Giving birth is not an easy process, physically or mentally. It is utterly exhausting for everyone involved, as well it should be. It is the way we bring new life into the world–it’s good that it isn’t an easy thing to do.
But that is not the same as saying it should be dramatic. When emotions are running high, it’s easy to see how a potentially innocuous remark could get blown out of proportion, but that’s not what we’re talking here. We’re talking cheating, revelations about paternity, babies coming out all sorts of unexpected things, etc.
These 15 AskReddit stories are just about as Jerry Springer as it gets:
1. Vasectomy
It wasn’t at the birth, but: I used to work for a urologist who did vasectomies. He did a vas on a guy, then did the requisite 3-month and 6-month semen analysis follow up tests to make sure it worked. The 6 month test showed no sperm, so the guy was all set to…not father children. Fast forward two years, and he calls my surgeon fuming, ranting and raving about how he fucked up the vasectomy and now his wife is pregnant. So doc orders another semen analysis – of course, it comes back totally negative. A very awkward conversation ensued in the exam room that I’d have paid anything to eavesdrop on. The best part is, the couple left the office pissed off, with the wife sticking to her story that she would never cheat on her husband, and the husband in complete denial that she’d ever lie about that. Last I heard they were gearing up to sue or something, but I don’t work there anymore so I don’t know what happened 🙁
2. Details, details…
A patient asked if both possible fathers could be in her c-section so that neither would miss the birth of his child. They’d figure out the details later.
3. What kind of baby is it?
My friend was a delivery nurse for the hospital that all high risk pregnancies go to. They are extremely busy and she has brought a lot of people into the world. She once delivered a baby in the parking lot by herself. This has come up on a weekly basis, but she shared the best story with us.
A Caucasian couple come in and the mother is in labor. When the dude is filling out paperwork the mother takes the doctor aside. She tells him there is a chance that the baby may a different race than the father and to let her know as soon as the baby is born.
The baby is born. The doctor turns to the mother and announces loudly,”Congratulations on your WHITE baby boy.”
4. Blood Type Tells All
My mom is a labor and delivery nurse. One time she had a patient whose parents were present during her stay at the hospital. The staff there have a white board with some general information about the patients like blood type, time spent in the wing, and like how far along. This information is nameless for HIPAA reasons and instead has a patients number.
So this patient happened to be the only one in the wing at the time. Her father was walking back from the cafeteria at one point, and noticed the board. He stopped one of the nurses and asked if the blood type for the patient on the board was correct (he knew his daughter was the only patient there). It was B+. The nurse confirmed it was correct.
Turns out he knew his and his wife’s blood type. He was O+ and his wife was A-. This combination will never yield a B+ baby. He brings his wife out and just points at the board and this look of shock washes over her.
TL:DR Father of patient in labor finds out his wife cuckolded him 25 years later by knowing his blood type punnit squares.
5. Lucky Guy
I’m not a doctor, but when my godson was born, the nurse told us about this guy who had gotten two girls pregnant at the same time. They both wound up at that hospital just down the hall from each other giving birth hours apart. What a lucky guy.
6. Lucky you!
These stories remind me of something I experienced first hand the day after my son was born:
Nurse: So your baby’s blood type is A- Wife: Like me! Nurse: And daddy! Me: No, I’m A+ Nurse: You must be mistaken, that combination isn’t possible. (…) Nurse: Uh, I’ll leave you guys to it. Me: pulls out phone and frantically Googles “baby blood type combinations”
(the nurse was wrong).
7. Pretty damn “Jerry Springer”
Funny story that reminds me of this. My husband, then boyfriend, was in the process of getting divorced when I found out I was pregnant. His soon to be ex wife found out a month later she was also pregnant from a guy she had a one night stand with (not my husband). Prior to this she was refusing to sign divorce papers because she hoped to reconcile even if he did have a pregnant girlfriend. Obviously it wouldn’t work out since she got knocked up by another guy so she finally signed them.
The similar part is that our due dates were 11 days apart. We had the same obstetrician, and were set to deliver at the same hospital. My company switched insurances a week before I was due and I got to pick a different hospital. Wouldn’t you know it, we went into labor hours apart and delivered on the same day. Our obstetrician had to deliver my son first and then run across town to deliver her son. The OB did a double take when she saw my ex’s family show up to visit her later after visiting us. They were the “he may have divorced her, but we didn’t” mind. His sister even stayed when she delivered to be her support buddy even though she was officially with the one night stand guy and his family was there.
Our OB told us she thought that may have been the most “Jerry Springer” thing she had seen in awhile.
