RAISING our three sons, my wife had
put aside her dislike of sports and served as a Little League mother. Now, eight
years after the birth of our last, she was about to have a fourth child. After the
baby arrived, the nurse came out to the hospital waiting room to get me. My wife was
on a stretcher being wheeled back to her room when I caught up with her. "Your
husband doesn't know what you had," the nurse said, prompting her. My wife
looked up with a drowsy smile and answered, "Another four years of Little League -
that's what I had."
A married couple went to the hospital together to have their
baby delivered. Upon their arrival, the doctor said he had invented a machine which would
transfer a portion of the mother's labor pain to the father. He asked if they were willing
to try it out, and they both agreed enthusiastically.
The doctor set the knob to 10 percent for starters, explaining that even 10
percent was probably more pain than the father had ever experienced before. But as the
labor progressed, the husband felt fine, so he asked the doctor to go ahead and bump it up
a notch.
The doctor then adjusted the machine to 20 percent pain transfer. The husband
was still feeling fine, so the doctor upped the percentage to 50% and finally 100%, since
the wife was obviously benefiting from the transfer. The wife delivered a healthy baby
with virtually no pain. She and her husband were ecstatic.
When they got home, the mailman was dead on their porch.
A FRIEND of mine was in the hospital awaiting the arrival of
her first child. When I telephoned the hospital to see if the baby had arrived, the nurse
said it had. I asked if it was a boy or girl and was told that it was against hospital
policy to give this information over the phone. "Fine," I said. "I can
understand that. But can you tell me what she didn't have?" "It wasn't a
boy," came the reply.
A WOMAN arrived at the hospital in the late stages of
labour,
and my daughter's doctor was assigned to her case. After a difficult delivery, the woman
gave birth to a big, healthy baby. Afterwards the mother jokingly told the nurse that
because she had felt "as big as a cow," she had told her husband she'd probably
need a veterinarian to deliver the baby. With a twinkle in her eye, the nurse responded,
"Well. I hate to tell you this, but the doctor is also a veterinarian."
MY SISTER-IN-LAW and I were pregnant at the same time. She
went into labour, and my brother bundled her off to the hospital. A short time later, I
arrived to keep him company, and he met me in the lobby. "Come back to the fathers'
lounge," he said. As we walked through the maternity ward, one patient gave my
bulging figure a startled glance. "Will you look at, that!" we heard her exclaim
to her roommate. "There he goes with another one!"
IT WAS my first return visit to the town in northern Alberta
where I had started my maternity practice. When I moved away I had had to transfer several
expectant mothers to another physician. I was in a store when a former patient
rushed up to say hello to me. You can imagine the startled expressions of the customers
around us when she loudly exclaimed, "I remember you. You left town when I was eight
months pregnant!"
WHEN my son, Guy, was born 24 years ago, my room at The
Willett Hospital in Paris, Ont., was near the nursery. For the seven days I spent there, I
listened to the same baby cry incessantly, hour after hour, day after day. On the
seventh day, as I was packing to leave, I said, very indignantly, to the nurse: "When
is that baby going home?" She smiled, gave me a sympathetic pat on the hand,
and said, "How soon can your husband get here?"
WE SAT in the doctor's office. Forty-five minutes later he
had still not arrived. "What's keeping him?" my husband asked impatiently.
"I think he's delivering a baby," I replied. He glanced at his
watch again. "Well, how far does he have to deliver it?"
WHEN I was pregnant, we lived in a small town 25 kilometers
from the nearest hospital. Since my husband spent a lot of time traveling in a company
car, his co-workers agreed to notify him by two-way radio if I was taken to the hospital.
The great day arrived. Excited colleagues called my husband, who immediately sped
to the hospital and dashed to the maternity floor. "My wife is having a baby!"
he breathlessly announced to the nurse. The nurse consulted her records. "She
hasn't come in yet," she said. "Well!" my nervous husband exclaimed.
"I just thought that one of us should be here."
TOWARDS the end of my pregnancy, my doctor was called out of
town. Right after he left, labour pains started and I headed for the hospital. Things
progressed so quickly that I was never told who the attending doctor would be. A stranger
in scrub suit, gloves and mask rushed into the room, delivered the baby, and dashed back
out. My husband leaned over me. "Who was that masked man?" he asked in a
conspiratorial whisper.
AFTER learning the Lamaze method of natural childbirth, I was
admitted to the delivery room with my wife. It seemed like an eternity before the
doctor finally announced, "I've got the head now; just a few more minutes."
"Is it a girl or boy?" I asked excitedly. The doctor replied, "It's
hard to tell by the ears."
MY ANXIOUS mother waited with me at the hospital for my wife
to give birth to our second child. As the day dragged on, we were joined by other
expectant fathers. Finally, a nurse appeared, called my name and announced that I was the
father of a beautiful baby boy. But then she rechecked the baby's name tag, discovered
that the baby belonged to one of the other fathers and corrected her mistake. "Just a
minute," my mother demanded, jumping up. "My son was here first.