Most childbirth stories are associated with crying, usually due to the warmth of the moment. The thought of yourself or a loved one bringing a new life into the world comes with extreme emotional heft. However, you could also consider yourself lucky to have a childbirth story that leaves you in tears due to laughter.
There are doctors, and parents alike, who can recall stories from the day of delivery or during the months leading up to it, that sound like the works of a joke. On Reddit, they chose to share their most hilarious pregnancy stories.
How Dad Ended Up In Timeout
“I am a veterinarian. While my wife gave birth to our son, the doctor asked me what I was thinking about the whole thing.
I looked at all the blood and the general mess he had made and replied that I make less of a mess in the stables when I help giving birth to calves than he just did.
He gave me a 5-minute timeout.”
This Father Was Off To A “Great” Star
“One of my coworkers is about to become a dad. His wife has been spending a lot of time at their local hospital. She has heard some pretty crazy stories from the nurses, including this one:
One day, a guy came running down the ward hallway screaming for help that his wife was in labor and they needed the doctors to come quickly! The nurses looked around curiously.
‘OK. So, where is she?’ they asked him.
The color drained from the husband’s face as he thought it over.
‘OH NO!’ he yelled as he ran out of the hospital.
Forty minutes later, the husband returned with his wife in tow. In his initial rush, he had packed a change of clothes, the car seat, camera gear, and high tailed it to the hospital while leaving his wife at home!”
How Woefully Uninformed This Woman Was
“My grandmother worked for the medical clinic at her local Army base during WWII. She, sometimes, got to deliver the news that a woman (usually the wife of a soldier) was pregnant. She told one young woman, who replied, ‘But that’s impossible! My husband has been overseas for more than a year!’
My grandmother assured her that she was definitely pregnant. She asked if she had had relations with anyone else recently.
‘Well, yes!’ the woman replied. ‘But…you can’t get pregnant with nobody but your husband!’
The poor girl actually had no idea.”
No One Got Through That With A Straight Face
“My first OB call, we get her to the back of the ambulance and the head just coming out. So we start delivering right there, when the mom-to-be looks with a straight face to the dad-to-be and says, ‘This started in the back of a van, only fitting that it ends in the back of one!’
My partner had to walk away, leaving me stranded.”
The Mother Hopped Out Of Bed A Little Too Early
“A friend of mine was looking after a Caucasian couple on the labor ward. Things were progressing well and she started pushing. She kept pushing and pushing until the hair visible. The head continued to advance. It became quite clear that this child was black.
The dad stood up, wide-eyed and pointed at the woman.
‘You HUSSY!’ he shouted and stormed out of the room.
The woman, in sheer panic, hopped straight off the bed trying to chase down her significant other… with the baby’s head just sitting there between her legs. My friend tried to wrangle the woman back on the bed so she could deliver the rest of the baby as the woman sobbed uncontrollably.
I imagine the father did not stick around to raise the little one, based on his reaction.”
Beyond Grumpy Old Men
“I was staying in the hospital with my sister while she was pregnant. We got to know this other family who were there over two days. They seemed nice, except for the two elderly men awaiting the birth of their grandchild.
They were constantly shouting and swearing at each other the entire time. One time, the paternal father tried to ask a nurse for directions to the cafeteria, and the other dad called him a ‘worthless piece of trash.’ These two hated each other. It was mental.
They broke out into a full-on fist fight in the hallway and ended up knocking over some cleaning supplies. I had to help break up the fight. Let me remind you that these two were 67 and 75 years old.
The hospital staff asked them to leave as they were stressing out the patients which is the last thing a woman in labor needs. The hospital staff asked me to make sure the two men actually left the building, and when they got to the parking lot, they started going at it again.
I had to break it up, again. Just before security arrived, one old guy got into a wheelchair and claimed that the other tried to flip him over. The other grandfather then walked up to the guy in the wheelchair and punched him in the face. Then the guy got up and (yep you guessed it), they started fighting again.”
This Medical Student Switched Career Goals After This
“I remember assisting with a delivery as a medical student working with a family resident physician. Usually, they let the student do a lot of it to get experience, but I remember the attending physician, referring to the resident, telling me, ‘No, no, let her do it. She needs the practice. You just watch.’
