Nobody is perfect. And that’s definitely true of all of us. Sometimes, people find out about their partner’s intense imperfections in a really terrible way.
These stories from medical professionals about delivering babies that obviously aren’t related to the “dad” in the room are truly wild!
Enjoy!
1. Everyone thought her mom cheated.
Okay I am a nurse but this isn’t a story about a birth I witnessed, it was my own birth. And although my mother definitely didn’t cheat, all the midwives were convinced she had. And yeah it’ll be buried but I think it’s a funny story so I’m going to share.
For background: my mother (J) is white, and had got married young to another white guy (D) (actually forced to by my grandparents who were horrified she was living in sin). Their relationship petered out and they separated but remained very good friends.
Then she met my father (A), a black man, and began a relationship with him. Mum was still married at the time, neither her nor her husband were in a hurry to get divorced, and he became good friends with Mums new partner (my dad).
Mum fell pregnant with me. Time moves along. She goes into labour and needs to head up to the hospital.
Dad was working and couldn’t make it home in time to get her there, so still being good friends with the husband, she rings him and he comes around to drive her to hospital and decides to hang out until I’m born.
After an hour or so dad arrives. He was freaking out a bit so his best friend (H, also a black guy) drove him because dad didn’t trust himself. They arrive at the hospital right as mum is ready to deliver.
The midwives come out to the waiting room to grab the “husband” to be there when baby is born. They knew that mum’s actual husband (D) had driven her there so assumed that he was the father of the baby.
Went and grabbed him and tried to drag him into the delivery room. He freaked out and yelled “No no, I’m not the father, I’m just the husband! The father is Aboriginal!”
Dad and H pulled up into the car park as this is happening, and dad leaps out of the car. Decides he needs to have a quick smoke to settle his nerves before he goes in. His best friend H doesn’t smoke (cigarettes but does smoke weed and is pretty stoned) so he walks in ahead.
Just then the midwives come running back to the waiting room to grab the actual father, and see the only black guy in there. Obviously him right? So they take him and suit him up to bring him down to delivery.
Being pretty stoned, H doesn’t question this and just goes along with it. The midwives reach the delivery room and shove him inside.
Mum, legs in stirrups and at the pushing stage goes absolutely ballistic. “NOT THAT BLACK GUY, HES NOT THE FATHER, GO GET THE OTHER ONE”.
The midwives hustle H out and return him to the waiting room to wait with D. A (my dad) has come inside by now and the midwives marched up to him and said something like “I hope you’re the father this time otherwise I’m going to just give up and she can birth alone.”
So that’s the story about how the hospital went through three different men before they finally got to my actual father.
2. The same dad.
Had two women give birth a few days apart on my floor.
Turns out they actually had the same baby daddy.
The father of the two newborns got both patients pregnant around the same time.
It was an interesting day for the social worker!
3. Unexpected news.
Anesthesiologist here. C-sections are typically done under spinal anesthesia, and we’re the ones at the head of the table keeping the mother calm and talking her through the procedure while the surgeons operate.
I’ve seen it more than once, but I remember one in particular when the parents were both very Caucasian, and the baby was very much not — the actual father obviously had to be very dark-skinned.
At delivery, when the not-Father saw the baby he just looked down at his wife (who was starting to cry) and calmly said, “You f**king w**re” and walked out.
She started screaming for him to come back, but there wasn’t much she could do since she was, you know, still being operated on. She lost it to the point I eventually had to sedate her just a bit because she was in danger of injuring herself.
As far as I know her husband never came back to the hospital, I don’t know what happened after that.
4. Definitely a staged statement.
From my friend who was a delivery nurse for years.
The mother takes the doctor aside and makes him promise to let her know the color of the baby the instant he knows.
The baby is born and the doctor announces to mom,”Congratulations on your beautiful, healthy WHITE baby!”
The father just walked right out the room and they never found anything more out about it.
5. UTI or… baby?!?!
Had a patient who came in to ER for UTI with her boyfriend of 4 months (his words). She was 19. Acting extremely dramatic for just having UTI. We tell her we need urine. She urges us to catch her which is really unusual but she says she can’t pee so me and other nurse assume the position to put in a catheter with her lying on the gurney. At this point nurse screams, “call L&D!! She’s crowning!!”
