10 Arguments against Letting Dad Attend Delivery

For the last year or two, the father of the baby was expected to be present at the delivery. It has turned into a sort of a tradition, so now a father who won’t turn up for the big event may be looked upon as an uncaring parent. When discussing the upcoming birth, many women never even ask their partners whether they would like to come along to the delivery room – it is regarded as a natural thing to do. He is the father, he has to supply support and exude reassurance. Besides, he ought to be eager to watch his dear baby appear into the world, oughtn’t he?

Yet it can happen in the best families. For one, famous chef Gordon Ramsey, father of four, opened up about staying away from the births; he decided that his bedroom performance may be impaired by things he could see in the delivery room. While it can be a valid reason, women keep inviting their husbands in because they want them during birth. But the point is, such reasons are numerous and some of them are supported from the medical viewpoint.

His presence may create additional stress

While the man is watching his wife laboring he releases adrenaline, the stress hormone; he may try his best to appear calm and happy, smiling at his woman, yet he is inevitably flustered. She can’t but feel his tension and anxiety, and his condition interferes with her own relaxed state – because it is known that adrenaline sluice-in is catching. If there is somebody around pumped up with adrenaline, you won’t be able to stay fully relaxed.

Consequently, the woman who is trying to relax for the delivery will find it hard to do it properly due to her man’s nervousness, and the birth may be more complicated than it should. It has occurred before those women who were exerting themselves to deliver while their partner was in the room, produced the baby as soon as they left it. Some of them spoke of their partners’ temporal absence as of “bad luck,” although it was anything else but luck. They just relaxed as soon as he stepped out, and the delivery became easier.

The scene could make him depressive

There is little doubt that such a situation can produce a very potent emotional effect on the male, sometimes so potent as to make them fall into a sort of post-natal depression. Some of the men attending the birth were known to stay in bed for about a week afterward with various complaints like headaches or stomach aches. It all sounds as if they were thinking up reasons to disguise their state of dispiritedness that they couldn’t account for otherwise. They feel unexplainably low and seek to forget the scenes they witnessed. So they can escape to a pub and drink the images in their heads away, or go away to play golf. They feel the aftermath of a highly unpleasant mixture of powerlessness and uselessness during the birth – they would have liked to help their women along, but of course, it was out of the question.

It may spoil bedroom fun

Think about it. Of course, it is different with different men – some come out all right and their wives fire them up even after they saw them deliver. Then again, there are others who feel that things have changed dramatically. There was a man who confessed that after he had witnessed his wife laboring and bringing out his baby he was unable to think of bedding her for the next year. Meanwhile, the rift keeps widening, aggravating your relationship.

As emerged from a survey conducted by the Netmums website, about 75% of couples do not make love so often after the birth of a child than they did before. Over 30% of women said their partners looked upon them as mothers above lovers, and over 40% didn’t believe their partners regarded them as attractive anymore. Of course, men dislike being driven off from their first place; others are put off by things like the stitches or expressing milk. Hardly anyone puts these sad changes down to being present during childbirth – a degree of intimacy that is often far more impressive than men bargained for.

His presence can interfere with the placenta

We already mentioned that with men in the delivery room the process can be delayed somewhat, but what’s more, they can intrude into other intimate moments. For one, as soon as the baby comes out, the woman needs to be alone with it at least until the time she has delivered the placenta. First, she has to establish a bond with the tiny one; then, she has to deliver the placenta as easily as she can. For that, she needs a high level of oxytocin (the love hormone). She can get into the condition when she is alone and forgetful about everything except her baby, touching its skin, looking into its eyes and inhaling its smell, feeling boundless love.

Meanwhile, men are apt to speak, distract her attention, come up to the baby and touch it. This intrusion could be very inopportune and result in hindrance in the placenta delivery.

Men can make delivery more painful

Attending childbirth can arguably become one of the man’s most impressive events shaping his further family life. Yet there are studies advising fathers to stay away from the sight for the cogent reason that it will bring their partners more pain than necessary. Research showed that men’s presence often failed to alleviate the pain; moreover, in a number of cases, the pain was registered to be even worse.

