Distractible - Bob's Baby

Episode Date: January 23, 2023

Bob recounts the unexpected and emotionally taxing circumstances surrounding his new son's birth. Listener discretion advised (pregnancy complications, surgery, hospitals, postpartum panic/anxiety, etc...). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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it's good food in a cup. Visit Kenora.com to learn more. Whoa, what are you listening to this for? Wait, who's talking? You know you're driving a 2024 Ford Escape with available Alexa built in

so you can change the music. Oh yeah, Alexa, change station to 99.2. See? Purchase a 2024 Escape ST-Line all-wheel drive with Tech Pack at 3.49% APR for 72 months with down payment. That's just $267 bi-weekly. Cash value of $40,294. Plus, eligible Ford owners get a $1,000 bonus. For details, visit your local Ford store or Ford.ca. Hey listeners, this is Bob. Jumping in before I get into the story today, just to give you a content warning.

This story will involve discussions about pregnancy and pregnancy complications, will involve discussions about hospitalization, surgery, and recovering from surgery, and we will also be discussing some mental health topics, specifically talking about anxiety and panic related mental health issues if any of this sounds like something that you don't need to hear today that you don't want to think about or listen to go ahead and skip the rest of this episode i'm so sorry but i hope you're doing well i hope you're taking care of yourself and uh you know we'll see you on the next one no worries good evening gentle listener, and

welcome to Decidable, a Woodhouse production. This week, prophetic Wade gets wet while dogging, Mark has a life-threatening knee booboo, and Bob gets real and explains the fear only a father can know as he watches the love of his life and his unborn

child go through hell. An eye-opening episode like no other. Yes, it's time for Bob's Baby. Now, sit back and prepare to be distracted and enlightened and enjoy the show. Hello and welcome to yet another episode of your favorite podcast, Distractible. If it's not your favorite podcast yet, we probably missed our chance. But that's okay. You're still here listening, so can't be too mad about it, right?

Man, this is the most indifference kind of like letdown ever. It's okay. You can if you want to, but... It's a fine podcast, okay? It's a very serviceable podcast. If you hate our podcast then here's the door thank you for coming you can leave we won't try to win you back at all anyone to leave yeah i was just thanking them for listening despite somehow this not being their

favorite podcast it's like when you're boarding a plane and they're like there are exits back there there there you can uh-huh you can exit case but it doesn't mean you have to. It's a very good plane. In case there's a podcast emergency, there are exits over the wings and at the front and there's one by the toilet. What qualifies as a podcast emergency?

Listening to us? I don't think that alone is a hazard. We're not a radioactive podcast here. I don't know. I don't know. I'm not a hazard oh it's a radioactive podcast here i don't know oh i don't know i'm not i'm not touring touring tested that's not how you test a radio active miss we're approaching emergency oh man uh just delete everything i'm saying the line is like bouncing up welcome to another episode they jumped in early i didn't even get to say that i'm your host bob and that uh my co-hosts are here and or competitors, even though, spoiler alert, today it might not be super competitive.

But, you know, at some point they'll probably earn points. Mark and Wade are here. Hello. What's up, John? Hi. Hello. Hi, I'm here. I can't wait. We're doing couch co-op podcast today. Yep. Pretty much. PVE podcast.

That's definitely true. Anyway, it's been another stretch of time since we've been together. Fellers, how's it going? Did you all survive all the rains in California where we all live? I nearly didn't. You nearly didn't. I nearly didn't. Did you almost drown in a puddle?

I had no issues at all. I almost died. I did not. I want to wade's story no so uh it got a little bit chillier here in cincinnati california and then it got a little bit warmer and it rained about i don't know one inch over three days it was very dire straits and uh there was really no stress or problems whatsoever. It was very nice actually pretty great weather Wow Great story. I know just like that and mark would have me well, you know, I almost died For my life I feel it in this room Care for my life. I feel it in this room

No, no, no, I almost died there I was on the road middle of a torrential downpour Water gushing left and right. I'm on my bicycle desperately pedaling upstream Barely fighting against the current really make it all the way up there. And then out of nowhere, I guess flowing down the river, a lady paddling her dog like a boat down the raging rapids. And I swerve out of the way. And it's going at an incredible speed, an outstanding, outlandish speed of several several miles an hour

and then i fell over and i scraped my knee a little bit oh there was so much water that ladies were paddling their dogs why were the hell were you on a bike uh uh look i'm dizzy from the impact i i can't really recall. Things are so foggy, but also shut up. It's my world. Yeah, no, you're right. Go on, tell us. All right, fine. I did.