When an attending physician says, ‘No, no, She needs the practice,’ it’s not a good sign. Luckily, the baby itself got delivered, and I thought all is good.
After a baby is born, you have to deliver the placenta by applying gentle traction on the cord to encourage progress. While the attending physician was distracted by the new baby, I watched in horror as the resident YANKED on the umbilical cord.
Of course, it snapped. She had this look of dread on her face and with good reason. Then, we had to take drastic measures. The attending physician explained to the husband what would happen next.
‘We’re going to take her back to the OR,’ the attending said.
‘She’s having surgery?’ the father asked.
Attending: ‘Hopefully not, sir. We’re going to extract the placenta manually.’
Father: ‘How are you getting in if there’s no surgery?’
Attending: ‘Well, sir, we’re able to enter through the birth canal.’
Father: ‘You’re gonna put some tool inside her?’
Attending: ‘No sir, we’ll be doing a manual extraction.’
Father: ‘Manual?’
Attending: ‘With a hand. And arm.’
Father: ‘You’re going to stick your ARM up my wife?’
Attending: ‘That’s about right, sir.’
Father: ‘You mean to tell me you’re going to fist my wife?’
The conversation sort of went on this way for a while. When we got back to the operating room, I watched in horror as the attending physician put on a glove that pretty much went to her shoulder, and just dove right in.
She was in past her elbow, manually scraping the placenta out. The wife was loopy but not ‘out’ during the procedure and was providing colorful commentary.
‘I swear to God, I could feel them pressing on my lungs,’ the woman said to her husband after we had finished.
‘I thought they went in from below,’ the husband said.
In beautiful theatrics, she grabbed his shirt, pulled him towards her, and said, through clenched teeth, ‘They did.’
As for me, I decided to go into psychiatry.”
“Make Me Unpregnant!”
“A teen was in her third trimester and decided she was tired of being pregnant. She showed up in the clinic and said she was ‘cramping.’ Checked her and everything was fine. She got mad when we sent her home with a follow-up visit scheduled for the next week. She started crying and yelling that she wanted to be induced. Then started demanding we make her ‘unpregnant.’ Apparently, we didn’t understand what she was going through. When the tears didn’t work, she started to get nasty. Threatening to report us all to the College of Surgeons and Physicians. But the attending was not phased at all. Their response is what cracked me up the most:
‘I have never, during my whole career, induced a woman because she was yelling at me.’
The OB said it so calmly. It just instantly made the girl stop crying and she picked up her bag and stormed out of the office with her mother. ‘I have never, during my whole career, induced a woman because she was yelling at me.’ Cracks me up every time I remember it!”
She Changed Her Attitude Relatively Quickly
“I was once a volunteer in the ER. I had the privilege of seeing a very obese woman admitted with severe discharge and pain. As it turned out, she was in labor and never knew she was pregnant.
She insisted that she just had not been on her period for more than nine months because of some thyroid condition. It boggled my mind that she didn’t know.
What did she say upon being informed she was pregnant? ‘No way in heck.’
Seven hours later, I heard her say, ‘Her name is Michelle.'”
From Horror To Hilarity
“I was in medical school on my obstetrics rotation doing a late night shift because I wanted to see some births. A schizophrenic woman in her 20s came in, laboring with her sixth child. 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 on rotation looked unamused and said to the nurse, ‘Sedate her a bit, we’ll do a C-section if she refuses to push.’
Thirty minutes after witnessing that, the doctor told me to go in and do a pelvic exam and give him a report on her status. He went in with me, then he got called out as I was putting on gloves. He said he would be back in a minute.
I introduced myself to the patient, explained what I was doing, and started the examination. I felt a contracting sensation. The next thing I knew, a baby’s head pushed out into my hands.
‘I, uh, need some help here!’ I started to scream, in shock at the sight of the baby.
Both the mother and child ended up healthy. After everything settled down, the mother approached me.
‘What’s your name?’ she asked. ‘I’ll name it after you.’