While women keep expecting support from the one they love and want him to be present at the occasion, hoping that his being there for them will help them through the experience that is overwhelming – especially if it is their first birth. They don’t know what to expect, and their partner present embodies the idea of comfort and confidence that they have been getting from him. They are not aware that this kind of comfort sets off factors that affect them adversely.

There is a risk of PTSD

Many experts urge hospital employees to analyze the fact of the presence of husbands at the delivery of women whose labors proved to be more difficult than it was expected. When fathers watched their children come out in traumatic or aggravated circumstances, they were left mentally disturbed. If it came to the worst, the man who had to undergo the experience went and developed post-traumatic stress disorder (abbreviated to PTSD). There was a case when а man experienced a first schizophrenic bout after his first baby was born.

In most of the registered cases of men traumatized due to their presence in hospital during the delivery, there is a recurring report of them finding themselves alone in an empty corridor wishing to help somehow but hamstrung by the feeling of helplessness. They were afraid that something may go wrong. Many of those emphasized that they had to suppress their feelings understanding that their prime concern is with the woman and their baby.

While women are naturally deeply involved in delivery, we ought not to forget about our partners who watch us painfully struggling without being able to help, torn by conflicting emotions.

Now that they saw it, they can’t do anything about it

Supposedly everyone would agree that there are bounds of intimacy that had better left untrespassed. For one, we will hardly take pleasure in seeing others defecate. While you may enjoy catching a glimpse of your beloved one perched on the toilet seat, you won’t stop to observe the whole process. Right? It must be even worse with delivery, with the woman’s legs thrust asunder, her face distorted with labor, the baby coming out, and the nurses probably passing jokes about him watching. Do you really think one could enjoy this?

The stench is awful, body fluids are leaking, there is blood, the placenta, everything combining to create an atmosphere he is hardly likely to ever forget. Rushing in is the realization that he is a father. It is not something from a movie, it is sickeningly real and it may keep haunting the poor male for years to come.

Patience can run out

Come to think about it, the watching process – for the man – must be long and not so very interesting, after all. As time goes by, they have to sit on, do nothing, feel in the way and try to be cheerful and supportive (which does not always come at opportune moments). At first, they are fired up, but hours slip away, and you don’t know when it will begin and when it will end. What if they have to wait for another day? While the wife is getting her medication, their endurance is severely tested. Emotions start burning out, coffee and cigarettes don’t help any, their own needs begin to clamor for attention, the hospital personnel doesn’t enjoy bumping into him on their way about their work.

Of course, there’s always step-by-step archiving –all the greasiest moments including – and reporting on the social media, it’s engrossing enough, but it may be vexing for the people in the delivery room.

Men can break… literally

After the baby is born, a father finds himself burdened by housework more than he ever thought possible in an attempt to make your life easier. If he is willing to step in and shoulder the chores, great – if he has both hands healthy and you didn’t injure one of them in the process. Since you were having contractions, squeezing something (or somebody) is a natural thing to do, and the stronger the contraction the harder the squeeze gets. Because the workings of the uterus call for a reaction of some kind, and you don’t feel yourself just how tight you squeeze.

At home, you are forced to simultaneously try and recover from your demanding experience and nurse the man whom you unintentionally harmed (and he may be making the most of his injure!). Hopefully it is something that will heal fast enough, but still, your unfortunate mischance will be referred to more than once during the rest of your life.

Men may not be strong enough to stand the scene

You have a really attentive and considerate husband who is adamant that he must be near you all the time to see you through. Then, when you want to feel his support, you hold out your hand for his and… emptiness: he passed out and fell down on the floor with medicos attending to his seemingly lifeless body. It can happen, after seeing blood flowing and hearing screams and moans. You are meant to concentrate on your labor instead of getting concerned about how your husband is faring.

Therefore, it is a grave issue for pregnant ladies: if you have reasons to doubt the sagacity of your partner attending your delivery, look deeply into the matter. Let the staff take care of you and your arriving baby without seeing to it that your man didn’t hurt himself falling. Then again, if they bring him around, he will be groggy and apt to repeat the fainting trick when it is most troublesome.