 things like baby massage and then you learn how okay so so with that in mind you can have a baby on your back you know there are other ways you can have a kid or as a woman can have a kid uh squatting is actually a really effective means because it's like boom open the pelvis push the kid out um you can have they've actually have this partner assisted way it's like if i if i had an envelope like the stage here i could kind of hook underneath my wife's arms and kind of elevate her so it pulls weight off the pelvis and it relaxes and then you got crazy shit like the old man drying his balls in the gold's gym gold's gym locker like the captain put your balls away man but this is a legitimate like the lunge put foot on seat chair toes pointed back lean back towards the chair be careful with your balance look off to the side push the kid out they had a whole sheet of this stuff of ways you other alternative ways you could have a kid things i had no idea existed because i didn't grow up wanting to have kids i didn't not want to have kids but you know whereas my wife was happy to tell you like she was planning baby names and and talking about all the things she would do and this and that and blah blah blah blah so old man drying his balls right there um so then there was the existential crisis there's this idea of like before kid and after kid that i i've read about before but i experienced firsthand so prior to having my kid i decided i was going to be the white usain Bolt because i had i had this is the last bit of time in my life i was going to have to try to i don't know do something with it right like this idea that that you have a kid and then all of a sudden you're fully in service of your kid um and you have no hobbies or anything else after that it's not entirely true but it is what ends up happening the this feeling of i gotta do something before i am now a dad so i'm pulling my hair out about this it's like all right i'm gonna be you say the white usain bolt and i'm doing sprint training and it's a lot of fun or um i'm gonna and what else did i want to be i was going to be the best rock climber there ever was like it's just it's just you're grasping at straws and this notion of trying to integrate an identity of soon to be a father with the identity of yourself as just a married guy or even a single guy and i went through a little bit of that kind of getting married but my wife and i had already owned a house like we had a mortgage together so it was an easier integration getting married uh having a kid that's pulling my damn hair out about this stuff it was just like oh what is this going to be and i and i talked to all my clients who are fathers about this and they all had kind of the the hair pulling out experience as well this notion of um holy crap what is this going to look like there's just no prior evidence and experience that you can have you can be told it's a bit like russian literature and i forget who i got this line from you can you can read it and understand it but you cannot comprehend it unless you have grown up as a russian right and it's any culture right anytime you learn a culture you're learning from a second hand experience and it's almost like fatherhood and parenting is a is a culture that you can look at and watch and go i think i understand that i've got okay okay he's looks really tired and there's a screaming kid and wow that doesn't look like a lot of fun right but uh then you then you get immersed in it but you you go through this phase in the middle where it's like the transition you're going i have no idea what what this is all going to be about and it scares me you're going through this fog of war now the birth so 38 weeks there's my wife there i am our kid was due September 25th of 2013 and uh i uh as i had noted uh we had decided we were gonna we're gonna use the birthing center and it was the by a country mile the best medical care we've ever had um just from the environment to the time spent with us to the concerns uh even for me as a father who's just there is like support role um we uh we were really really happy with that but when i when i say birthing center what does that make you think maybe something like a grass hut so so i could so 21 convention 2010 doug's up here being dug hold on so there i am in the er and some granola head decides they're gonna have their baby in their living room and it comes out with the umbilical cord around their neck and they drop it in my lap that's confirmation bias of course they're going to drop it in your lap you're the emergency because i didn't take my kid to the emergency room after i was done and say hey doc look at my great-looking kid having said that having said that um it's actually some people think kind of grass hut you're gonna squat in the hole and push a kid out uh at our birthing center all the all the midwives have master's degrees in nursing science and the extra training in that and this was actually the room we we had birthing or gave birthing and around the room they're actually hooks on the walls because they can have provide medical procedures based on how the birth is going up to some level and then a mile down the road is the hospital they they set them up in proximity to those you know it's sort of like it's an argument that often gets leveled and it's totally spurious which is what happens if they can't do what what they need to be done they call someone who can do it what happens if you need brain surgery and you're at your family care physician they call a brain surgeon you know it's a it's a it's a ridiculous argument that uh oh well you you you realize you're outside of your death and you call someone who knows uh so we have this kind of wonderful room and and a week passes september 25th is gone it's all