L&D nurse gets in just in time to grab the child as it shoots out into her hands and is a living breathing baby.
The girl swears she had no idea she was pregnant. They wheel her off to postpartum and the guy is just kind of left standing there, dumbstruck.
“We only been dating 4 months. I had no idea she was pregnant. She never mentioned it at all.” As he just buried his head in his knees while he was sitting on the floor against the hallway wall.
I felt so bad for the guy.
6. This one is uncomfortable.
Ok story from a friend of my brothers. She worked as a nurse and a woman and her husband came in. They were both white, and she delivered a child that was black. The husband immediately starts saying wtf, while she is going on and on about dormant traits and everything.
He orders a DNA test. While this is going on her mother and Stepdad show up. The stepdad is black, after the testing is done, the DNA test ends up showing that the baby is the Stepdad’s.
Her husband instantly dropped her and cut ties.
Edit: In response to some comments. This didn’t happen over the course of a couple of hours. Husband hung out (albeit reluctantly) until things were conclusive.
Once testing showed it wasn’t his baby, they tested the step dad. Probably suspected something, I wasn’t there I don’t know the deeper details.
7. When you have to ask about blood grouping…
Med student. Had a mother who was A- and father was A- but baby ended up being A+. Mother was asking if it was possible for this to happen and the doctor kind of implied that it was possible (to my surprise since it’s not meant to be).
But they suggested to retest the husband’s blood group and follow up with their GP. The doctor told me after that they didn’t want to get involved and would leave it up to the GP to deal with and just hoped the husband was actually positive.
Apparently got awkward the next day (they stayed for a couple days after due to complications) when the husband was asking about blood grouping and was just strongly suggested to get retested.
I never found out what happened after but from my impression of the mother and some of the things she said I am pretty sure she cheated.
8. Affairs galore!
My wife’s best friend is a doctor who delivers babies. I’ll ask and get back to you all.
Edit: a couple of stories came in.
She delivered one baby where the father and mother were acting really awkward but he was around during labor and when it came time to push the man just walked out and left the room. Apparently the issue was they were just friends and he lived in another state with his wife and kids.
Another woman had an affair with her cousin’s husband and got pregnant, calling him her fiancé. Her own husband died during this period and it prompted her to go out and sleep with a few other one night stands.
At this point she tried to get an abortion but she was turned away because she was overweight and hypertensive making the procedure too risky. She never followed up with the Dr and gained weight to over 400 lbs. it was too late for an abortion at this point and she had been taking medication for the hypertensive thing and the medication can cause death/deformities.
When she delivered it took the entire staff to prevent her from having a stroke and the baby’s kidneys… do they work? No one knows.
Most of the stories are that the man cheated, if the mother cheats there’s no real reason to bring it up so they don’t really know. Lots of having to tell a mother who has only slept with one man that she and her baby have chlamydia. No weird stories of white babies to black parents or vice versa.
Also if my wife’s friend sees this she will know who it is. Please just don’t go through my history and judge me for my crayon colored Pokémon picture.
9. The baby is grey!
This is my granddad’s story (he was a gyno), but it’s amazing: it must have been in the 70s, when a married white couple came into the hospital with the woman in labor.
Baby is born, my granddad is called to cut the cord, but …the baby is all grey! The nurse is in terror, and holds the baby upside down and smacks it on the buttock (as was custom to clear the airway) and is almost in tears “Doctor, the baby is only getting darker and darker, I don’t think it’s getting enough oxygen!”
My granddad, having worked in the field for a long time at that point, just started smiling, took the baby and said “I think a good bath will do just fine” and preceded to wash all the blood and fluids from birth off of the baby, reveling a healthy and half black child.
He used to tell that story all the time when I was a kid. He said the husband just stormed out and it was a huge scandal in their village. Since it was Germany in the 70s in a rural area, there weren’t that many candidates for the father either.
10. An aggressive man.
Well, somehow, I don’t know why, the husbands are almost always first aggressive towards the doctor or nurse who presents the baby. Had a case that I will always remember: my first shift on gynecology.