I don't tell you. I told you. Oh, great. All right, good. Told us. God, that's over. Bob, do you have anything exciting to add to that? I bruised my hip a bit.

It hurts. It hurts. I just bruised your ego it happens did anyone see you fall down and laugh at you because that's the real pain it was actually quite nice because the lady like i was embarrassed because i just fell over but this one car like pulled up and i swear this guy leaned out the window with the most worried expression like if you looked up a definition like picture of someone worried he looked like i was bleeding out and it made it was so worried that i thought i was horribly mangled and i didn't realize it because he stops his car like screeches he's in

the other lane he's like and he leans roll down the window he's like are you all right i'm like am i i don't know am i okay I was hoping he would follow it up with, are you all right? You're riding a bike in a terrible storm. What's wrong with you? You know, he was driving his car boat down the raging rapids. He dropped anchor right next to me.

Shouted down from the gangplank. Be ye all right! Driving his car boat up the road river. I love the amphibious honda civic he dropped his brake anchor right next to me anyway so i uh i i survived and i pedaled home when i sniffled a little bit but i didn't cry ah somebody was a big boy sorry i'm a dad now so i talk like that i think you talked like that before but i can't confirm it what no no i was funny before now i'm just a dad it rained so

hard here that i took the dogs outside and when i'm waiting for them to pee and poop i came back in and i was somewhat wet well life is hard for everyone good small talk boys I think we all come out on top of that for such an engaging and harrowing and life threatening story two points for Wade thank you it was really difficult good try Mark but it was a little

overproduced alright that's fair enough Will damn you for adding the production value to my story you for adding in the production value to my story. Well, anyway, those will be the last laughs. Wow, I almost just bit my tongue. The last laughs in today's

episode. There should be some funny parts. Point out the exits. Just in case. The exits are imagine I'm doing the weird hand arm thing where they hold their arms too close together and then indicate with their fingers. The exits are over I'm doing the weird hand arm thing where they hold their arms too close together and then indicate with their fingers. The exits are over my shoulders, by the front, and then over the wings, and also just punch a hole

in the window and jump out if you need to. Do we need to remain seated? That's a terrible metaphor, guys. It's dead. The plane crashed. It's dead. One hour later. That's a much better metaphor. No one survived, except for us. Now let's do this podcast. It's too late to escape.

There's no accents on this. You're just here now. Today I've asked special permission instead of hosting some sort of competition where I keep the kind of score and arbitrarily pick a winner at the end I'm going to tell a story and this is not going to be like the fridge story

where I was so unbelievably angry that everything was funny even if it was something that wasn't that funny uh this is the story of how my son james was born and about all the special things that happen or can happen when a woman is pregnant and about to give birth and actually doing the giving birth part that nobody tells you about. I was prepared by television and pop culture to do a lot of waiting at the hospital to just sort of stand around and, you know, hold Mandy's hand and for it to be a whole thing

where she basically did it and I just sort of watched and brought her ice chips and held her hand and was like, you can do it. Remember, you're breathing. And, spoiler alert, that's not really how it went what i don't know how common our experience our experience manny's experience is compared to the rest of the world but uh yeah it's a little bit of a twisty story i will say i'm assuming it's this is obviously the sequel to bob's fridge as we we all know. So everyone get your popcorn, prepare for hilarity

and lots of bumbling delivery men. What's this one called? Bob's Life? Bob's Wife? Bob's Baby. Bebe? Bob Bebe? I don't know.

I think you need more letters than that. I don't know. It's the story of James. His name is James, by the way. All right. For anyone who didn't know that. Good name. Yeah. Strong name. Family James. His name is James, by the way. All right. For anyone who didn't know that. Good name. Yeah.

Strong name. Family name. Family name. A fresh voice can speak to you and open your ears and your mind to new views and new perspectives. The call of the wild, a crescendo of culture. Listen as a chorus of fresh voices moves you, taking you to greater heights. Add your voice to the mix

and let fresh answer back with perfect harmony in Pure Michigan. Keep it fresh at michigan.org. I do want to start this. A lot of people may know this. I want to start this a lot of people may know this i want to start this by saying that mandy was really sick for her entire pregnancy which was not a thing that either of us knew could happen i think i talked to you guys about this a lot but you know how morning sickness is like a thing right that they show in movie and tvs mandy essentially had morning sickness

starting around the second ish month of being pregnant, except she had it all day, every day, and for the entire pregnancy. That's awful. Terrible. She was effectively, like, bedridden. In some days, it would not be so bad. There was a medicine that they gave her that helped with the nausea,

but sometimes it didn't do anything. And, like, she literally could not stand up, even sit upright. Food was not an option. There was a stretch where she basically subsisted on water if she could drink it. And then like Powerade because that was the only thing that she could keep down. So bad start. Yeah.