of a sudden october 2nd and my wife who's getting really really infuriated and she smacks me at five o'clock in the morning and goes today's the day i go okay now this is important because i asked the midwives like okay so what's what's early labor and then active labor look like and they just sort of go like oh oh you'll know give me something i like facts i like figures i like poses so sarah's getting these contractions she's getting these contractions and we're walking around the neighborhood and nothing's happening nothing's happening finally we go into the midwives that afternoon and they sort of like layer on the table and they go oh you're really a face but you're not really dilated so here's an important kind of point of distinction at the cervix what's happening is there's this mucosal plug that is uh when they talk about dilation and being a face what's happening is your kid's head is kind of hitting the this the top of the cervix and slowly widening the space this is this is i'm gonna talk all about the vagina later guys don't you worry you got your kid hits the space and it starts to widen the gap and so you can be a face and push dropping down below the certain point but the mucosal plug has to give up the ghost it has to breaks either break slowly or if you see it in the movies where it's like bam and it's a pickle jar and uh and all this fluid everywhere and you're swimming in it it's disgusting it didn't it doesn't always happen like that sometimes actually just be a slow rip and a slow drip um so my kid's just waiting to come out trying to get out and she's not really a face not or she's very a face and not really dilated and so they're like come back later you're progressing you're progressing it's fine and the best part about it is our midwife east german five kids she's great earlier in the pregnancy she's telling us about you're pregnant that's fine keep doing everything you'd rather be doing she tells us a story about how this one girl comes into her trying to get a doctor's note so she can park closer at ut like a sick note and her response was you are pregnant you're not sick you can walk like it is idea that that that somehow the the female anatomy and that uh human beings on on the balance haven't dealt with this that haven't dealt with pregnancy and have to do stuff with it while pregnant is just absurd very kind of western society if there's no now now i've said that we have friends who had twins and she bedridden by like 20 weeks so there's certain circumstances where that has to happen but my wife didn't have that problem so we were still training and teaching and all that other fun stuff so we we get so we get there and the nurse practitioners like you're fine go go home you know try and sleep a little bit because this is going to be coming so about 9 30 my wife starts doing this this so if the midwife had told me active labor looks like nba players in the fourth quarter trying to catch their breath because you can't talk you can't think it's the most unimaginable pain that would have been helpful so there's a little tip there's a little tip for you first of all active labor is not like the the most painful portion is not the pushing according to every single one of my clients i've talked to about this it's not the pushing it's the contractions of your body trying to widen this space to to get ready to shove this kid out so there we are there and we've got the active breathing and we show up and here's why i don't have a mid husband as it hurt can i get you a beer or something because we don't know and we can't relate directly i mean we can know kind of in an academic sense and having been through it and so on and so forth but their care and their touch and having had kids and sort of going through the process we get there about uh let me see where i am yeah okay so we get there at about about nine o'clock in the evening and my we've got that beautiful tub my wife's trying to find a comfortable position again she's like on the on the bed she eventually settles to sitting on the toilet with her head against the wall because the porcelain's cold should get up she'd breathe through these contractions sit back down and lay there so what's happening is the mucosal plug is slowly ripping slowly ripping as the contractions are coming i mean while they're trying to sleep and she's totally harsh in my vibe trying to get a nap to which she so she goes like i cannot believe you tried to sleep i go what else was i going to do you didn't want me around she wasn't yelling at me or anything she's like you can't help right what i'm going to do like help her contract that muscle you can't help so i'm lying there on the bed trying to sleep because i know at some point i'm going to be my marginal utility is rising with every minute but in that moment in time i was totally not useful so i'm i'm trying to sleep so i'm effectively like grand haven father here uh does it hurt okay i couldn't i'll so eventually where things are progressing things are progressing things are progressing about uh about two thirty in the morning they always say when it feels like they're telling your wife when it feels like you cannot go any further that you've suffered so long that's when that's that's when the good stuff's about to begin so i was like i need a shot i need i can't take it anymore so i go and i get the nurse and she comes in and and she goes well we need to check you know well there'll be need to check and uh and comes in and um proceeds to lay my wife back and and go to check her and i'll and in that moment bam everything opens up finally it gives up the ghost and she screams around others this baby's coming now so nurse kind of wanders in nurse kind of wanders in she goes get the cart it's coming now so she runs up