It was a boy and I am female, but she insisted I give her my name. I didn’t want to mess up this kid’s life, so I said, ‘Henry.'”
Three Is A Crowd
“My father is an OB/GYN, so he has some good stories. His latest story was about a woman who came to his office with her husband and her boyfriend. They did not know who the father was and they could not find out until the baby is born. Both men wanted to be there during doctor appointments and the birth.
The two men were surprisingly cordial with each other, but I’m betting a paternity test would be run before the umbilical cord was even cut.”
A Very Awkward Moment In A Medical Lab
“My mother used to work in a medical lab many decades ago. One day, another woman who worked in the building was visiting the lab. During the conversation, she mentioned that she was blood type ‘X,’ her husband was type ‘Y,’ and their child was type ‘Z’ (I don’t remember the specific types).
‘That’s impossible,’ one of the younger lab techs blurted out.
The doctor in the lab just stared daggers at him.
Luckily, the visitor either did not notice or did not care, and moved along shortly after. My mom still remembers it as one of the most awkward moments she had ever been privy to.”
The Father Must Have A Sixth Sense
“My wife was three days late on her period. I was the one to notice this, not her. I purchased her a pregnancy test and she took it. I remember, as we were standing in the hallway of our first apartment together and she was watching the results of the test, I placed my hands on her shoulders and looked into her eyes.
‘You are pregnant,’ I said. ‘It is twins – fraternal twins, a boy and a girl, and the girl will come out first.’
She told me that if I knocked her up with twins, she would knock my head off. By the time I had finished speaking, a faint line appeared showing positive for pregnancy.
A few weeks later she was feeling sick. We went to the ER. Her pregnancy was confirmed. In a thick Caribbean accent, the ultrasound tech told her, ‘Eets Tweens! Look! See? Tweens.’
She did not understand him at first. I did. I thought about running. I didn’t.
Two months later, it was confirmed that they were fraternal. Two months after that, it was confirmed that Baby A was a girl and Baby B was a boy. The babies came six weeks early. It was a tough pregnancy that ended with an emergency C-Section. The doctor pulled my daughter out first and then my son.”
“She Thought She Was Just Putting On Some Weight”
“We were in Hawaii visiting family. We were laying on the beach one day. My mom rolled onto her stomach and noticed there was a hard lump in there. Being the woman she is, she assumed she had cancer and did not tell any of us about it.
Two weeks later, we were back at home. I was about to leave for work when she pulled me into the living room saying we needed to chat. She told me about her finding the lump to me and told me that she would be going to the doctor that day to get it checked out.
When I got home, my mother told us that the doctors believed she had an ectopic pregnancy, but that they needed her to come back and take more tests.
She went back the next day and learned she was really six months pregnant and having a boy. She was on birth control and got monthly periods and everything. She thought she was just putting on some weight.”
The Beginning Of A Beautiful Friendship
“The woman who later became my godmother was the attending OB nurse when my mom, a tiny woman, went into labor with me, her first. I had to be turned. As I was being manipulated, Mom passed out; a few seconds later, when she partially came to, she smiled sweetly and groggily asked the doc, ‘Did you at least take your shoes off?’ My godmother-to-be had to leave the room to change whites because she peed herself.
They became best friends for nearly fifty years. Mom’s gone now; I’m approaching 60, ‘Auntie’ Lorraine’s 85, and after I feed her two stiff drinks, she still loves to tell me that story. And I still love to hear it.”
This Mother Paid For Her Mistake
“I worked as a lab technician before I became a nurse. We had a set of twins in the NICU that were super early. The mom was still in the OR getting sewed up from the cesarean. I was drawing Baby B’s blood when mom was wheeled over to Baby A’s isolette.
‘Oh thank god you’re not black!’ the mother said, crying. ‘I have been so worried for the last 7 months.’
Newborn babies, especially when they’re born early, are very pink, almost red. Even if a baby was part-black, their skin would not necessarily be dark yet. But, looking at these babies, it was obvious they were going to be black – the shape of the face, the texture of the hair. Baby B, whom I was working on, had an intense Mongolian spot.