8. Oh, snap!
My friend told me this story of hers. Woman and her husband were having their first child and it was the friends first ever delivery (ob/gyn). When she got the baby out she looked at it, then looked at the parents and asked “OK, which of you has six fingers?” The mother broke down crying yelling I’m sorry to the husband…their neighbor apparently had 6 fingers.
9. Albino
My mom has seen a lot of babies come out “the wrong color” (she’s been a labor and delivery nurse for 27 years) but the story she always tells is a very dark black couple delivered with her hospital and the baby came out sheet white with white-blonde hair. The dad stormed out before the doctor could tell him the baby was albino, and he yelled the whole way down the hallway something along the lines of ” I feed you, I fucked you, I rubbed your damn back and you give me a white baby” he was apparently heard in the parking lot singing “that baby ain’t mine”. He came back in the morning with coffee for the staff and a big bouquet of flowers and balloons for his wife because his mom or someone asked if the baby could have been albino since he had an albino cousin.
10. 9 months he’ll never get back
Not a doctor, but my best friends stepbrother was that guy who found out he wasn’t the father because the baby was black.
I’ll try to make it short. Dude had gone to rehab twice and was doing really really well. He came back home for a weekend and fucked his ex-gf. Left and went back to his house states away to continue his newfound life. Got the call she was pregnant and dropped everything to come back and be a father. We were really worried he would relapse but he was great.
So 9 months of preparation goes by. He was gonna be an awesome dad. All worried about relapsing were gone and he seemed ready to become the best dad he could ever be.
Baby comes out. Everybody’s happy. Nurse takes him aside after a few minutes and says “I want to ask you something. You do know that’s not your kid right?” He says what do you mean?
“Well, that baby is at least half black, but the pigments are prolly going to really darken.”
So he goes over to his ex-gf and asks if there’s anyways what the nurse just told him is true. She starts sobbing and breaks down completely. Admits that she fucked a black guy right around time he came back. So he says, “Alright. I’m glad you and the baby are healthy. Have a nice life.”
Walks into the waiting room where all the new grandparents are waiting. Cheers. Celebration. “Everything good?”
“Yep. Healthy baby. Healthy mom. I’m not the father. I’m outta here.” And walked right out the fucking door.
The girls parents even wanted him to pay and support. He moved back to where he got his life back together and is doing incredibly well. But man, I wish he had all that time back
11. BLOOD TYPE DON’T LIE
I might be the first medical professional to post in this thread, hot damn. So I’m a NICU nurse that was floating to the nursery, a baby was born with a genetic abnormality (had one missing limb) but was otherwise doing fine. The pediatrician was in the parents’ room discussing with them the follow up type stuff for the baby – appointments with a geneticist, an orthopedic surgeon, etc. At some point in the conversation the mother asked what the baby’s blood type was, to which the pediatrician responded “A+.” The father of the baby insisted that was impossible, as he AND his wife (this was their third baby) were both O-. The pediatrician got totally flustered and came back to the nursery to verify the lab results – baby really was A+. We even went so far as to re-draw the baby’s blood and re-test it – nope, A+. There is absolutely no chance that the baby belonged to that man. The husband left the hospital soon after and didn’t show up again until it was time to pick up the mom and baby to bring them home. The mom spent the rest of the hospital stay lying alone, in the dark, mostly hiding under the covers.
12. Everyone’s on board!
My aunt is white and so was her husband (he passed a while ago). When they finally had a kid, my cousin was black. The family decided to ignore it, my uncle included. This was in 1989, and to gain my young teen cooperation I got an early Xmas gift: A Sega Genesis. Love my cousin!
13. Misprint
Not a doctor, but still a relevant story. When I was born, my father was 100% certain that I was not his because his blood type and my mom’s blood type couldn’t have produced me. He punched a hole in the wall in the hospital and yelled at my mom refusing to sign the birth certificate because I have A+ blood, my mom has 0 neg and he was positive that he had AB neg because that’s what his brand new dog tags said (he was in the army at the time). Turns out, they misprinted his dog tags. All his old tags said A positive.
tl;dr A typo on my dad’s army issued dogtags almost caused my parents to divorce.
14. Good on you, doc
I heard this from an old client who was an obstetrician. He was telling me stories about when he used to deliver babies at peoples’ homes way back in the day. This was probably 15 years ago when he told me this story and he was in his 80’s (83 IIRC).
Anyway, he was telling me about his son and I asked if he delivered his own son. He said yes and told me the most amazing, heartbreaking, and heartwarming story.