Late night, around 23:00, a woman comes, screaming and cursing like there’s no tomorrow. We check her, she was around 7 cms dilated (at 10, you can start the birth). We rush her to the birth room. Father is being lead into the waiting room, which is also a library for new father’s, a lot of books with informations on firstborns, etc.
Fast forward, woman gives birth, she goes into the recuperating room, husband goes to her, both awaiting eagerly for the baby to be presented. My boss, who was a sadistic mofo, hands me the baby, and tells me to go present it. Did I forget to mention that the baby was black?
Oh, and the mother was a snow white skinned redhead, and the father, well…blue eyes and blonde hair. There was absolutely no way I could justify THAT amount of Melanin… I bite the bullet, take the little lad, and head off. I enter the room, the father is standing up, he sees that the baby is black, he looks at the wife, looks at the baby, looks at my face, my face tells him “yes, there is no mistake here”.
He loses it, weirdly enough, his anger is not focused on the wife, but on me and the baby (two unlucky bastards who had nothing to do with the betrayal or any of that). The husband starts throwing newspapers and books at me and the baby, shouting “get him away, that’s a mistake” (not in a racist way or anything, the man was just in shock), and going with his back towards the wall, like a cornered animal trying to run away from a predator.
But in this case, he was just cornered by a dreadful fact, the one that he is not the father. Me and the baby manage to scape with just a bruise on my forehead (Bible’s travel faster than any other books through air). Sorry for the long post, just wanted to share this experience with you guys.
11. 10 weeks early.
I’m an OBGYN. When I was a resident, we induced a woman who stated she was 41 weeks (1 week past her due date). Her labor went surprisingly quickly and when I delivered her baby I knew immediately something was wrong – the baby was extremely tiny, clearly not a full term infant. We called the NICU team right away and after the delivery went digging deeper in her chart.
This woman had had her prenatal care elsewhere, and had claimed that her due date was always the one we had listed. It’s standard practice to confirm dating with an early ultrasound if possible, and she had had an ultrasound but her prenatal provider must not have looked at it closely.
When we finally found the original ultrasound report, it listed her as having a due date 10 weeks later than we thought…so we had just induced her at 31 weeks (6 weeks premature).
We went in to confront her and her partner is sitting there, processing this information. Turns out, he was “away” (Philly-speak for “in prison”) when the baby must have been conceived. He threw a bottle of soda across the room and had to be escorted out while we explained how the woman had put the baby in danger by getting us to deliver it early.
I think the baby did well, but it definitely had to spend several weeks in the NICU. We always confirmed dating ultrasounds or did a growth scan if there wasn’t one in the chart for future patients.
12. Yet another blood type issue.
I’m a nursery/postpartum nurse and our management basically forces us to give handoff report to the oncoming shift in the patients room. There has been a couple times where I’ve said what babies blood type is only to have been met with two very confused and angry parents.
They’re sitting there wondering how their baby is A+ when both parents are supposedly O+. It’s always very awkward. It happened to my own parents too when I was born but it turned out my dad just thought he had a different blood type his whole life smh.
I’ve also been in many deliveries where as soon as the baby comes out you can tell the dad is already questioning if it’s his. So far I’ve only seen one couple ask for a divorce before leaving the hospital! There’s never a dull moment haha.
13. The baby was literally still attached.
We had a very sweet blond haired blue eyed mom and dad along with their entire extended family in the room for a delivery one busy afternoon at work (think aunts, Uncles, cousins, Grandma and Grandpa too).
The baby is born and as the doctor places her on the mom’s chest the first words out of her mouth are “That’s not my baby! That’s not my baby!!”
The baby in question, still attached at the umbilical cord, has beautiful dark curly black hair, and dark skin. The nurse looks at her and tells her that this is definitely her baby because “she’s still attached to you” and she, not so quietly, tells the nurse “There’s no way, I never slept with a black man! It’s not mine!”
The “father” is standing there silent, not sure what to do. A long awkward silence fills the room.
We clean her and baby up as cheerfully as we can. We see the extended family filter out of the room and the “father” leave to get a cigarette.
About ten minutes later a tall black guy walks up to our front desk asking how to get to the patient in question’s room.
14. It could be!
I was assisting at a Caesarian when I was a junior doctor. The woman’s dark skinned partner had been in prison 9 months or so.
