Category Archives: Baby Trauma

Dispatches from the Delivery Room, Part 1: It’s a Madhouse!

I’ve heard it said that there is a special provision of nature that allows a mother to forget the pain of childbirth. Without this special indulgence, it might be hard to imagine any family containing more than a single child. I have my own name for this natural phenomenon. I call it insanity.

Unfortunately, there is no magic wand to wipe a father’s memory clean. He is doomed to remember all of the many horrible hours in which a mother’s pain turned his wife into a stark raving lunatic. The height of her mental derangement comes in an otherwise very calm statement, when in a moment of seemingly stable reflection, the mother makes this declaration: “It wasn’t nearly this bad last time.”

The mother makes this laughable comparison as if to imply that at a similar point in her last labor, she was entertaining well-wishers with tea and scones. It was a nice little get-together in the delivery room, at the end of which a beautiful baby was delivered in a holiday basket garnished with fresh flowers and an assortment of candied fruit.

In 2008, this baby eased into the world as smoothly as strawberries and cream - according to contemporary lore.

Only the father recalls the piercing screams and tortured howls of the former occasion. Yet a sense of self-preservation makes him humor the mother’s madness. Only a fool would argue with bedlam.

The mother, in her delirium, feels betrayed by fate. How could such a pleasant occasion have been turned into such a nightmare on her? Surely, this injustice cannot last long. It’s not supposed to hurt like this. God knows, it never did before.

I’m not sure what God knows, but the father knows it hurt exactly like this before. He knows there is nothing he can do about it, and he knows that he will be scolded severely for whatever he does to help and whatever he doesn’t do to help. The contract has been signed, and the contract doesn’t mention scones or gift baskets. There’s no turning back now.

There are still hours and hours to go. The mother is in pain like (to the best of her recollection) she’s never felt before. Also, she’s mightily pissed off because somebody has changed the whole process on her since last time. No one is feeding her bonbons . . . in the shade . . . beside a babbling brook . . . to while away the carefree hours of labor like they did last time. Insult to injury, that’s what that is.

In 2012, this child's birth caused much gnashing of teeth. A mother's love will soon rewrite history to show that it was all sunshine and lollipops.

The father sighs. There are still hours to go. And the only little task he needs to accomplish in all that time is to soothe the physical and emotional pains of a hurting, pissed off, delirious woman who suspects that he is the main conspirator in the cruel joke that is being played upon her.

He will remember this instance too, long after it has been whitewashed with rose pedals.

Lady parts and miracles

My son wants to know how the new baby is going to get out of Mommy’s belly. I don’t know what to tell him. It’s not that it is a sensitive question, with an answer I’m not sure how to explain to a three-year-old. It’s that I really don’t know how it happens. The physics of process don’t add up. I know the route the baby is supposed to take, but how he shimmies through the narrows is a complete mystery to me.

The best answer I can give my son is that getting babies out of bellies is a scheme worked up between mommies and doctors, that nobody else could ever truly understand. If he really wants to know how it happens, he could ask Mommy, or a doctor, but it’s probably best to let it go. Like the rest of us non-medical men, he should just refer to the process as a miracle and not think about it too much from now on. Lady parts and miracles are great boons to mankind, but a man can seriously dislocate his brain trying to figure out how they work.

Four wisemen consult over what to do about that baby in her belly. They sure don't look like the Marx brothers.

True, I do know a thing or two about how the baby got in there. To accomplish that, Daddy didn’t need to understand miracles; a hearty “can do” attitude saw him through those duties. Forturnately, my son hasn’t asked about that end of the situation yet. I think he considers it to be water under the bridge at this point. What’s done is done; what matters now is figuring out how we’re going to get that baby out.

Duh! We didn't have to go the pregnancy route at all. We could have just waited for the candy stripers and picked a child from the baby cart.

Now that I think about it, having had a hand in beginning this process, it seems a shame that I can’t have a larger part in seeing it through. Yet, I have to understand that I am just one member of this team. We each have our role to play. My primary role was to help get things off to a good start, and after an appropriate amount of rehersal, I finally pitched in to get things rolling.

At the end of the process I am completely out of my depth. My role has diminished to that of a supporting castmember. When I really think it through, I guess I’m okay with that. Not being in a leadership role gives me more freedom to avert my eyes from any especially miraculous scenes, or to pass out altogether.

You have one job, and one job only

With the delivery date for the new baby sneaking up, I was trying to remember all the things necessary to prepare for the hospital stay. There are certain things that the father is expected to do during and after delivery, and I was trying to bring one or two of them to mind so that I could present myself to the hospital staff as a useful addition to the family.

When my wife discovered that I was struggling with these recollections, she reminded me why I couldn’t recall any of the tasks on the modern father’s list of delivery room activities. “Remember what I told you last time,” she said. “I don’t care what they think you should be doing; you have one job and one job only. Do you remember what that is?”

The wavy lines that momentarily affected my vision indicated that I was flashing back to summer, 2008. My pregnant wife had just finished watching her 100th Lifetime movie about children switched at birth. We had gone to birthing classes for a number of weeks, but that training paled in comparison to what can be learned from Lifetime’s You Have the Wrong Baby Weekend Movie Marathon.