Not how I thought pregnancy was going to be. Yeah, thanks, James. Yeah. Well, it was his fault. He's a real jerk. If you're listening to this, here's the future, James. I'm sure he will. This will last the

test of time can i ask a quick question before we continue though uh-huh the name james is it from whenever we played uh that game with sean and we were reading the notes and we always ended with james i don't think what are you even talking about that it's that one where you're all getting books to put in the circles and then you burn the books in the circles and there were a bunch of notes oh yeah western thing with a guy with a gun and we read the notes it's like sincerely james i would name my child after that uh for certainly what a powerful memory for you both you and mandy it was a close call between that and also it's my dad's middle name and it's kind of a family name ah two birds one stone yeah

interesting so your dad's from the west yeah that's implied by what i said great because they even you could even say it's strongly implied from the west the west the west sure sure sure all right all right look so the pregnancy was rough and there were some other twists and turns, but finally Mandy got to the end and, uh, it started kind of weird. I sort of thought, you know, when you get to the end of a pregnancy, you just, you start to have the baby, you know, your water breaks, whatever dramatic drive to the hospital. Boom. Uh, it got to the end. And because of Mandy's situation, they were, they didn't want to let her just wait they wanted to get the baby out but they didn't schedule a day they they were like well starting on this date you're gonna get a call from the hospital at some point it could be up to a week or two weeks after

that date any day any time just expect a call where they're gonna be like okay come to the hospital it's time to have a baby wait I thought you had to wait for the water to break then you went in they scheduled no the water breaking they scheduled ish a time for her to come in and be induced okay you can they have they have medicine and stuff they can do to just make you start make a woman start having uh the baby and if the water broke before that you would just go in earlier they were like oh sorry your appointment's not for another two weeks show up and they're like no no no you know the time and you just hold it for a while If the water broke before that, you would just go in earlier. They were like, oh, sorry, your appointment's not for another two weeks. Show up and they're like, no, no, no. You know the time.

Can you just hold it for a while? Thanks. Can you just hold that back in there? Here's a bottle of Dasani. Just put some of that in there, top it up and come back in a week. Your shower has one of those standard plugs that keeps the water from draining. Just put that in there. Keep the baby and we'll see you in a couple of weeks.

Probably. Well, luckily we didn't have to experience that, but I don't know. It was weird. Keep the baby and we'll see in a couple of weeks. Probably. Oh, well, luckily we didn't have to experience that, but I don't know. It was weird. It was scheduled, but there wasn't a date. Anyway, we're waiting for them to call us and tell us to come to the hospital. And as we're literally on the way to a doctor's appointment, because at the end of the pregnancy, they wanted to see Mandy like every week to just check the baby and check her vitals and stuff. We're sitting in the parking lot outside of the doctor about to go in and we get the call from the hospital that's like, all right, we have like a

room ready for you. Come in. And this hospital is not close to our house. This hospital is 40, 35 ish minutes away. Cause somehow, even though California is one of the most populated places and I live, we live in the East Bay, well, east of the Bay. And it's an extremely populated area. There is no hospital within half an hour of our house. That seems scary. How is that possible? So anyway, we have to like go home from the doctor, get our bags and stuff, put them in the car and go to the hospital.

And we do that. It's exciting. It's time to go and to have the baby. It's very exciting. And by the time we get to the hospital, it's like almost an hour later because we had to do all that stuff. We walk up and after we've done the extensive security process,

which is just awesome, finally we get inside and the nurse is like, oh, to me, you have to wait outside for a while. And where have you been? We've been waiting for you. We almost gave your room away. What are you doing? And we were like, you called us less than an hour ago. We were doing security processes there to get into a hospital.

