A Dad talks about his delivery room experience

Filed in archive Miscellany on July 14, 2005

"At this point, Emily was due to deliver our first child within two weeks. And like the majority of first-time dads I was in the throes of delivery-room anxiety, which included a fear of fainting in what I imagined to be a sea of bodily fluids.

This selfish anxiety paled in comparison to what Emily would face in the delivery room. But my fears had already evolved into an imaginary scenario I could not get out of my head: Me fainting and having my pathetic self wheeled out of the delivery room as I try to whisper "sorry" through the oxygen mask --- all of which would be followed by my eternal humiliation.

I took comfort in the understanding that I wasn't alone. Generations of American men have faced my anxiety and shared my ignorance and lived." (Loftus, "A dad's delivery-room anxieties", MSNBC, Jul.15)