This was the moment of the defenestration of all of my weeks of training on how to be a supportive birthing partner.  “You can do whatever the hell you want until the baby’s born,” my wife explained. “Once the baby is born, you have one job. I don’t care what they tell you to do, you do not take your eyes off my baby. I will not have some stranger knocking on my door in five years, telling me I got their baby by mistake. I am not spending my time raising somebody else’s kid for them.”

She let this sink in for a minute, while she looked like she was moving on to something else. Then she came back at me all of a sudden, pop-quiz style. “What’s your job?”

“Watch the baby,” I replied confidently, like I was proving that husbands can pay attention when they want to.

“Watch? Did you hear me use a word as weak as watch? No, you did not. I said you are to keep your eyes glued to that baby from the moment he comes out of me until we get home. You are chained to that baby, do you understand?”

“What if you need me?” That seemed like it was the type of concern a woman would appreciate coming from her man.

“I won’t need you.” It sounds harsher than I’m sure she meant it. “I’m a grown woman. Nobody’s gonna stick me in the wrong family until it’s too late to do anything about it. I don’t care if I’m half dead, you are going wherever that baby goes.”

And that is just what I did. From the moment our son was born, I followed him around like a Secret Service agent, except that Secret Service agents probably don’t let their charges suck on their little fingers for three hours straight. If they do, I respect them all the more because that can really wear on a little finger.

At least somebody got to close his eyes for a minute during our hospital stay.

That little boy did not go anywhere in that hospital without me. When a nurse offered to take him to the nursery so Mommy and Daddy could get some rest, my wife just about called 911 on her. We didn’t want rest; we wanted our biological child, not whichever baby happened to match the number on our claim ticket at checkout.

So don’t come knocking at our door telling us we went home from the hospital with your son.  The boy we brought home was under strict guard the whole time. And just in case I did doze off for minute while I was watching him, we’re raising him in a barn, so you wouldn’t want him back anyway.

 

Before you try to claim your “switched at birth” boy back, you should know that this is the lady we employed to teach him table manners. (Credit: Steve Hillebrand/USFWS)

 

Bonding with the baby bump

At eight months pregnant, my wife is not so fond of people impulsively rubbing her belly. I understand her position perfectly. If there were something about my belly that made people want to reach out and paw at it whenever the whim struck them, I can imagine that I would be sensitive about it too. Fortunately, my belly is completely uninspiring; people would rather soak their hands in a bowl full of leeches than cop a feel of my spare tire.

Though my wife is rather reserved when it comes to sharing her baby bump with the fawning masses, she can’t seem to have my hand affixed to that bump enough. I believe she would glue my palm to her navel if she thought it practical.

This baby kicks, punches, and generally bounces himself off the walls of the womb with remarkable energy. I don’t remember this much activity with the first pregnancy. My wife seems intent on sharing every one of these movements with me. I’m all for feeling the baby kick, when it is convenient for me to sit next to his mother and gently place my hand upon her belly. I am all about the miracle of life, and I agree that it is thrilling to feel tangible evidence of our forthcoming bundle of joy.

However, I don’t think that I should have to come running from a different floor of the house to dive at my wife with my arm outstretched in order to feel the movement, before it’s too late, every time the baby hiccups. Yet, this is what is expected of me. At any time of the day, I might hear the alarm, “Quick! Quick! The baby’s awake. Come feel him.” True to my duty, I drop everything and comply, only to get kicked in the hand for my trouble.

I originally thought I was obeying the mother when I came running to get my feel, but it was explained to me by the mother that I am actually being summoned by the baby himself. “He needs skin-on-skin with his daddy,” she said, ignoring the fact that my hand was resting upon her epidermis.

It was further explained to me that, beyond needing to feel his daddy’s touch, this baby needs to hear his daddy’s voice every day. “Have you talked to your baby today?” I get asked by his spokeswoman as she thrusts out her belly button like it’s a walkie-talkie. Even in the privacy of my own home, I feel a little shy about speaking into a belly button. And what kind of conversation do you strike up through the uterine wall? “Read any good books lately?” On top of that, the kid can’t seem to figure out the intercom system, so I can’t even hear his replies.

Still, I do the best I can at meeting this baby’s many needs. I must confess though, there are times when his movements are so visually shocking that I must pull back my hand in horror. My wife is a petite woman, so any big movements make her belly fluctuate profoundly. Many times I have anticipated seeing an alien hand pop out of her to grab hold of my puny, human wrist. At other times the movement merely resembles the massage balls revolving beneath the cover of a shiatsu chair. This image is less frightening and I can usually be convinced to put my hand back.

Our sweet little dictator in his command and control pod.

Even though I value these last couple months of being able to sleep at night and not having to change diapers, there’s a growing desire within me to have this baby come out and face me eye to eye. Then he can tell me directly what his needs are. You never know if you’re getting the straight poop when you’re working through an interpreter.