I took the baby immediately upon delivery and announced cheerily “It’s a boy!”
Her first words were “Is it black?”
Luckily the baby was a mocha colour that could have gone either way, and I told her in a mildly confused manner “Ahhh, it could be?”
15. Total nightmare.
Paramedic here.
Our crew delivered a full birth in the back of our rig. We have two paramedics in the back, a driver, and I’m working on the laptop listening to the info they are telling me to add to the report.
All the sudden, it goes kind of quiet, I hear the mother let out a very loud “Oh s***, it’s not white!” (She was very white).
Few more seconds of silence, and I’m like, “?”
The driver alarm(beeping light on the center console sent from a button in the back) was pressed 2 times quickly, generally meaning to turn around to get info for the report. I turn from the front passenger seat to see a very dark skin colored baby.(I’m guessing Cuban) I can’t see the mothers face, but all I see is her shacking her head. She begins to worry, saying that “her husband is meeting us there at the hospital! He can’t see this!!!”. I just continue the report, and am not sure what the problem is, but I guess we’ll see when we get there.
Flash forward, to the ER. We stop outside the ambulance bay, I get out to open the doors, and am met by another very white heavyset guy in a uniform shirt, dress pants and glasses, asked me if his wife was in there and she was in labor when he was coming home.
Hospital policy dictates that we can’t have random people that we can’t confirm identity that close to the rig when opening doors for PT safety. Security is there quick, holds him back a bit. We open the doors, roll the PT and her newborn out. He takes one look, sees the color of the baby,
JAW DROP, LOOK OF DESPAIR. Like a 1000 yard stare. Even security had a look like, “wow, that women f**ked up, and this guy knows it now”
Wife: “BABE, I can explain every bit of this!!! I know it looks weird, but I can!!!!”
We wheel her into ER. No sign of husband. Last I knew, the husband didn’t check into the hospital as a visitor. I’m assuming he went home to pack his stuff.
16. Total silence.
Medical student here: shadowing in OBS/GYN and was present for a natural delivery. As soon as I got in there I could tell something was wrong- husband was stood away from the mum (usually they’re near by or holding their hand).
Apart from the mother pushing and the midwife instructing her on what to do the room was in total silence, no words of encouragement from the husband. When the baby eventually came out it was clearly not his, both parents were white and the baby was as black as anyone you’ve ever seen.
The midwife explained that sometimes the pigmentation can be a little bit different immediately after birth and tried to make a joke of it but it fell flat. The baby was crying and was given to the mother.
She started crying, the husband walked over to stand by the bed looked at the kid. Then he started crying. I’m now stood awkwardly watching unsure of whether I should start talking or make a joke or anything.
At this point the mother starts bawling. She keeps saying how sorry she is and the husband just leans down and kisses her on the forehead before turning and leaving the room sobbing to himself. I don’t think he ever came back.
17. Epidural or truth serum?
When I was a nursing student, I had an OB clinical with a pregnant woman who thought the epidural was some kind of “truth serum.” When her boyfriend left the room, she shouted “oh no, these drugs gonna make me say things I’m not allowed to say!”
The anesthesiologist just kept saying “Ma’am these drugs don’t affect what you say. If you say anything inappropriate, that’s on you.” Then the mother just screams “don’t let him look at my phone when he comes back! This ain’t his baby but I need his money!”
The anesthesiologist pulled me out of the room because he wanted to laugh and then tell me that’s why I should be in anesthesia, because I would get to sedate the wild patients.
18. Two super sticky situations.
A lady giving birth to her second child. Asked for her husband to be present for the discussion as usual. Was told he was away working in a Middle-Eastern country for a bit less than two years, and would be coming home on leave “soon.” This was in a conservative South Indian state, tried to keep a poker face with the patient. Don’t know what happened later.
This one is a scumbag who cheated on his pregnant wife. This made me angry with the guy, but again we have to stay professional and neutral. A young lady (early twenties) brought in for “safe confinement.”
Asked for marital history, she starts crying and says she was unmarried, at her sister’s house to help the sister with her pregnancy by doing chores round the house and taking care of her, when her brother-in-law got cosy with her, and they ended up in a physical relationship.