Dude, getting into a hospital is like getting, it's like visiting someone in prison. Whoa, really? There is nowhere in the hospital that you can go where you're not like buzzed through a door with a badge, with your picture on it that says why you're there and

all this stuff it has a date on it and they expire it's not like armed guards everywhere it's just you know it's like security people but it's it's like that it's crazy i imagine it's even worse for like a maternity ward just because of the nature of what's going on in there and the kind of people that are crazy babies are very dangerous they must protect everyone from the babies escaping because of the baby armed guards at every door to keep those babies from getting out you know the true nature of babies we can't unleash that on the world it's like batman begins doctor is looking at a baby like, we got to get you out of here. It's dangerous. And he's like, they're trapped in here with me. Okay.

So high security, I didn't know high security hospitals were a thing. I learned something today. I didn't either. And it was like, it wasn't awful, but it was a lot, right? Because if, and there are COVID limits on visitors and stuff also.

So like both of our parents were in town to see the baby. So they wanted to meet him as soon as possible. Only two people people could visit at a time which means that i couldn't be in there with both of either of our parents so i had to like tag people out at the security door and be like i'm leaving this room and they're going into this room so there's not too many people in it and the security person would like call and then call someone else and then after a while be like all right you two can go in you don't go in there you get out of here it's like a it's like a whole thing it was a weirdly unpleasant part of it that wasn't a big deal but was kind of annoying but anyway we finally get to the hospital and we're like this is cool they show us to while they put mandy in a room and eventually they bring me back and show us

the room there's like a big bed for mandy and a little bed for the baby and a dad couch for the me. And it's cool. You know, like this is not so bad. I was expecting that I would have to just like sleep on the floor or I don't know. It's a nice room. And theoretically, if everything goes correctly, Mandy would go through labor, give birth in that room, then they'd put the baby over in the little baby bed and that would be great. And at some point once he's born and everything's cool, they would move us over to the like recovery room

where you just hang out with your baby for a day or two after you give birth to make sure everyone's healthy. Then you go home. So we were like, this room is sweet. It's big. It's spacious. We have our own thermostat. It's not bad. The couch even turned into a bed. So we were optimistic. Unfortunately, this room is also the beginning of the chapter i've decided to call the bad part oh boy so we're settling into this is that the name on the plaque above the door it's just like in red lettering with dripping red blood the bad part in my mind palace this story this part of the story lives in an elevator where when the doors open blood rushes oh god

oh if you're eating food this is your time to put down that sandwich i just have shining calm down just shining reference they're all driving they're not eating sandwiches at the same time that would be far too dangerous they're all driving no yeah they're all driving just to see what happens did you see the post sorry this side trick There was someone that actually posted a picture of their car and it was just like, yeah, I actually got in an accident listening to this podcast. Because it's so hilarious. The risks.

Please don't do that. Such a great podcast. Only good things happen when you listen to it. Wait, I don't think it was a choice. Don't do that. Oh, the podcast forced its way onto their radio while they were driving they heard a joke and they were like i'm gonna choose to crash i don't think that was the part they didn't tell me what the emergency exit was take that bridge do not drive do not operate machinery sharp in

fact don't operate anything of any kind yeah we, we're. Don't eat. Don't drink. Don't even listen while you're listening. Our podcast is equivalent to powerful muscle relaxants. So just like beware. Well, until you know how it affects you, at least. Yeah. So we're settling into this room and it's super great and we're really excited for it. And that is the bad part.

So Mandy's body tends to react pretty strongly to medications. Just meaning like, you know, if there's a painkiller, it will hit her really hard. It will make her extra sleepy or whatever. She'll feel it. But also her body tends to like getting all the little side effects that, you know, drugs frequently have listed with them, but not a lot of people might get. So we know this about Mandy. It's just sort of how her physiology works or whatever. And so to start inducing her to have the baby, because she's not naturally starting

to have contractions and stuff yet, they give her this medicine that is supposed to start the process of having the baby. It just tells your body to start doing all the stuff it's supposed to do to get the baby out of there. And she starts having contractions, which is is great and they're setting her all up and uh the contractions start to be like a lot not painful actually she wasn't in too much pain uh but they were like

almost constant eventually they kept happening and they're not really supposed to do that they're supposed to like you know be some minutes in between maybe five ten minutes maybe longer sometimes they might be you know a couple minutes apart but at this point they're not really supposed to do that. They're supposed to like, you know, be some minutes in between, maybe five, 10 minutes, maybe longer. Sometimes they might be, you know, a couple minutes apart. But at this point, they're not, as far as I know, they're not really supposed to be that close together. She was having back to back to back contractions. And it wasn't too bad because like I said, it wasn't too painful. She could just kind of tell it's contracting.

