Kate Hackett
Giving birth has to already be one of the most stressful moments in a woman’s life. You’re pushing a HUMAN out of you!! So when anything goes sideways, it takes that stress and really exacerbates it. Personally, I cannot imagine what it must be like to have a team of people
A recent thread on r/AskReddit from u/Roach2791 asked the community for some great delivery room tales and we grabbed the best of the tales for you.
1. RIPPED THE HEAD OFF?? (not really)
A doctor was delivering the baby via ventouse, a vacuum extraction. He was pulling, and you do honestly have to put some muscle into it, those babies are stuck pretty fast in there sometimes. Anyway, the suction cap came off the baby’s head, this happens a lot. The father of the baby thought that the doctor had pulled so hard that he had pulled the baby’s head off, so naturally punched the doctor in the jaw, who went straight down to the ground like a felled tree. Much yelling ensued, people holding the father back, him realising that the baby was fine once we pointed out that the head was still inside, unconscious doctor being pulled into a chair, another doctor coming in to do the delivery, the mother crying hysterically.
We had to have a quick and frantic conversation at the midwives’ station about whether to allow the father to remain in the room. We decided that from his vantage point it may have appeared that the baby’s head had been, uh, removed and that he had a momentary loss of reason. He was also hugelyapologetic and took responsibility for his actions. The doctor who got punched took every opportunity afterwards to tell that story as often as possible and we all laughed.
2. Surprise!
Ambulance officer here.
Got dispatched to “17 year old female, difficult pregnancy. Caller statement: Baby born, didn’t know was pregnant. Can’t find umbilical cord.”
Whooooa boy…
Get there, healthy baby girl born. Mother and grandmother sitting on floor, blood everywhere. Both emotionally shocked. Umbilical cord right where it should be. Grandmother holding baby, outstretches arms and hands me the baby without words while my partner checks out mum.
Grandma comes to me and just says “I thought she was a virgin!”
Mother had texted grandmother while at work to say “Mum, come home, I’ve had a baby.”
The tension in that room… Holy crap.
3. Jerk
Wife just gave birth and we asked that same question to our nurse. She told us about the time a guy brought in his pregnant wife and his pregnant girlfriend. The doctors thought that they were going to try and kill each other so they kept them on separate floors. All the nurses thought the guy was a complete and utter douchebag.
4. No drama here
I was once present at the birth of a very white baby to not white parents. The parents spoke a different language to staff and there was this awkward silence while staff tried desperately not to exchange eye contact or stare at the father for his reaction. After a while, it was obvious that the father either hadn’t noticed or didn’t care, as he looked delighted and was chatting to the mother happily.
Subsequently determined albinism ran in the man’s family.
5. Hitler’s Bday
Not a doctor but security guard outside delivery room. I just remember cracking up(wtf moment) as one lady was screaming she would not have her baby born on Hitler’s birthday.
6. Sorry, honey!
One day a bloke came running down the ward hallway screaming for help that his wife was in labour and they needed the docs to come quickly! The nurses looked around curiously and asked him “ok… so where is she?”
The colour from the bloke’s face drains for a second as he thinks this over…
“OH SHIT!” and he legs it out of there.
40 minutes later he returns with wife in tow. In his initial rush, he’d packed change of clothes, the car seat, camera gear, high tailed it to the hospital and left the missus at home!
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7. “Nah. I’m good.”
The way my dad tells it, part way through labor with me my mum said “that’s it, I’m done, I’m going home” and tried to get off the table. Mum claims not to remember this.
