The most thoughtless birthing partner father ever.
(Please note: I plan on being ultra supportive when Tabitha has our baby. Inspiration just struck me here, so I thought it'd be funny to go with it.)
At around 3AM, Tab said she had her first real contraction. She had been having Braxton-Hicks contractions for weeks now, but I had dutifully reminded her each time that it wasn't REAL labor unless they were closer together.
When she told me that they were around 10 minutes apart, I reminded her of what we learned in our birthing class, and that we needed to go in when they were 4 minutes apart. Guesstimating in my head, I told her to wake me up when they were six minutes apart.
She became so antsy every time a contraction hit that I finally got up in a huff and slept out on the couch, despite it likely ruining the pace of my entire day.
I was awoken 3 hours later by Tabitha nudging me awake that they had finally reached six minutes apart. I got up and trudged to the bathroom, indignant that she had broken up my sleep. I took a long, hot shower and finally packed my bag for the hospital trip.
I got in the car, then proceeded to wait 10 minutes for her to gather her prepacked bag and get in. Once she did get in, I asked if she had locked the door. As she couldn't remember, I told her to hurry up and check, as she was keeping us from getting to the hospital.
While waiting in the lobby for Tab to park the car, I caught up with the news of the day, checked in to the hospital (I'm the mayor now on Swarm!), and made sure everyone on social media knew we were about to give birth. As soon as Tabitha got back from the parking structure, she wanted to check in, but I had her wait while I set up the perfect selfie to commemorate the occasion.
Checking in was fairly uneventful. We went into the birthing triage room, and spent the next hour there. The nurses were very attentive towards Tabitha, but refused to go into any depth as to the coffee offerings of the cafeteria below.
After being demoralized about having to likely put up with substandard coffee, we finally got admitted to the delivery room around hour 7. I decided that I needed a break, so I got into the relaxation tub. Boy were they right! This thing had jets, and even soothing lights to help calm you. The only thing that ruined it was the screaming woman outside the bathroom. I yelled for them to quiet it down. After all, this was ME time.
The doctor came around and told us that if we wanted an epidural, this was the time to do it. Tabitha said the pain was severe, and that she really thought she needed it.
Fortunately, I was on hand to remind her, as well as tell the doctor, that we didn't want it, as we were trying to keep costs down on this birth. "Remember what we said a month ago dear: No sense going into debt because of this child."
After 13 hours, I told Tab to wrap it up, as the novelty was wearing off, and that, frankly, she was starting to look like an attention hog.
I'm guessing it worked because, after only an hour more, she finally began pushing. They asked me to cut the cord, but I said no. It looked unsanitary.
They asked Tabitha if she wanted the baby immediately. She said yes, but, again, in order to keep things sanitary, I insisted they wash the baby off first. It look goopy.
Before checking out of the hospital, they insisted that we have a baby seat in the car. I unsuccessfully tried to argue that my parents didn't have a baby seat when I was brought home, I begrudgingly installed it. Driving home, Tabitha insisted on sitting in the backseat, despite that this was the first time I actually wanted to talk with her, as she wasn't complaining about pain anymore.
Arriving home, I turned on the TV and returned to my Netflix queue. I was drastically behind, and needed to really power through to get back on track.
Fatherhood is going to be great!
