Drew Magary is glad he’s not a woman. Here’s why.
I hate hospitals. Have you ever been to a hospital and thought to yourself, “Hey, this hospital has way too many doctors and nurses! I’m getting way too much attention! They should leave me alone in my room for hours on end without telling me anything about what’s wrong with me or what’s going to happen next!” No. No one’s ever said that. And if they ever have, it’s because they’re in the psych ward.
Mrs. Drew was induced into labor yesterday, but that was after 24 hours of sitting there, after being “induced” to be induced. I wish I were making this up. More importantly, Mrs. Drew wishes I were making this up. Not so. A gel was applied to Mrs. Drew to get her to have contractions for 12 hours, PRIOR to being induced. And the gel had to be applied twice.
Waiting in a hospital is like being in your 7th grade Spanish class. Time ceases to pass, and in fact can often go backwards. All you want to do is leave. All the hospital wants you to do is leave so they can move on to the next patient. And yet, you can’t leave. Why? Because no one in medical school teaches doctors how to speak to human beings without sounding like an aloof jerkoff. But it seems they do teach them to never speak to nurses, ever. The majority of doctors I’ve met assume that I too went to medical school. As you can tell from this blog, I did not. Every question I ask a doctor gets treated rhetorically. I hate you, medicine men.
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Anyway, Mrs. Drew spent the better part of 12 hours in complete and utter agony because her nurse said the pain medication available to her probably wouldn’t dull the pain and could, in fact, make her nauseous as well. We later found out that nurse had two children without the benefit of drugs. Her career objective, apparently, is cruel, twisted revenge.
Once Mrs. Drew got the drugs, she said “I should have done this ages ago,” which is the first thing that pops into my mind whenever I myself have drugs of any kind. By noon the next day, she was ready to push, except the baby was facing up coming out of the womb, already psyched to play peek-a-boo. This makes delivery harder. Now here’s where it gets bloody.
To get the baby out, the doctor decided he needed to use the forceps, i.e. the jaws of life, i.e. the salad spoons, i.e. the pitching wedges. The nurse then proceeds to roll in a host of equipment that, to me, looked like the kind of equipment used to cure women in the 1600’s of witchcraft.
There was no partition at Mrs. Drew’s bedside. In fact, there was a TV up on the ceiling that hit Mrs. Drew at precisely the wrong angle. I moved the TV. If it had weighed 74 tons, I still would have moved it. I stood at the side of bed at Mrs. Drew’s waist, facing her head and staring right at her. This worked well for the most part, except for the few occasional glimpses I got. Peripheral vision is useless and horrible.
They made Mrs. Drew push for a half hour. By this point, she had had an epidural, which had numbed her below the belly. Hard to push down when your lower body is paralyzed. But hey, that’s just the logic in my head talking. Pushing failed (shocker!), and they dug in with the forceps.
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I won’t lie to you. Before your kid is born, you aren’t expecting it to be pretty. You know the birth will be a little messy. But it’s fairly shocking when the doctor holds up your baby and it looks like a prop from one of those horror flicks that gets called a “cult” flick because 42 fat dipshits on the internet like it a lot. The baby was covered in blood, head to toe, screaming. Screaming, I assume, for a shower.
That’s what surprised me the most about the whole labor process. It takes forever, and when it’s finally over, you’re shocked that it’s over, and that there’s a baby sitting right there. When I first saw my daughter, I had the same reaction people have after seeing David Blaine perform a magic trick: “Oh my God? How did you… I’m so freaked out right now!” I still have a hard time believing it’s our baby. I assume it’s a baby we’re borrowing from someone else who doesn’t have the time for it, like an NBA player.
They cleaned my daughter off. She looked better. Beautiful in fact, bruises and all. She looked at me. I looked at her. I looked at Mrs. Drew. And Mrs. Drew looked at both of us. And we all agreed, in an unspoken fashion, that being stuck in a hospital blows.
This post originally appeared here.
Drew Magary writes for Deadspin, NBC, Maxim and Kissing Suzy Kolber—a humor site dedicated to the NFL. The Postmortal, now out from Penguin, is his first novel. You can follow Drew on Twitter.
—Photo jonny.hunter/Flickr
I loved my epidurals.