8. No time
So I’m in medical school on my obstetric rotation. I’m doing a late night shift cuz I just want to see some births (labor lasts forever, yo). 20s something schizophrenic woman comes in, laboring with her 6th child. Her mother apparently has custody of the other kids, kind of a sad situation. Police had to break her door down because she went into labor and continuously screamed “I’m not giving birth to Satan’s baby! This is Satan’s baby!” The doctor I’m with looks unamused and just says to the nurse “sedate her a bit, we’ll do a c section if she refused to push, etc”. After about 30 minutes and some sedating drugs the doctor tells me to go in and do a pelvic exam and to report to him how far along things are. He went in with me, and then got called out as I’m putting on gloves, saying he’ll be back in a minute. I introduce myself to the patient, explain what I’m doing and start the examination. I feel a contracting sensation and next thing I know a baby’s head pushes my hands out and I’m holding a screaming newborn. I am so in shock I am just staring at the baby and I start to feabily scream, “I, uh, need, uh, some help here!”
Everything was well with the baby and mom. I had to throw away my socks and shoes.
Edit: I forgot the best part, where the mother goes, “what’s your name, I’ll name it after you!” It was a boy, I’m female, she insisted I give her my name. I didn’t want to screw up this kids life so I said Henry.
9. Premie
I gave birth in an emergency room hallway, courtesy of having sudden onset preterm, super short labor. We had JUST moved to a new town and they did not have a full hospital, only a stand alone ER.
So husband goes casually cruising up the freeway on the way to the hospital 30 minutes away and I had a feeling shit was about to go down, saw a sign for the ER and just screamed at him to pull off.
We get into the ER and they immediately call an ambulance to take me to a hospital with a NICU. Paramedics are literally wheeling me down the hall to the ambulance when my daughter started crowning.
They rounded the corner of the ER to get to an area with some space and the dude in the room right next to us was in cardiac arrest. So this poor ER is completely empty except the screaming pregnant woman birthing a preterm infant in the hallway and the elderly gentleman dying.
My daughter wound up being solely delivered by the 2 paramedics who were transporting me because the ER doc was busy running the code and the 2 nurses on staff were flying EVERYWHERE. They were running in and out of the other guys room with meds and fluid, sprinting around with the baby isolette, etc.
The other patients’ family is clustered in the hallway staring at my gaping vagina while also crying over their dying relative. When my daughter let out her first cry there was a paltry round of cheers from that family and then they all went back to their crying. Meanwhile my husband is curled up in a waiting room chair heavy breathing from light headedness and everyone is ignoring his feeble cries for water. He was literally acting like he was about to die.
In the end no one died, baby was fine, husband passed out, and 5 years later I became a paramedic.
Edited to add: it was 0600 AM, hence the minimal staffing.
10. Told ya
Not a doctor but a fire fighter. Got called for a pregnancy, baby already born. Get on scene and mom and daughter (who just gave birth) are arguing back and forth. Mom summed her argument up best with “I told ya you was pregnant”
11. This one’s sad
When I was an intern we had a woman who was 8 months pregnant get crushed in a subcompact vs truck collision. Mom was pulseless on scene so EMS brought her in hot (ie, ongoing chest compressions, very unstable). We had about a 60 second warning in the ED to get the OBGYN crash team and the NICU response team down.
It was clear mom wasn’t going to make it. Blunt trauma arrests in the field survive about 1% of the time under the best of conditions. But we had to try to keep her alive so we could do a perimortem C-section to get the kid out. I was on the trauma team, so while I was working on trying to keep mom’s circulation going to perfuse the uterus OB started the perimortem section. We opened the chest to start internal compressions and see if there was an aortic injury we could temporize.
Sections are usually fast; perimortem sections are faster. From skin cut to baby out and over to NICU team was about 45 seconds. They started CPR because baby was severely bradycardic and essentially dead. That’s when we found baby #2. Turns out mom was having twins.
Now, in retrospect in turns out this twin had died in utero earlier and this was a known problem, but we didn’t know that immediately. I joined the impromptou NICU team #2 as we tried to save #2. But it became clear this was futile and we abandoned efforts and turned all our resources to baby #1. We worked on that baby for over an hour but never was really able to get to a stable place. We were able to get the baby to the NICU but unfortunately arrested again and could not be resuscitated shortly after getting there. Likely catastrophic hemorrhage.
