Quote:
Originally posted by ironweed
"In Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, set at the turn of the century, a father is sent off to the bar by the household women so he doesn't have to hear his wife's cries of pain."
But just try leaving your cell phone number with the maternity ward nurse and see the looks you get. And it was ten cent wings too.
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I am told that even though it wasn't customary back then, my dad was allowed in the delivery room because he was a physician on staff in that hospital. My mom says during her ungodly number of hours of labor, he'd check in, see how much progress had been made, and leave again to "go see patients." He left instructions with the delivery nurses to page him when it came closer to showtime. I
think he was there when I was born, but my memory of the day is a little blurry.
ETA: It may be relevant to this story that when my dad did his ob/gyn rotation in med school, he had a 25% drop rate in the four deliveries he performed. He says newborns are a more slippery than you'd think.
