Babies are an odd occurrence in daily life. You see them everywhere, you hear them everywhere. All your friends are either parents or in the process of trying to get pregnant. For years you tell yourself ‘no, I will not have a kid’. Your mother picks on you to produce an heir in the hopes of ensuring the continuance of the family name down through the coming generations.
You push onwards in your life, blissfully aware that you have no progeny – at least, not that you know about. Sometimes you wonder if there really is a Mini-me floating around somewhere, but you suspect that if there was another you then his/her mother hasn’t found you for her own reasons. You find yourself a nice wife that your parents like, and even you tolerate her (most of the time *cough*).
Eventually, the day arrives when…hey, you might be a daddy! And you panic! You’re too young to be a parent. You’ve not done everything you want to do. You’re suddenly locked into something in a conflicting way – you love your wife, you love the idea she might be pregnant but OH FUCK NO! GET ME A PLANE TICKET AWAY FROM HERE!
Like an idiot you hang around and see what happens. After all, its just a simple little test right? It could be wrong. Sticks can turn purple and give false positives. Sure! Thats all, its a false positive. So you try another the next day. Well, that batch may be contaminated at the source, lets see what a doctor says. The doctor agrees that she may be pregnant after all, but nothing is conclusive yet until some tests are completed.
The tests get done, and again the tests are wrong when they say she is! They can’t be right – you’re too young to be a daddy! Eventually your wife gets scheduled for an ultrasound, which you go along to just out of morbid curiosity (and to make sure she isn’t lying to keep you around…OR to chase you off!). The ultrasound is performed, and SHIT! There is actually a tiny blob there. That’s your offspring! Dumbstruck, the penny begins to drop that you’ve rolled the dice one too many times in recent history, and you try to remember which one it was so you can avoid that in the future.
Time goes on, people are told about ‘the blob’, plans start to get made. Slowly, you realise that it isn’t “his and her” baby, its really “her” baby and you’re just the schmuck that was there at the fun messy part. She gets scads of attention and good lucks and presents and baby showers and you get to pay for it all. Because, yep, you were there at the fun part. There’s no showers for you. You must suck. Oh sure, some of your good friends congratulate you but you just know if you kept a meticulously detailed list – she’d outscore you in attention by a factor only NASA could calculate.
The day itself gets closer and closer, and suddenly you’re looked at as the taxi to the hospital, and the guy who’s going to get yelled at and cursed at, and promises of ‘no sex ever again, you fucking bastard, this is a watermelon coming through a keyhole in perfect shape ohgodohgodohgodyoufuckingOUCHOUCH’. You’re not looking forward to the labour part of this whole thing, and yet you know you’re going to have to go anyway as a sucker for all the abuse. You know its going to happen because the speeches come from -everybody-. Literally. Even childless people know how birthpains go, except for you. You try really, really hard to take it all in good stride, but no matter how hard you try there really is a breaking point of ‘can I fly home and make it look legit?’. Obvioudly the answer to that one is ‘no, are you an idiot too?’, so of course you stick around and realise…yes, you are really an idiot.
The big day rolls around. Perhaps her waters break at Chilis, Borders or Kohls. Perhaps some brave doctor is going to speed things along and induce her weeks early due to health reasons. But the day is here. So you bite your tongue, go along and pretend you know exactly what to do. Deep down you know you’re going to be a complete waste of space, but you’re obligated to be there (unpaid, too!) because the people who get paid to take abuse pretend they’re doing things like delivering your baby. Damn nurses…
Throughout the process of ‘being in labour’, you as the husband (and presumed father) are expected to be a) useful to her; b) stay out of the way; c) not be squeamish; and d) cool, calm and collected to keep her cool calm and collected. Guess how many facets of that you’re able to achieve?
Right! Zilch. Zip. Nada. None. You’re the sperm donor, remember? You move to where you can encourage your wife to breath properly, to push, to hold on a second longer. You move where the nurses tell you to move, but then you’re in the way and you’re no longer useful to her. Your new position has now put you in full view of the admittedly scary stuff, and you start to feel feint and weak so you’re even less of a help now to anybody. Because your blood has drained from your body into your shoes, you’ve lost the capacity to be cool calm and collected too.
Great! You knew this was going to happen, but you stay in the delivery room anyway for as much as you can. Oh it gets worse when all the nurses and doctor pause what they’re doing to make sure you’re OK because it looks like you’re going to lose about 4 months of meals in 3 seconds, but you just know they’re all going to laugh about the squeamish daddy. Your own confidence drops below record levels, despite trying your best to help the woman you love.
After what seems like a lifetime, the head is seen. The arms are seen, the body is pulled out of places no extra body should be located. All of a sudden, you’ve gone from a waste of space deadbeat escape artist, to a new daddy.
Quietly you nod to yourself. Let her get all the attention, you’ve got something better now.