But what can happen when you have contractions too frequently is it can lead to the baby inside of the mom having d cells which is short for uh heart rate decelerations which is not good sounds bad maybe his heart rate's supposed to be like between like 130 to 160 which is super fast but it's supposed to be really fast right and and most of the time when he was checked out previously his heart rate was like in the 150s ish but so manny started to have these contractions and they just kept happening kept adding and eventually the baby was on a heart monitor eventually he said he had a d cell and uh the nurse kind of looked and was like that's a problem but she kind of like moved mandy around maybe he had you know gotten a bad position who knows and

she kind of worked on in the first for a minute and eventually the decel went away on its own it was a little like stressful but went away baby went back to normal totally fine it wasn't like painful on mandy when this was happening but it like triggered a like an adrenaline response almost it gave her like really like panicky feeling and it obviously does not help when you're stressed out and you're worried that your baby is having trouble. But it was OK. Eventually it went away on its own. And we were like, whew, all right, that's enough of that. Let's just hang out.

It's going to be, you know, 12 to 24 hours, maybe longer before Mandy's ready to give birth. This is about to be the longest part, the part that's really painful because it goes on and on. And Mandy keeps having more painful contractions. That's what's supposed to happen. We were mentally preparing for a long time of being in this room and helping mandy get through you know a long labor and then to delivery and we did that for about 20 minutes until the next decel happened and this time his heart rate went like really slow his normal range

is like 130 to 160 like i said his heart rate was down in like the 30s. Not the 130s, the 30s? The 30s. The 30s. Like the double digits. And what was the normal? 130 to 160 is the normal range for a fetal heart rate. Right. Yeah, 30 is pretty low.

That seems pretty bad. That's low. Yeah, so that's not great. And so the nurse, again, calmly was like, hmm, like problem and started moving mandy around but this time it didn't get better and at some point the nurse was like it's not getting better and like literally called in the cavalry where it was me mandy and one nurse in the room up to this point and the nurse came and went and was doing other stuff but she came you know was helping us helping mandy taking care of her and at this point she called the cavalry and like five or six more nurses rushed in

and three doctors rushed into the room. And they like circled around Mandy and politely, but firmly were like, please back up. To me, they were like, get in your corner, stay back, get out of the way. And this was like way more stressful than the first time. This is not a casual thing where it's like, oh, that's not good, let's fix that.

This is like a horde of medical professionals rush into the room. They're doing stuff. One of them's doing something with Manny's IV. A couple of them are trying to move Manny around. One of them's doing some scans or whatever with a medical device of some sort. It's a lot of action. And the doctors, the nurses are the ones actually doing everything. The doctors are standing back kind of by me, kind of looking and looking at each other and talking and being like,

hmm, do you think we're gonna, we don't need to do that yet. Hmm. Okay. Let's give her a couple minutes. See what happens. You know,

like low talking. In a way where I'm standing there not really hearing what they're saying but kind of watching and being like, what the fuck are you doing? What's happening?

Yeah. Is this okay? And so that was awful. There were some moments where Mandy and I met eyes and we're kind of both like what is happening holy shit until the rest of what happened happened that was probably one of the scarier moments of my life right there because we're like who you know is this is mandy okay is the baby okay no one's really saying a lot because they're all really busy doing their job which they i have to say all the nurses and doctors did an excellent job. They are like fantastic. They were amazing. I have my issues with Kaiser and we've talked about healthcare in general before and stuff

like that. The actual people in the hospital were amazing. They did fantastic work. So like, cheers to them. But Manny and I are standing standing here not really sure if someone is in life and death peril or if it's going to be fine or what that happened for like 10 it felt like an hour but i think it happened for like 10 or 15 minutes eventually they got the heart rate back up for the baby and everyone kind of took a breath and the doctors were like okay and want and just left the room and the nurses slowly made their way out and at at this point, the basic theory was, we don't know why that's happening. It's probably fine. It shouldn't happen again.