Felt sorry for the sister, the primary victim here.
19. Watch those blood types.
I was working on the postpartum mother-baby unit as the resident pediatrician when I walked into a room to talk to the parents and examine the baby. The mom is jabbering while I’m examining the baby and I’m trying my best not to be rude and answer.
She starts telling me how her other kid is blood type B, but she’s type A and dad’s type O (for everyone reading this without medical or science knowledge, you absolutely cannot have a baby with blood type B unless mom or dad are B or AB, except in rare cases of chimera).
She explains that they cannot figure out how that would happen and even went to a geneticist who couldn’t find a reason. I quickly changed subjects and said goodbye. I couldn’t look the
dadhusband in the eye after I heard that.
20. Wonder if they ever found out?
I was new to L & D but an experienced nurse. Mom and supposed Dad were joking with their family that the baby’s 3D ultrasound didn’t look like Dad while Mom was in labor. We have the baby later in the morning, and baby’s face was pretty smushed…still had the classic “potato” look.
A little while later, I’m helping mom clean up when the pedestrian comes in. She examines the baby, congratulates the parents, and tells them baby’s blood type…which absolutely couldn’t be Dad’s. He insists that he’s B, mom is O, and baby is A…oops!
They start arguing and Mom keeps insisting that Dad calls his mom to ask about his blood type. Maybe he was wrong?
The pedi and I just backed out of the room saying that we’d be back. He stormed out right after that. He apparently came back later, but I don’t know how it all ended.
21. It’s not too hard to figure out.
I’m an ultrasound tech and I’ve had several situations where women ask if I can tell exactly which day she got pregnant.
Once, I told the mom when her due date was (first trimester screening, difficult to be too far off that early; couple of days maybe, but this case it was weeks off of her supposed last period.) and she insisted I was wrong.
Husband put two and two together and was furious.
High tension room after that.
22. How did she not know?!
I attended a birth where the notes on file had “DON’T MENTION GESTATIONAL AGE IN ROOM” all over them. The mother was young and had been dating her boyfriend for around 8 months. She found out she was pregnant when she got out of a pool and her boyfriend said “Babe. You look pregnant.”
That late in the game, ultrasound measurements get unreliable, so the initial scan had estimated around 22 weeks. A follow up scan added around 2 months to this number, but this also didn’t line up with current boyfriend, so she leaned into her right to privacy and asked everyone to keep the actual gestational age private.
We were called to the room to deliver this baby with her, boyfriend and boyfriend’s mum in the room. The whole time I was reminding myself of the mum’s right to privacy and kept my mouth shut.
A plump, very term baby came out and we didn’t make any extra fuss about it. I kinda hope that the boyfriend’s mum twigged to the fact that this baby was not 8 weeks premature. I don’t think he would have.
23. Genetics are wild.
Labor and delivery nurse here! So this is a bit of a spin on this question. I had a married couple expecting their first baby, both white parents. They had been together for years and were so excited. When the baby was born it came out looking African American with really dark skin. It was an adorable kid but clearly not what either of the parents expected.
They got into this huge argument and the father wanted a paternity test. Which, who could blame the guy? I’d probably do the same thing. The wife swore she never cheated and agreed to the test to prove her faithfulness.
Sure enough, the paternity test came back showing that the baby was the father’s biological child.
After some genetic testing and family tree searching on his part it turned out he had an African American family member a few generations back and the gene just hadn’t expressed itself again until now. Genetics are super weird.
24. It happens more than you think.
My friends who is a Dr and I were just talking about this yesterday! Apparently this kind of thing is more common than you’d think!
One time she said man came into the maternity ward with his wife who was in the deep throws of labour. Her midwife soon noticed he kept disappearing out of the room with different random excuses each time.
It didn’t take the staff long to realize he was actually visiting another patient in the same ward. Wasn’t this guy’s day… as his wife and side chick were both in labour at the same time in the same hospital.
He apparently spent some time running between the two rooms before it all unravelled…
The other story was one of a couple that had been battling infertility for a long time. The husband’s whole family were excited and waiting just outside the ward in the waiting room for their precious little ones arrival.