In the late 40’s, the town ambulance/hearse/taxi pulls up at his little independent practice out in the boonies of Illinois. A volunteer firefighter comes in and says they have a lady in labor and they won’t make it to the hospital which is over an hour away. He tells them to bring her in. He delivers the baby and mom passes out. They clean her up. They clean up the baby. And all seems normal.
Mom wakes up and the doctor comes in to give her the baby. She starts screaming “get it away from me!”
He’s all confused and can’t figure out what’s going on. She keeps flailing around and screaming that she doesn’t want to look at “it.”
The doc takes the baby out and comes back. She’s calmer but still looks frantic or terrified. He talks to her and she just stares at him like he’s got nine heads. He finally asks, “Well, what do you want me to do with your son?”
The mom stays silent for a long time and as he’s getting up to leave, she quietly says, “Can you get rid of him?”
The doc asks what she means. She says, “you know. Maybe just make him go to sleep so he won’t wake up.”
He said it took everything for him to not beat this woman to death right then and there. He went off on a tangent about how much he loved his work working with all the new mothers in all these little towns full of “salt of the earth” people with great family values. On and on about how happy it made him bringing life into the world and this woman wanted him to murder her baby.
He asked why and she ends up saying that her husband is in the military and its not his baby. She couldn’t let him find out. He kind of understood her rationale for not letting her husband know, but murder??? So he suggested family, an orphanage, and other options back then (none of which seemed appealing in my mind). She said no to all of them because she “couldn’t risk this coming back to haunt her.”
He told her he’d see what he could do and he let her rest. The next day, he tried to talk to her again and she was just more adamant about “making it sleep.” She said she wanted to hold her baby. He refused since he thought she’d try to kill him herself. She went nuts.
In the end, he sent her home and told her that he’d given the baby to his brother who was a pastor and was unable to have children. He promised he’d never tell anyone (even the kid) who she was.
Then he said he “taught her a lesson.” If she ever found herself pregnant again, she would come to him whether it was her husband’s or not. If he ever found out she went elsewhere, he’d tell everyone the story. He said he did this because he was afraid she’d get knocked up and kill the next one. And he knew he’d find out if she went elsewhere because he was the only baby doctor for five towns around and knew other other docs at the hospitals. (Of course, she could have delivered at home on her own, now that I think about it.)
She never had any other kids (as far as the doc knew – and he said he did check up on her once or twice with his colleagues). Supposedly, she died from a drug overdose a few years later.
The doctor and his wife raised that baby as their own son (his wife wasn’t able to have kids – the pastor brother was BS just to make her think he’d already given the baby away). He eventually told his son a very watered down version of the story when the kid was older. The kid ended up becoming a plastic surgeon and has like 9 kids of his own. He’s doing very well, he’s very happy, and he probably never would have had a shot had that small town fireman tried to press on to the hospital and wound up delivering the kid in the middle of nowhere. He was convinced she would have delivered and then smothered the baby by the time they got to the hospital.
TL;DR: Lady gets pregnant by another man. Her husband has no idea because he’s in the military. She ends up at a small town doctor and wants the doc to kill the baby so her husband doesn’t find out. Doc raises the baby with his barren wife and the baby grows up to be a brilliant surgeon who gives the doc tons of grandkids and a huge family he never would have had otherwise.
15. End of a Marriage
This happened in my immediate family.
My mother is white mix American, brown hair and green eyes, married a full-blooded Japanese man. My two younger brothers and I are very, very obviously half-Jap. I got the black hair, brown eyes, and a slight cast to my eyes, my brothers look Jap as fuck in the face, with brown hair (Mom’s) and lighter eyes.
After the third kid, things weren’t going so hot with my mother and father. Lotta fights, lots of nights where I would wake up, at the age of 5, and find my dad slept on the couch.
Mom gets pregs again, even though they only had sex once after my youngest brother was born. Their relationship continues to deteriorate during the pregnancy. The big day comes, out comes my baby sister, last of the bunch.
My sister was born white, with a shock of bright red hair and a VERY pale complexion, and no Jap features at all.
My father’s best friend was a tall Danish redheaded dude. It took my father about 36 hours to put 2 + 2 together. He confronted my mother in the hospital, and she admitted she’d been fucking his best friend behind his back since before my youngest brother was born.
Divorce happened not long after that. My father ran the fuck away from alla that bullshit.
Funny thing? I didn’t realize my sister was from another father until I was 16 years old, and my girlfriend asked why my sister looked nothing like me and my brothers. I asked my mother, and got the full story. To this day, she’s not my half-sister – she’s my sister. We grew up together, and she my sis, I’m her eldest bro.
But yeah. It ended the marriage, more or less on the spot.
