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A pregnant woman has revealed why she doesn’t want her doctor husband to deliver their baby.
In a post shared to the Am I the A**hole Reddit forum, a 35-year-old pregnant woman explained that she and her husband, a family doctor medicine, are having an ongoing disagreement about their birth plan. Her husband, 35, wants to deliver the baby, but she wants him to leave things to her doctors, and hold her hand throughout the delivery.
“My husband really wants to deliver the baby which I can kind of understand,” she wrote. “It’s not uncommon for doctors to deliver their own kid. There is still an OBGYN there monitoring everything, and the doctor father steps in at the last minute as mom is crowning to just catch the baby.”
“My husband has I guess always dreamed of being the one to pull the baby out, while I pictured it very differently,” she continued. “I thought he would be up by my head, holding my hand and helping me through it.”
He told her that while he does plan on holding her hand, she won’t need to at the very end when he pulls the baby out. He added that his mother could step in and hold her hand instead.
“I’ve been on my own since I was a kid living in my car, so I don’t have anyone I’d want in there with me except him,” she explained. “I don’t really even want his mom in there. She’s great, but he’s my person. I know it would be ‘cool’ for him to deliver our baby, but I really feel like I need him there.”
She added that since her doctors have found out that he’s a doctor, they talk “exclusively” to him during prenatal appointments. She said: “I don’t even want him to go the prenatal appointments anymore because no one talks to me. They all talk to him, and I can’t ask my questions to anyone but my husband at home.
Despite their disagreement over the birthing plan, he’s told everyone they know that he will be the one to deliver the baby.
“I don’t want this because I wanted him to be there as a husband and a father, and not a doctor,” she explained. “I see him as a doctor 95 percent of the time, and I wanted to experience this with my husband and not my husband the doctor. I wanted him to be there for me as this is my first birth and I’m terrified.”
“I just really wanted him to hold my hand all the way through it, and be able to share this experience as parents and people,” she added. “I was hoping we could see the baby at the same time and just be equals in this.”
As they’ve continued to disagree, he’s claimed he’s talked about it with some of their family and friends, saying that they agree with him and that he should have this since she “has the honor of being pregnant.” However, she later learned that he never discussed the issue with some of their mutual friends. She wrote: “They were really shocked to learn we’ve been having this disagreement and were actually quite supportive of an expectant mother controlling her birth plan.”
In the comment section, people agreed with the pregnant woman, saying she had every right to want to be in control of her birth plan. They also added it seemed she didn’t have the support system she needed at home.
“You’re not wrong for wanting your husband to support you during birth and not ‘Dr Husband’ attending the birth,” one person wrote. “However, he doesn’t seem too concerned about what you want.”
“Labor and delivery is 100000% about the person risking their life to bring a child into the world,” another added. “Your husband’s SOLE job during YOUR labor is to do exactly what you want him to do.”
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