The Paradox

Men are believed to be physically strong. But that attribute should probably be reserved for women. They are literally the strongest “weak” (Read: physically weaker than men not all but generally) people ever. Allow me to explain before you crucify me.

I’ve never experienced such fear and joy at the same time. The amount of pain women experience during labor is why men don’t have babies. I didn’t even go through it directly and I know we wouldn’t make it. On this day one year ago my wife gave birth to our beautiful daughter(Happy Birthday Baby girl!).

As a man all I wanted to do was “fix” what was causing my wife excruciating pain. But alas I was unable to do anything. Nature had to take its course. I sat next to my wife in the room and a tremendous sense of grief began to hit me. I started to feel like it was all my fault she was feeling all this pain.

In the back of my mind I started to think of all the scary stories or near misses that I had heard of during pregnancy and Labor & Delivery. I had been staring at the monitors so long that without the Staff telling me what they meant I had learned what each item corresponded with. Oxygen(O2) levels, my wife’s heartbeat, my daughter’s heartbeat and the contractions.

There are things in life that make sense logically. Such as when the Dr. told us one of the side effects of an epidural is it can drop the mother’s blood pressure.

My conclusion was that because my wife’s normal BP is just above the threshold for normal it might cause her BP to drop too low. As surely as I thought it the monitors started beeping. Nurses rushed in. Rolled my wife onto her left side and gave her oxygen. This would happen more than 4 times throughout the night and into the morning.

I would look at the monitors and see that my daughter’s heart beat would drop to dangerously low levels as my wife’s BP would drop. My wife through it all stayed strong. She had more composure in those moments than I had seen her have for anything. I had to remain stoic through it all because I knew that the moment she saw worry on my face she would start to worry.

At the moment when my daughter started to crown I saw a strength in my wife that I had never witnessed before from anyone. She pushed our daughter out. She had started to freak out a bit and said “I can’t do this”.

When the Dr. told her that she would either have push or have a C-Section(Cesarean Section) she bared down and after less than 15 minutes of pushing our daughter appeared. She didn’t want a C-Section but she also wasn’t going to allow anything to happen to our daughter.

The strength I saw that day I will never forget. The pain I saw that day I will never forget. As a husband/partner/boyfriend/friend/relative whatever being in that room changes you if you are paying attention.

I realized how strong women really are and how weak men are. I realized that my mother, my aunts, my cousins, friends etc and any woman I know or didn’t know for that matter who had a child were gladiators. Fighting battle for not only their lives but the lives of their children.

To all the gladiators whether you’ve fought in the arena once, twice, or many times I salute you. Those of us in the stands have the easy part which is trying to cheer you on and keep you motivated. You are the stars of the show!

Related posts:

Over the past two centuries, the world has seemingly discovered more and more ways to pollute the water we drink, the air we breathe, and the forest that we love hiking through so much. While we may…