Women do have to go through a lot with the ability to have children. That being the case, husbands should be more grateful to their wives instead of proclaiming how much better they have it. It’s not a competition. Besides, if you were a man that wanted to be a woman, then you’d probably be undergoing something different in that hospital. I have to admit that when I hear guys say how happy they are that they aren’t women that it does rub me the wrong way because it’s admittidly a bit of a condsending attitude to take. And if… Read more »
This. Agree 100%
“Be Happy You Never Have to Give Birth”
I don’t, nor do women.
QED.
Yeah Congratulations…BTW the click bate tittle is completely uncalled for.
I always wonder which zealots will hijack a thread that was perfectly benign and obviously meant as tongue-in-cheek humor. I honestly didn’t think this one was in danger of that. But I completely underestimated the overzealous natural birth/homebirth/hospitals are evil crowd. Well done.
For what it’s worth, my wife had drugs and they were TERRIFIC! They didn’t make her dopey or anything, they eased the pain, stopped her from vomiting because of the pain and she was a million times better after the epidural.
So here’s to drugs and lots of them. Early and often.
Went to the hospital once, it was horrible.. my mother is a nurse and stated the doctors are trying to keep a 9-5 job so they rush everything and it puts mom and baby at risk.. inducing and cesareans are very risky (in our country over 25% of ppl are c-sectioned now and more times then not it is unnecessary) my last 2 boys I was at home in the bathroom, my husband delivered them and he was prouder and more excited then you can imagine.. being the first person to hold his boys . .the first person to know… Read more »
Childbirth is a WONDERFUL experience when it’s not disrupted by forcing a woman to birth in a bright, crowded, unfamiliar, stale hospital room. It makes me so sad to read things like this. I had a homebirth with my second daughter and it was pure joy.
Exactly. In my anthropology class, we learned that women in third world countries have a lower infant mortality rate upon giving birth because the women are subjected to the stressful conditions of a hospital. There was one story of a Hmong woman who had participated in over 300 births and lost only one baby. You cannot say the same about American births.
I agree that hospitals often make giving birth worse than it has to be. But, sorry, I’m not drinking the Kool-Aid about how birth is inherently wonderful and beautiful for all mothers if only they would get back to their pre-industrial, pre-allopathic roots. I’m sure for some women no matter what the environment birth would not be a glorious moment. I think there IS too much focus on all the horror stories and worst-case scenarios, but it’s just as unbalanced to swing to the opposite extreme and suggest it’s always wonderful. I would guess if many women in the Third… Read more »
No, but it is telling how unnecessary a lot of the procedures hospitals impose on mothers-to-be are.
Those procedures were specifically put in place to lower a hospitals liability…
Congratulations on your new baby! Trust me..the birth may have been unreal but the joy you’ll have in the weeks and months to come will more than make up for it.
I’m still looking for a man who can handle the pregnancy. I don’t mind delivering the babies (had two) but nine months of chronic pain and nausea? Not so much. Besides, that huge rush of endorphins you get the moment your baby is delivered? There’s nothing like it.
Mmmmm no that’s just not true. People who have home birth have a much higher change of their infants dying. http://www.inquisitr.com/77762/home-birth-death-risk/
Congrats on becoming a father! May I suggest that if there’s a next time, you both look into homebirth? I’ve had two and I’d do them again any day. Birth is not supposed to be an ordeal to be suffered. It can be calm, gentle, peaceful, family-centered, wonderful.
