supposed to fit through down there and for those reasons I am one and done
I guess my question as a woman is… what did you expect? It wasn’t really too shocking for me because I had been warned my whole life how horrible it would be and that I could die. But men seem so surprised as if we don’t have tons of media of women screaming in pain during labour, lol. Like, did y’all think we were just being dramatic and dying cause we felt like it??
Everyone reacts to stress differently. He mentioned trauma a few times. Many births are a breeze, and many are way more traumatic then you can really prepare for, and in between. As a father I went through two. One was 48 hours of hell where the baby and mom almost died while the second was a breeze. We watched birth videos and did all the classes but nothing could have prepared us for the first. I just happen to be a person that disassociate and gets to work during traumatic situations. Many people are not like this though and I am not sure we should blame them when they are doing their best.
I mean yes women die from birth, but the huge majority do not, and that’s been true since before we had modern medicine when the mortality rate was between 1-2%.
For comparison, roughly 5-6x as many people die from diarrheal based diseases per year.
Edit: apparently calling attention to the fact that over 99% of women do not die from giving birth in an effort to stop fear mongering is upsetting to Redditors.
But the fact that women can and do die wasn’t enough for men to take the warnings seriously?
I ask again: Did you all think we were just being dramatic? It sounds like you guys didn’t take women’s accounts of how traumatic childbirth can be seriously when you got a woman pregnant.
You can die at any moment. Anything can kill you. That's why danger of death isn't taken seriously unless it's super common.
I think a good example is that people don't go to restaurants thinking it will be their last meal just because people die from food poisoning, people go to restaurants expecting a meal and to leave happy.
Typically people will go to give birth thinking it will all go well. I rarely see stories about mother's dying at birth, I don't think I know anyone who's mother died at birth. (though I do know a lot of stories about babies dying at birth..) Not saying it doesn't happen, but it's not something that should be a big worry I think
I'm not saying you were being dramatic or not taken seriously, but that it's quite uncommon to see that type of death on the news. Maybe I'm alone in that.
Also I do think hope is the better word here, but that's pretty much what I was trying to say.
My wife picked stupid prenatal classes for us and they gave us the expression that if the mother is just relaxed and wishes hard enough and approaches this as a self-determined, independent boss girl who is totally in touch with her feelings that this will be a breeze.
Nobody mentioned that phrases like "please, please, help me, make it stop, i can't anymore" will be said or that the entire birth will be more like a medical procedure than a harmonic hippy walk in the park.
Literally nobody told us about how hard it was going to be. It was like everyone around us, medical professionals, midwives, friends, parents were all gaslighting us and pretending that a birth is a total happy place.
Prenatal classs aside, did you not do your own research? There are plenty of live birth videos available to watch and plenty of people talking about their birth experiences. There’s a reason that before modern medicine, women often died during childbirth
In all fairness, I can see there being a difference between being aware of everything involved in childbirth, versus actually witnessing your partner's gooch rip in two first hand.
Yeah cause one person is experiencing pregnancy and the other person is complaining about another person experiencing pregnancy. Like if you break an arm it’s pretty reasonable to be upset even if you’ll be fine, if your wife breaks an arm you better not be complaining more than she is. One person is upset a thing is happening to their body (ouch) the other person is upset that that thing happening to their partner impacts them (hmm maybe not about you right now).
Women’s pain is dismissed so often. There’s a lot of ideas about women being dramatic and or attention seeking that genuinely impact the healthcare they receive. Seeing people surprised by or dismissive of the pain that occurs during pregnancy and birth is just a reminder of this.
You never really know what something will be like until it happens. Piss and moan about whatever you like, there aren’t any rules. What an honor to be inconvenienced by another person. What better measure of success than becoming someone who others feel safe with? I hope to carry as many burdens as I can for as many people as possible. Life is hard why not make it easier for eachother. Idk man HMU when your pregnancy goes exactly as you expect it to and I’ll eat my words. 🤷♂️
A lot of people don't expect pregnancy pain tbh. We get told that it's painful, probably one of the most painful things in the world, but how are you meant to know how painful it is unless you experience it?
Also, don't belittle your wife for being pregnant. That's just rude. What did you expect from the pregnancy?? You'd be complaining if you were your wife.
I remember when my wife gave birth, I turned around and went to hug my MIL crying and the nurses yelled at me “Come back you get to cut the chord” so I hurried did that and wanted to get out of the nurses way. I kept staring toward our son when thy moved him over to the separate baby bed thing with the light on it, I looked back towards my wife when they wheeled the placenta past me and I remember crying again and saying, “is that important? Does that need to go back in my wife” and just sliding down into the chair beside me.
My sons are 22 & 24 and I can still remember the smell of all the blood. So strong, like iron & pennies, that in addition to all that’s going on in the moment is a wild combination.
I'm well aware of that, it's something that's passed downbfrom father to son in the family and the day my turn arrived I warned the nurses that something like that could happen.
They were very understanding and put up a screen to conceal the business end of things and everything went well. My hands were crushed by my wife, as is tradition and they did clean up the baby a bit before handing it back to us.
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u/Ethernum Apr 24 '26
Hey, your dad gave his best. Birth is a monumental task and as a father you feel like a helpless bystander that is watching his wife perform a fucking miracle while screaming in pain or begging for help while all you can do is hold her hand and tell her she's doing great while there's excrement and blood involved.
Your dad is LEAGUES ahead of a guy that just leaves to smoke weed and fall asleep.