A few weeks later, my NICU nurse friend told me that the babies were now on a ‘no-info status’ security alert, meaning we could not give anyone information about them, could not refer to them by name, etc.
She said there was a huge fight because the mom’s husband, a white guy, obviously noticed that the babies were half-black and that mom had cheated on him and got pregnant. The real dad, a black guy, came in and didn’t realize the mom was even married.
Those poor babies.”
A Whole Saga Of Maternal Insanity
t”I have several of these kinds of stories. Where do I start?
I have one in which the baby daddy and the grandma were in the delivery room. We were setting up the table to deliver.
‘Okay, Dad, want to cut the cord?’ I cheerfully asked the baby daddy.
He lost his cool.
‘Not if this she-devil is in the room!’ he said, and pointed to the grandma.
They got into a yelling match. Meanwhile, the patient and I made awkward eye contact while the nurse and the other resident tried to calm them down. We delivered the baby and I cut the cord.
I once had a couple with no prenatal care show up in labor. They ended up needing a C-section. After we got the baby out, I was closing up when the baby daddy started yelling at us and accusing us of being not real doctors. We kept on going and ignored him. He demanded to talk to the CEO of the hospital and kept on standing up and looking over the drape.
At one point, he was behind me until the nurse got him to sit down. Finally, we finished up as he was yelling at us. The mother never showed up for follow up appointments, but later ended up with a surgical site infection. They tried to sue us. I always wondered if there was some underlying abuse there.
I once had a mom ask if the baby is mixed… right in front of baby daddy who was the same race. Speaking of which, I once had a baby daddy ask for paternity tests the minute baby was born. Chill.
There was another time I had a crunchy granola couple come in to see if the woman was in labor. They passed out pamphlets for their birth plan. It was made to look like a playbill. Cute.
I started to read it. Nothing seemed too off – they wanted to wash the baby, they did not know if it was a boy or girl and wanted the dad to announce…
Then, I got to the end. They specifically requested no verbal communication with the mom. All communication was to go through the dad. There was to be no referring to the baby as ‘baby.’ We were to refer to the baby as ‘special soul.’ Those requests were quickly ignored.
Another time, I was doing an initial prenatal visit for a mom on suboxone, a narcotic.
Good for her, trying to get over her addiction.
She seemed motivated. She was excited. The baby daddy seemed excited. Both seemed like a cute couple. I was doing a quick ultrasound in the room and he randomly asked me a question:
‘So, can you tell me who the dad is?’ he asked.
‘You need a DNA paternity test for that,’ I replied.
The mom looked shocked.
‘Well, let’s do it,’ the baby daddy said.
‘We don’t do them until the baby is born,’ I explained. ‘The method for doing it before delivery has risks associated with it so we don’t do genetic testing unless we think there’s a risk of a birth defect.’
‘Then WHY am I here?’
The mom was bawling at that point. I asked him to leave.
This next story is a sad one. A mom came in on coke with an abruption. Her kid was delivered by an emergency section and went to NICU.
The child was brain dead. It, basically, only had some episodic spasms of movement. The cops told the mom that she could not withdraw life support because, then, she would be on the hook for manslaughter. She didn’t.
The guy she put down as the dad on the birth certificate was her husband, whom she’d cheated on. He did not give a care about what was going on. The real baby daddy had no say in withdrawing life support. It made me cry.
I have seen several pregnant teens whose moms, somehow, think withholding an epidural will make them think twice about premarital coitus.
OK, but let’s do some birth control instead? It is so messed up.
One time, a woman was with her cousin as she rolled in at 9 cm with her third kid. She was Snapchatting pictures of herself posing next to the mom, who looked very uncomfortable. We delivered the baby, whom the woman deemed as her ‘hot little nephew.’
MA’AM, HE IS FIVE MINUTES OLD.
And, finally, I once saw a medical student get recognized by her baby daddy as he was helping deliver for his other baby mama.”
There Had To Be SOME Reason The Baby Looked Like That
“My mom used to be a NICU nurse and then became a lactation specialist. She once told me about an mixed race couple (neither were white) that had an albino child. The mother was convinced that the father had an affair.”