Ideally, having your partner in the delivery room would mean you’re covered on the support front: they’d be present as much (or as little!) as you want, know your birth plan, calm your nerves and advocate for your needs with the hospital staff.
That’s the ideal situation. Given how stressful the lead-up to labour can be, partners aren’t always on their best behaviour. I’ll never forget my mum shaking her head after giving birth to my little sister; my stepdad had the lovely idea to eat a cheeseburger with onions while my mum was in the throes of labour pains.
Lately, there have been many celebrity examples of loutish labour behaviour. For example, “Live with Kelly and Ryan” host Kelly Ripa recently shared that her husband, actor Mark Consuelos, asked, “Do you mind if I eat?” before the birth of one of their children, then followed it up with, “I’m going to the batting cages since you’re gonna be here a while.”
When Meghan Markle gave birth to now three-year-old son Archie in May 2019 at London’s Portland Hospital, her husband, Prince Harry, emphasised staying calm – at least for himself.
In his memoir, “Spare,” the prince revealed that he had bodyguards grab him Nando’s chicken in the hospital room and that he “enhanced his calm” during the birth of his son by taking “several slow, penetrating hits” of the canister of laughing gas in Meghan’s hospital room.
When a nurse returned and tried to give Meghan a dose for pain relief, there was none left: “I could see the thought slowly dawning,” he wrote. “Gracious, the husband’s had it all. ‘Sorry,’ I said meekly.”
Cool story, Haz!
We asked our readers to share the most ridiculous things their partners said or did in the delivery room. (Some dads chimed in, too, so props to them for trying to repent publicly.)
1. “While in the thick of labour, getting to the point of no return, no epidural yet, crouching on the floor in agony, my husband, who is a baseball coach, suggested I ‘walk it off.’” ― Ashley
2. “My husband worked in the same hospital where I gave birth. I got to meet most of his coworkers postpartum with a tit out breastfeeding because he told them to pop in anytime and say, ‘hi.’” ― Sara Petrick
3. “With my first kid, I laboured for 38 hours before having an unplanned caesarean, but during labour, I got super hot and asked my husband if could find a towel or cloth he could wet with cold water so I could wrap it on my neck. At this point, I wasn’t allowed to eat or drink, and I felt like I had no relief.
He was opening all these drawers and finally found something that looked like cloth and wet it, and then he was like, ‘It has a hole! It must be made for this,’ and I’m like PERFECT. Logically it didn’t make sense, but I was desperate… and it worked. I put my head through the hole of this wet thing, and it helped a lot.
The nurse comes in, and she’s looking at me, kind of amused. Turns out they were panties. The mesh panties that they give you after birth. I was wearing wet mesh panties around my neck and head, and neither of us realised.” ― @Tobi_Is_Fab
4. “I’m usually a smart man, but when my wife went into labour with our firstborn, I brought my laptop to the hospital because my ‘Farmville’ crops needed to be harvested before they died. She really had bad timing with that whole ‘labour’ thing.” ― @dadmann_walking
5. “My third child was an emergency C-section. They called my husband into the room and didn’t tell him that I wasn’t closed up yet. He came in and asked me how I was doing. I told him I was cold. He looks over at me, still opened up and goes, ‘I bet you are.’” ― @pro_worrier_
6. “My hubby was casually chatting and showing off his DSLR to the anaesthesiologist who was administering my spinal block before the C-section. I kept nudging them both that my shoulder was hurting, but [there was] no need: The gynaecologists ultimately gave them both a glare, and my IV was adjusted! Men.” ― Batool
7. “When I went into labour with my first, things happened so quickly, and my husband didn’t get a chance to eat anything. Fast forward to hours later ― still no baby, and he’s still starving. His mom brought him this horrific-looking burrito that had mushrooms in it, which he hates.
Almost immediately after eating the burrito, he was hit with horrendous diarrhoea. He didn’t want to use the bathroom in the delivery room, so he’d run past the nurses station to the waiting room restroom and then back again to help me push. Guess we were both delivering something that day!” ― Carly
8. “I do recall thinking how uncomfortable the chair I had spent hours sitting in alongside my wife as we waited for our first child to arrive. I was going to say something about it, but somehow I caught myself before I spoke.” ― Slade Wentworth
9. “For the birth of our first child, I had driven on every possible route going to the hospital in NYC at various times and never missed even a blood work appointment. What I hadn’t accounted for was having IBS the day of. So obviously, I had to take a 20-minute break while she was waiting in the car to go. I mean, the cramps I had were awful, and I had to shut up about it because I forgot about the hospital bag.
In the delivery room, she had a playlist for going into labour, and I thought the songs were too boring ― I probably shouldn’t have said that thought out loud. After the baby arrived, my friend came to meet us, and I gave him her food because he was hungry.” ― Vinod Chhaproo
10. “Apparently, I pooped on the delivery table, and when he went to react, a nurse gave him a look and shook her head like, ‘Don’t say anything!’ and quietly cleaned it up.” ― @mommy_cusses
11. “With our oldest, when we first got to the hospital, my husband put on the Vince Vaughn movie ‘Delivery Man,’ where he’s a sperm donor to 500+ kids. Then he ordered a huge hospital breakfast, which he ate in front of me. I couldn’t eat anything and was waiting for my doctor to come on duty so I could get an epidural.
A little before it was time for me to start pushing, my husband abruptly left the room. The doctor was worried and sent a nurse running out to check on him, thinking he had fainted in the hallway. Instead, he sauntered back in a few minutes later with a cup of coffee because he ‘didn’t want to miss anything.’” ― Meghan
Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and style.