The miracle of birth can quickly become a very complicated and confusing affair when delivery room drama starts flaring up. Fights with doctors, peculiar comments, and even partners accidentally leaving the moms going into labor at home are just the tip of the iceberg.
Reddit users shared the most intense, wildest, and weirdest things they’d witnessed in the delivery room after user u/Roach2791 started up a thread on r/AskReddit asking them exactly that. One thing’s for sure, the thread increased our respect for the doctors and nurses who have to keep the situation under control under these extremely emotional conditions, alongside their actual jobs.
If you think that delivery rooms and hospitals are drama-free zones, then these stories are likely to change your mind. Scroll down and have a read, Pandas. Let us know what you think about these situations in the comments. And if you feel like sharing, why not tell us about the bizarre things that you’ve seen as well?
I reached out to Labor and Delivery (L&D) Nurse Holly D. to learn the secrets to staying calm in the delivery room, how medical professionals can keep the situation in control if there's drama, and how important communication is for professionals and parents.
L&D Nurse Holly stressed how vital it is that medical professionals "remained unbiased and focused on the safety of the patient" no matter the exact details of the situation in the delivery room or the hospital. "Safety in a delivery room for the baby and mother come first above all else. Ensuring your patient is safe mentally, emotionally, and physically during this time is vital. Reminding the parties involved in the drama why we are all here can help diffuse and refocus the energy. We can ask involved parties (not the patient) to leave and return at a later time due to the circumstances of the situation. However, if things become unsafe and nurses are unable to diffuse the situation security will be called," she told Bored Panda.
#1
My great grandmother had 13 children. Somewhere around number 5 or 6 she made it as far as the front lawn of the hospital and gave birth. The next pregnancy she only made it as far as the elevator and was totally mortified. The nurse on staff tried to reassure her by saying "it's okay, last year someone gave birth on the front lawn." She had the rest of her babies at home.
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562points
According to nurse Holly, how we stay calm can depend a lot on who we are as people and on how intricate the circumstances are. "The most effective way of remaining in control and calm in these moments as the patient is communicating with your medical team. Open up to the team about your thoughts, fears, and questions from the start," she said.
"The healthcare team can begin to walk you through common scenarios as well as possible emergency situations before they happen. By doing this it permits parents to ask additional questions that would arise in these scenarios, as well as give a 'sense of calmness' during an emergency," she explained to Bored Panda.
#2
Workmate of mine is about to become a dad in the next week. His wife has been getting to know the nurses at their local hospital and listening to some of the stories....
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 S**T!" 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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435points
#3
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 hugely apologetic 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.
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418points
Communication is the bedrock of quality work and care. Nurse Holly believes that it should be maintained at all times, no matter how complex, intense, or dramatic the situation. In fact, it becomes even more valuable in those types of situations.
"Communication is necessary in Labor and Delivery between the medical team and the patient/parents. Miscommunication or lack of communication can lead to mistakes and chaos between both dynamics. Communication throughout the duration of the patient's stay should be expected," she highlighted.
"During emergencies in Labor and Delivery communication between parents and medical team should be available. Great practice is designating knowledgeable personnel to walk parents through the emergency situation as it is happening, this could be a nurse. This allows parents to understand the priority of the situation, also this allows questions to be asked and decisions to be made by parents during the emergency. Although the situation is moving fast communication should be kept at priority between all."
#4
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 s**t 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.
It was 0600 AM, hence the minimal staffing.
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398points
#5
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 f*ck 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.
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380points
#6
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.
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365points
Some time ago, nurse Holly gave me some in-depth insights about her job and how some parents, especially dads, behave while their partners are in labor.
“On average I would say that approximately 1 in 10 are unsupportive and/or insensitive dads. There tend to be a lot more dads that don’t know how to support their significant others in labor, but I wouldn’t say those dads are insensitive, they just need guidance," Holly told Bored Panda during an earlier interview.
“As a nurse in Labor and Delivery we do a lot of coaching and educating the support person to help their significant others through labor,” Holly said that a nurse’s job involves a lot of human contact and communication.
"Their place and presence in the labor/delivery room is noticeable and can be iconic for your laboring wife or significant other. It’s okay to not know what to do, but being mentally and emotionally present is essential," the nurse explained that anyone who is in the delivery room to support the mom is playing a vital role.