The husband and father, who was in the car as well, was physically fine. He had some minor contusions. But when he told him what happened, that he had just lost essentially his whole family, poor man just collapsed. There was no crying, screaming, he just went down like a sack of potatoes. The expression on his face, though, with such immense sorrow and pain and suffering. I will never forget it.
Hopefully that wasn’t too gorey for what you were asking. That was definitely the most intense delivery I have ever attended.
12. Dude.
There was this couple who were gonna birth their first. The father though had already a child from a previous marrige. So when it was time for labour, instead of being supportive and calm and leaving it to the proffesionals. The father went batshit and started screaming ”my previous wife wasnt in this much pain, something is wrong”. That is excactly what a woman in labour would like to hear
13. Ugh OUCH
I remember doing a delivery as a medical student working with a family medicine resident physician (new doc still being trained and closely supervised). Usually they let the student do a lot of it to get experience, but I remember the attending physician (experienced doc supervising the resident) saying “No no … Let her do it. She really needs the practice. You just watch.”
When an attending says “no no, she really needs the practice,” it’s not a good sign. Well, baby itself gets delivered and I’m thinking all is good.
After baby is born, you have to deliver the placenta, applying gentle traction on the cord to encourage progress. Gently but consistent. While the attending is distracted by the new baby, I watch horrified as the resident YANKS on the umbilical cord. Of course, it snaps. She gets this look of “oh shit” on her face and “oh shit” is right.
Now, in the best case scenario, delivery of the placenta will proceed because it was almost there anyway. That did not occur here. No matter what encouragement we gave, it was not coming. So drastic measures have to be taken.
To the husband, the attending physician is explaining what will happen next.
We’re going to take her back to the OR.
“She’s having surgery????”
Hopefully not, sir. We’re going to manually extract the placenta.
“How you getting in if there’s no surgery.”
Well sir, we’re able to enter through the vaginal canal, it remains very much open.
“You’re gonna put some tool up her pussy???”
No sir, we’ll be doing a manual extraction.
“…manual?”
With a hand. And arm.
“You’re going to stick your ARM up my wife’s pussy???”
That’s about right sir.
“You mean to tell me you’re going to fist my wife??”
…The conversation sort of went on. We get back to the OR and I watch in horror as the attending puts on a glove that goes back pretty much to her shoulder, and basically just dives right in. She is in past her elbow manually scraping the placenta out. The wife is loopy but not “out” during this and is providing colorful commentary.
When we finally finish and reunite her with her husband she says “I swear to God I could feel then pressing on my lungs.” The husband says “I thought they went in from below” and in beautiful theatrics she grabs his shirt, pulls him towards her, and through clenched teeth says “They. Did.”
As for me, I decided to go into psychiatry.
Probably not the kind of story you were hoping for, but that’s my contribution.
14. Free parking
I worked as a hospital parking attendant manning the booth. A car pulled up and the woman was mid way pushing out her baby in the passenger seat. One relative in the back was giving her a back massage, one was fanning her, her kid was playing on his DS, and her husband in the driver seat nonchalantly smiled at me and asked for one ticket all while the mother just delivered her own baby looking calmed like it was a perfunctory task. I didn’t know what to do so I just gave them free parking.
15. Bad omens
This is actually my grandfather’s birth sometime in the 1920s: my great grandma was giving birth at home, on the reservation (Apache), and as the labor kicked in full swing, a crow or raven landed on the windowsill.
Now, this is a bad omen, it means someone is going to die or has died. Needless to say, my great x2 aunts and great grandma’s mother started straight tripping, shooing the bird and whatnot. Bird would not fuck off, looked at my great grandma and squawked.
Grandpa was born a few minutes later, while someone is trying to get the crow to go away. Crow flies off the minute the baby cries. A few minutes later, someone rode up on horseback to tell everyone that my great great grandfather had passed away about 15 minutes beforehand. That was right when the crow had landed on the sill.
Family legend says that grandpa was his reincarnation.
16. What a dick
When I was a nursing student doing my OB rotation, a group of us watched our first delivery. There was no time to do an epidural because the baby was ready and he wasn’t waiting.
