From Ezra:

As for all this talk over guys getting freaked out by the delivery room view of their partner's suddenly giant, bloody vagina, I don't quite see the problem. If you're the sort of guy who thinks this'll haunt you forevermore, either stick near your wife's head so you can be with her without peering up her or stay out of the delivery room.

Maybe I am weird, but for me, the experience of being there with my wife when she gave birth, was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life. Was it messy, yeah it was. Was it scary, yeah that too.. But it was beautiful in a way that defies description for me. We lost our first child, and I was there for that one too. She was a beautiful baby girl, and I remember crying and then going out and getting high with a friend of mine. Mind numbing, I don't ever want to come back high. My wife was seven months along when her placenta ruptured. The doctors tried, but could not save the baby. When she got pregnant the second time, I was so protective I probably drove her nuts.

The night before she gave birth, I drove 50 miles to San Francisco Airport to wait for her mother who was arriving from Costa Rica. (We lived in San Jose, California at the time). Due to some mixup, her mother actually flew into Los Angeles, nearly 400 miles away. I found this out after spending three hours waiting in the airport. I called friends in Los Angeles and had her mother picked up, and a flight to San Jose booked for the next morning. By the time I got home it was nearly 4:00am. My wife went into labor at 5:30.

Surprisingly, operating on almost no sleep, I managed to keep a cool head and get her to the hospital. A few hours later, her mother arrived from LA just as she was in the last throes of giving birth. It was one of the most compelling experiences in my life, and far from disgusting me, it made me love my wife even more. All I could think of was the pain she was going through, (that part was easy since she was cursing me in Spanish for being so big, and giving her a baby that was huge, hehe). I kept thinking about how brave she was in losing the first baby... How she endured her pain, and the emotional pain of that loss with grace and dignity. And I watched with pride as she worked to deliver our baby.

I held her hand. I encouraged her. I accepted her insults. I coaxed her, and I prayed. And when little Elsie emerged, I cried. Cried like a baby... and I loved... Loved them both. For me, birth is still a miracle, an amazing, beautiful, incredible miracle. I don't even remember any of the clinical stuff. What I remember is my joy, my relief and my sense of sharing something very, very special.

I think the guys who get hung up on the "nasty," aspects of child birth are missing the real significance of it. The beautiful sacrafice in pain and suffering, that there lady is making, to create something they will both share for the rest of their lives...

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