#7
Doctor here, I have only ever 'delivered' one baby...(sorry for formatting, on my phone)
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.
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.
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332points
#8
Baby daddy is so exicited about the birth. We ask mom if she wants to do skin to skin bonding with the baby. She says yes. We go to put baby on her chest and baby daddy rips his shirt off and is stoked to do skin to skin. A for effort dude!
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306points
#9
This was a nice intense, and for the record, I'm a midwife. In Australia and the UK, midwives deliver the vast majority of babies.
Anyway. there was a woman who was in labour with her fifth child, she and her husband already had four girls. She knew that they were having a boy, but he didn't (he hadn't wanted to know the gender). He really, really wanted a boy, not for sexist reasons or anything like that, and I know that he was a wonderful father to his daughters and wouldn't treat the son any different, but he just wanted a son.
He sat in the corner, reading the paper for basically the whole birth. He wasn't ignoring his wife or anything, she didn't want him to touch her while she was in labour, that was just how she went about birthing (she also didn't want the midwives to touch her, so we stayed as hands off as possible). When the baby was finally born she broke out in a sweaty grin, looked at me and said, 'Tell him.' I told him that the baby was a boy and he raced around the bed to give his wife a hug and a kiss and to meet his firstborn son. He was crying and laughing and just absolutely overjoyed by the birth of the baby.
That was a good birth :)
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278points
"Labor is no easy task, and it comes in all variations. Talk with your partner about their expectations and desires during labor, be adaptable as things progress, and be mentally and emotionally supportive of them. I guarantee your experience in the labor room will be unforgettable and you will develop more appreciation for your significant other during labor,” she said.
"I fell in love with L&D when I had my first child, and I knew this was where I needed to be. I am inspired daily when I work with my patients as to just how incredibly strong women are. I love being able to support women during this time by encouraging, laughing, praying, and even crying with them and still being able to guide them through a moment in their life they will never forget."
#10
Oh. Friends a midwife. Baby comes out looking very very Asian to an apparently white couple. Lots of umms and looks.
Turns out that the father was mixed race on his mums side and she never mentioned it.
256points
#11
Holy cow, have I got a story for you. I’m not a doctor. This was my husband’s birth in 1944. His mom was in labor in a small town birthing home. It was literally in the local doctor’s home. Mom was in a back room with the doctor and a nurse. My husband’s dad was in the waiting room (living room). The doctor came out and told dad there were complications: he could save mom or save the baby. Dad had to choose. My father-in-law got up, walked out, got a gun out of his truck and came back in. He pointed the gun at the doctor and said both better live or the doctor wouldn’t. Then dad sat down on the couch with the gun in his lap. I’ve tried to imagine that doctor’s state of mind at that moment. He went back into the room with the laboring mother and ended up pulling the baby out with forceps. Mother and baby lived. So did the doctor. My husband’s skull is a testament to this story. It’s like craters on the moon. I’m grateful he’s never gone bald.
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247points
#12
Obligatory not a doctor, but when my nephew was born, he was so ugly my sister didn't want to hold him, saying, serious as f**k, "put it back in, it's obviously not ready yet"
She loves him to bits now, but we never let either of then forget it
245points
#13
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"
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230points
#14
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.
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225points
#15
One from a colleague of mine. One woman during her second stage (where you’re cervix is fully dilated and you can push the baby out) started pushing. As she did she passed what has been described to me as an utterly massive, 7.5 couric-worthy s**t, that just kept coming. The midwives had to receive it on a large pad and place it quickly on the nearest place which was the baby resuscitaire, as it was still coming. They then went back to the woman to catch the rest and clean up. As they moved back over to her she panicked and asked “is it breathing?!”. They had to get the husband to tell her it wasn’t the baby she’d passed.
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225points
#16
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.
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215points
#17
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.
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206points
#18
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.
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196points
#19
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.
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195points
#20
The baby’s father was caught cracking open the anesthesia cart and stealing meds. When police officers came to arrest him, he was sobbing and kept saying over and over “y’all aren’t going to let me see my baby be born?” and the officers were both like um nope should’ve thought about that before
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193points