After the baby’s delivered, the first thing the dad says is ‘You can rub it my ex’s face that you did it natural.’
It wasn’t a huge dramatic thing but everyone in the room just kinda looked at each other. Like buddy, your son was just born and you’re more excited to one up your ex?
17. Oh, dude
I was in labor with my son for a total of 35 minutes. I had my first contraction and he was out 35 minutes later. Obviously, we didn’t make it to the hospital.
I had what I thought was a contraction (this was my second baby) and told my husband I thought I was going into labor. Could he please get our daughter ready (she was 13 months at the time) and grab the bag I had packed for the hospital. By the time he came back downstairs, I’d had 2 more contractions in about a minute. So I said we’d better get going. As I said it, my water broke and I had another contraction. So I told him he’d better call 911 for an ambulance, because I wasn’t sure we’d make it to the hospital 20-30 minutes away and didn’t want to have a baby in the car.
He calls 911 and tells them what’s going on. I only hear his side of the conversation. I later found out they were telling him to grab things – towels, shoelaces, etc. So I’m in active labor on the couch, waiting for the paramedics, hoping I won’t have to push until they get there. And my husband starts freaking out on the 911 operator. I hear:
“That is your job. You need to get here. That is your job.”
Several times he says that. The operator was trying to get him prepared if the baby was born before the paramedics arrived. So he’s holding my 13 month old (who was terrified because she had no idea what was going on) and screaming at the 911 operator that it wasn’t his job to deliver his son.
The paramedics did make it, with about 30 seconds to spare. One came over to me on the couch and told me not to push if I was able. He just got the words out and I said I had to push, pushed once, and my son was born.
My husband was so terrified and panicked. He’s a good guy and a great dad, but he did not want to deliver a baby. Really didn’t want to deliver a baby. I was laying there hoping the paramedics would make it and he just screamed about how they needed to be there. It was not reassuring. We brought a bunch of homemade goodies to the fire station, and they promised they’d bring a plate to the dispatcher. I’m still so sorry he yelled at her.
18. Candy crush
Husband was sitting in the corner playing candy crush on his wife’s phone whilst she was in labour, up popped a text message saying “does he know that it might not be his?”. Shouting ensued and he walked out and left the unit with her crying.
19. Well, that’s it. Never having a baby.
My first baby was born by emergency c-section and spent 5 weeks in the NICU. I wanted to try for a VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean) with my second. I was given a foley bulb induction at 39 weeks and 5 days. They put the bulb into my cervix and expanded it with fluid, and then it slowly expanded my cervix as it fell out. That took about 12 hours and was quite painful.
Then I was given pitocin, but they cranked it up too high and I was having 6 or 7 contractions in a ten minute period and I was only at 5cm. They tried to turn it down. I got an epidural and was trying to get some rest when my shoulders started to hurt. I mentioned that I wished the epidural was in my neck so I wouldn’t feel my shoulder pain, which I assumed was from lying on my side.
My husband says at that point I passed out as my blood pressure dropped and about seven doctors and nurses rushed into the room. They pumped me full of epinephrine and stuff. They thought I was having an amniotic embolism or a heart attack. I got rushed to a c-section.
I remember thinking, as they were pushing me down the hall, that the movies get it totally right. The lights on the ceiling did that streaming by thing they show in movie scenes.
They opened me up to discover that my uterus had ruptured and my baby’s hand was coming through into my stomach cavity, which was full of blood and amniotic fluid. It was quite gruesome.
Baby was fine, but my husband was convinced I was going to die. I didn’t, obviously.
I was bitterly disappointed about not doing a VBAC and I’ve had people ask me why I “chose” to have a c-section many times. It has really done a number on me emotionally.
20. Ugh
Teen mother told me if the baby comes out black the family is going to disown her. Her boyfriend was not black her dealer was.
Baby was black. They weren’t happy but didn’t disown her until the next baby. She was still using.
