Men and their Lucky Babies

The guys in the kitchen at my office were discussing their wives' midwives and the intricacies of turning babies in the womb with all the anticipation and insight of expectant mothers. They mentioned ultrasounds, doctor visits, due dates.

Finally blabby me broke in and told them that such a discussion among men probably wouldn't have happened 30 years ago. They looked at me like I came from another planet, which I do.

After the birth, my colleague confessed to being slightly nervous about having their second child with only a midwife in attendance, but it went extremely well. His wife's labor cooperated by starting nicely in the evening and by 7 a.m. their baby was there, and the older child was right there to greet it having gotten a good night's sleep (at least someone did!)

I had to think back another couple of generations to the secrecy surrounding pregnancy and birth and how one woman said she didn't even have any idea her mother was expecting a baby when all of a sudden, she was greeted one morning with a new baby in the house. This was not unusual, I'm told.

A book called What to Expect When Your Wife is Expanding (newly updated in 2007, Andrews McMeel Publishing, by "Nick at Night" TV executive Thomas Hill) writes about how it used to be (and this would have been the way it was when I grew up in the 50's. "It used to be so easy. The rabbit would die; only her doctor had to hear the monthly details. After all, it was all in the realm of 'female trouble.' Dad's responsibility was to take one frantic drive to the hospital, spend a few hours pacing, and voila! Progeny! Pass out the cigars. Those were the days when every newborn came with an undebated last name."

For those of you born later than the 50's, like Hill explains, yes, in the old days, the way a doctor tested for pregnancy was to inject a woman's urine into a female rabbit, then examining the rabbit's ovaries a few days later which would change if the woman was pregnant. And while it was a myth that the rabbit died only if the woman was pregnant (they all died because of the surgery), a common expression if a woman learned she was pregnant was "the rabbit died."

And that is about how primitive fathering was back in the "good old days." In his book, Hill gives useful partly serious and partly tongue-in-cheek tips on which visits to the doctor you need to accompany your wife, and which you can safely (without endangering your status as "involved" father) skip.

For instance by the eighth month, he says "still not too much real news, but now is the time for all good men to come to the service of their wives.... It's time to start paying attention, and at the very least, you want to make sure that when you rush into the hospital on the big day, you recognize your obstetrician. Learn her name, now."

Today's fathers are so much more involved in the lives of their babies, to their everlasting credit. There are so many more expectations for fathers: making a living and getting up at night to change the baby. (You get the picture.) Of course, that is in the ideal situation. We can't pretend that there aren't also absent fathers--either physically or emotionally. The lucky babies are the ones who have a mom and a dad both right in there from the beginning. Especially lucky are the ones who have Moms and Dads who know and serve God and love Jesus.

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Contributed by Melodie Davis: MelodieD@MennoMedia.org Melodie is the author of eight books and writes a syndicated newspaper column, Another Way