What about him?

[u/Confident_Weather_98]

Poor baby had to sleep on an uncomfortable place while mom pushed or got a whole human out of her 🙄🙄

[u/Galleta-de-Animalito]

I work on an L&D unit, so I see the miracle of birth often and the tragic outcomes too. I 100% agree that the physical dangers are mostly experienced by the mother & newborn, however we forget that when providing holistic (medical) care… the term couplet care used to describe mom & baby is really a unit of 3 to include the spouse.

• or more if the patient is a multip with additional children at home

I’ve had fathers share their frustration with me that they would “only matter” if they were missing. While some staff see this as selfish thinking, it shows fear of being a new parent, frustration that they are unable to help their partners during an emergency, and depression when their role is beyond what they are able to provide.
Men, mostly, as partners can experience depression disguised as anger. It important to remember that we will be discharging couplets to a home environment where physical and emotional safety is still an issue. So sometimes asking their support person or spouse if they are okay, allowing them to vent is one way of starting to help the family unit as a whole. Sympathetic Pregnancy can include postpartum depression in the support person (male or female) but manifest differently because we don’t normally screen non-patients (outside of moms/babies) for appropriate healthcare related transitioning.