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.
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.
I never said death was the only consequence, I was just only referring to your comment about death and explaining why it apparently isn't a concern to many people.
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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.