So let me get this straight – your wife had a highly managed, medicalized labor and delivery with a host of predictable interventions, and you actually think this is what birth is supposed to be like? And that women who had natural births must’ve had it even worse (since the nurse was supposedly out for “revenge”)? There’s just one thing I can say to that – no. I have three kids, the first at the hospital (where I was high on morphine and people treated me like an idiot) and the second (which was actually painless) and third unassisted at… Read more »
As a mom who labored for 49 1/2 hours sans drugs (six hours of that was pushing- baby took a long time to mold), I want to weigh in on this. Birth is not a horrid, awful experience. I think it has everything to do with the environment and support you have. Yes, birth is painful- but it’s not unbearable- and there a fabulous ways to cope with the pain (particularly if you are not strapped to a ridiculous monitor that has NOT been shown to improve maternal/neonatal outcomes or tethered to an IV pole when you’re perfectly capable of… Read more »
ever heard of natural homebirth? there’s even this thing called ‘orgasmic birth’…. it doesn’t have to be painful, and it certainly doesn’t have to be in a hospital
Agreeing with previous posters, the problem isn’t childbirth, the problem is the environment. Childbirth is a beautiful, fantastic experience that has been twisted into this greusome torturous nightmare by decades of medical propganda and meddling. There’s a much better way to do it, if you’re able. And 95% of women are. When a women enters a hospital in the fashion that you described above, her baby is “delivered” to her, in an impersonal and disempowering fashion, and most people would be happy to not have to repeat the experience. But when hospitals, medicine, and even yes, the DRUGS, are reserved… Read more »
Congratulations to the proud parents. The Nurse was 100% correct. Having experience of birth with and birth without drugs, I feel qualified to comment.. The pain is no greater without drugs than it is with drugs. It’s bloody sore either way, and the pain is so great that there are no drugs capable of taking it away. It’s like taking a paracetamol to have your leg cut off. .. But the drugs do severely deplete the mother and the baby of alertness and energy which is vital for the best, healthiest experience. Drugs put you in a nightmarish, out of… Read more »
They don’t tell you what’s going to happen in the psych ward either! I’ve only been a patient when my children were born, 30 years ago. I had wonderful experiences both times. But this was 30 years ago. I recently had abdominal surgery. I couldn’t get my needs met until I complained to a hospital administrator. I know what has changed. There are not enough staff (RN, LVN, CNA) to sufficiently see to individual patient needs as there were 30 years ago. There was less equipment and so the care was more patient centered. As to my comment about psych… Read more »
Yet again on GMP a wonderful article introduced by a most unfortunate title. “Be Happy You Never Have to Give Birth” I am glad as a male I will never have to give birth. As someone childfree by choice, I wouldn’t choose to have a baby anyway even if I could. Fortunately, ideally, if you live in a place with good access to birth control and family planning, generally speaking NO ONE will HAVE to give birth. “Drew Magary is glad he’s not a woman. Here’s why.” I can’t believe an unrepentant neanderthal like me is the one to point… Read more »
It rubbed me the wrong way too, as if giving birth is most horrifying thing a woman can endure and men should be glad they don’t have to put up with such fickle feminine things.
I’m childless by choice. Luckily my fiance agrees too. I will never have to worry about giving birth.
Just tossing this out there. If giving birth in a hospital is such a horrible experience, it may have something to do with being in a hospital. There are other options out there besides treating pregnancy as a medical problem and treating birth as a surgery, which is what most old-fashioned hospitals do. The moment you step into a hospital, every step the hospital takes makes more and more intervention likely. I’m not saying using a skilled midwife or birth center or home birth would make all the difference, but maybe the hospitals are part of the problem.
Congrats. And yes, you described the first few moments of being a father perfectly. Except I had the opposite experience because my wife was in the hospital for 2 hours before she zipped my son out like a 97-MPH fastball. It was actually to my benefit since I had no time to process anything that was happening. We were in, there was an epidural, they told us to hunker down because it would be 12 hours before she gave birth, and 10 minutes later I was alone in the room with my wife with a small head popping out of… Read more »
Congratulations!
I know what you mean about feeling like you borrowed a baby. Eventually that feeling gets replaced by a whole lot of other feelings. Good luck to you and your baby and your lady wife.
Congrats on becoming a dad! In my, humble, opinion, as a mother who has been pregnant more than once…a woman generally is happy to be the one to endure pregnancy & child birth because we know we can only barely deal with man colds, by complaining to our girlfriends about them. We certainly don’t want to endure a 9 solid month man cold complete with having to hear for eternity how they were able to push a watermelon out of a small tunnel or by way of an 8 inch incision. Our girlfriends would disown us before our husbands even… Read more »
Congrats dude! Sounds like mom and child are well and that’s what really matters. Love them both to the best of your ability (whatever that means, but I’m sure you’ll figure it out).
Cheers!
Congratulations dad. That’s why it’s better to be a father than a mother. You still get the kid without all the hassle. Strangely, women will go through all that and WANT to do it again and again. Crazy.
My wife says she still prefers being the one to be pregnant, despite all the hassle and after effects; She said that feeling the kids inside her made her feel closer to them and she wouldn’t trade it. But, I still think we get the better end of the bargain.