The labour became an emergency c-section, and my friend says even the experienced doctor (who she was studying under at the time) was emotional going into the procedure – as they realised how long-awaited this moment had been for the parents.
The excited and touching mood in the room drastically shifted however when the Dr pulled the baby out and the whole room saw that this white couple and an obviously black baby….
My friend said wheeling the baby into the room filled with Dad’s family was one of the most awkward moments of her life… The story then came out that “Dad” had gone away for a work trip one weekend 9 months prior and Mum had taken advantage of this and “celebrated” the arrival of a ship full of American soldiers that arrived in town.
25. Hopefully, it’s true.
From an acquaintance who’s an RN in obstetrics:
White woman was giving birth with her white husband on hand. A distinctly brown baby presented itself in the doctor’s hands, and she says you could hear the intake of breath followed by silence as everyone waited for the dad’s reaction.
Then he broke the tension: “She’s just like Mom!” Apparently his mother was south Asian and his father, whom he obviously took after, white. The mother’s apprehension faded with a “Yea-ah! Isn’t that something, honey?” that apparently convinced the father, if no one else in the room.
As mother, child, and putative dad were whisked away to recovery, the surgeon said quietly “God save them from Ancestry DNA.”
26. This one is tough!
Respiratory therapist in Neonatal ICU and had to go to deliveries. One time baby came out and had syphilis and so did Mom, but dad didn’t. To explain it she actually used the “from a bus seat” excuse and the dad bought it. Because he wanted to.
He married her during the last trimester of pregnancy because he thought the baby was his. Only there was another thing, baby was very jaundice…and black. Both mom and “dad” were white.
Husband didn’t pick up on it for a couple days. He kept talking about how bad the jaundice must be because he’s getting darker.” (Black babies often are born with lighter skin than they’ll have, as if they tan over the next little while).
Eventually our oldest and sassy nurse taking care of baby said “it’s a beautiful baby, a beautiful black baby. Isn’t he daddy?” He stopped coming in after that.
27. Best friends forever?
My sister is a OBGYN who comes home one day detailing this chaos a couple caused in the delivery room. Priceless moment as she described it was when my sister came out to ask who the father was of the baby girl, Two dudes stood up to simultaneously say “I am”.
And so it began.. As the two “Best Friends” both thinking sat together thinking that one is there to support the other; neither of them knew that she was seeing both of them together and she did not know who the father either.
28. “There’s no difference.”
L&D nurse here (using Bf account). Had a lady who was induced and it was her 3rd baby. Usually by the 3rd mom’s usually aren’t that nervous but this lady’s nerves were out of this world. She kept asking if we knew what time the baby would come and kept asking for a vaginal exam.
The husband was there through it all and was very loving. When the husband stepped out to get something to eat, she told me she had gone to DR and had slept with a white guy (her and her husband were both dark) and that she knew the baby wasn’t her husband’s.
I wasn’t there to deliver her but I heard the baby came out looking dark so idk if the guy ever found out. Poor guy seemed clueless.
But this isn’t a rare occurrence. We just treat them the same. There’s no difference. If the SO doesn’t know, we can’t tell them cause of HIPPA and if he does know then it’s all good. I’ve never seen a father flip out but if they did, we would just call hospital police and escort him out cause of patient safety.
My coworker told me a story that I’m not sure how true it is but you never know. She says that there was a lady who got pregnant, told the husband that she had to live with her mom in the US (she’s originally from DR and her husband doesn’t have papers) because her mom was sick.
She had the baby here and told her husband that her cousin had cheated on her husband and the cousin didn’t want her husband to find out so the lady was going to adopt the baby so her cousin husband wouldn’t find out. But that sounds too juicy to be real.
29. Again with the blood types!
We had a case where a baby was born anemic, and we needed to give the child a transfusion. Baby was O+, mom was A+.
So we called on the dad.
He’s AB+, which if you read up on how blood type is passed down, does not yield an O+ baby. You either get an A+ baby, B+ baby and AB+ baby.
So……
Yeah, it was awkward telling the dad he wasn’t a match AND he had to go find someone who could donate for the child. Whoops.
It seems if there is one thing we have all learned, it’s that blood types are not to be trifled with.
Which of these stories really surprised you? Let us know in the comments!