He seems fine. That's a good theory. Oh, good. Yeah. So, you know, that's comforting. And everything went back to normal for maybe half an hour. It felt like a second because, again, out of nowhere, it felt like five seconds later another d cell started happening and it was immediately like call the cavalry this is a bad sign what the hell keeps happening

everyone rushes back in they start doing more stuff and this time the doctors are way more concerned they're looking and they're like we don't really know why this is happening very confused about this and at this time at some point the baby moved and they weren't able to get a heart rate reading of him though the way they they check his heart rate is they basically strap a thing on the outside of mom's belly and that like gives the baby's heart rate by just sensing it through her belly and stuff they couldn't find him so the heart the baby heart rate monitor was just like flatlined at zero and a couple nurses were frantically moving the sensor around and everyone was kind of just standing

watching as the nurses were like we can't get it we can't find him i'm not sure about this so we don't even know what's happening right now you know if the baby's okay or what and i was like okay this is the worst part this is just awful so much worse than before and finally they're like we're gonna try this thing we're gonna take this huge needle and stick it up into where the baby is and basically pop the bag uh that he's in because he the baby up inside of mom's uterus is in a sack filled with fluid right when your water breaks what's happening is the sack that the baby is in with all the fluid uh that he floats in that breaks the fluid

rushes out and that is you know leading towards giving birth mandy is nowhere near giving birth at this point she is you know a i think two centimeters dilated at this point maybe and you're supposed to get up to like 10 to give birth and they're like we're gonna take this huge needle and stick it up in there and pop the baby balloon and then we're gonna take this other huge stick and this circle thingy and stick it up in there and put a thing balloon and then we're going to take this other huge stick and this circle thingy and stick it up in there and put a thing right on the baby's head without being able to see anything by the way

they just did it by feel because you can't see up inside the mom that's not how the anatomy works and they were like there's almost no risk to this there are some risks but it's probably fine we do this you know we do this regularly. It's okay.

So they do that because we can't get the baby's heart rate. And we're like, God, I hope he's alive still. Do the thing. And they do that and they get his heart rate back. And it's still decelerating or decelerated, I guess. And they do some more stuff. And finally, after just screwing around and getting to the point where the doctor started to talk to me about emergency C-sections, and they were sort of like coming over to me and they're like, we might have to do this.

It's going to be fine. But we, if we make the decision, we're basically going to sprint out of here and rush your wife straight to an operating room. It's an emergency procedure. So we have no time to like explain it. So just so you know, if we decide to do that, the room will be empty in like 30 seconds and we'll be taking good care of your wife. Don't worry. I'm like, yeah, good. That sounds care of your wife don't worry i'm like yeah good that sounds like a thing i wouldn't worry about why would i be worried about that that sounds great yeah easy easy stuff yeah so obviously in my head i was like okay well this is the worst part and i hope they don't do the emergency c-section because that's an incredibly dangerous thing as far as

complications and mortality around uh giving birth emergency c-sections cause and or lead to all of the highest mortality rate complications that can happen when you're giving birth a lot of the most dangerous stuff is excessive bleeding infections i don't remember all the things but like the emergency c-section is the main thing mandy and i had talked about we wanted to about we wanted to avoid we wanted to do everything to keep that from happening because that presented the most danger to both her and the baby so we're back in the room and the doctor's like okay well we're like we have to decide in the next couple minutes if she doesn't get better and right as they were

about to make the call and sprint her out of the room. The baby chilled out and his heart rate went back up and Mandy sort of calmed down. She had been in incredible stress and like panic and some pain from all this, but he chilled out and the doctors were like, all right, that seems good. We don't know what we did. I don't think we fixed anything, but he's fine now.

Oh yeah. Did they leave in the exact same manner? They were like, all right, this was a lot scarier, but we're done seeing a bit. They did. They straight up did. The doctors manner they were like all right this was a lot scarier but uh we're done they did they they straight up did the doctors looked and were like ah i guess we can go and skittered away and the nurses all sort of filtered out and the nurse our nurse who was like the one who was supposed to be taking care of our room in the on the floor or whatever uh was like okay well if she could just chill out for a while and the baby could stop doing that it's almost time for

uh the epidural which is the thing where they numb like the bottom half of the woman's body so it makes it instead of incredibly painful it makes it more like incredibly uncomfortable when the contractions are happening and when she's trying to push the baby out and stuff really doesn't completely take away the sensation of pain and discomfort but it makes it bearable, more bearable. Anyway, that's the point. I've had an epidural before, so I can attest to this. Oh yeah, how was it? It was fine. It's actually worked out really well. It's things that people probably don't understand too well. They actually tap into your spine. And so they pick a spinal column piece and they stick a needle in there and then they inject a local anesthetic and a painkiller into

that specific nerve and it basically makes everything below that not really feely very much yeah but with my case they put too much not was it paralytic or uh and i like my legs weren't working properly which isn't supposed to happen uh yeah no that's not that's weird yeah but it's actually not in the bloodstream so i and i'm not a medical professional but i believe in the case of childbirth it's less likely or extremely unlikely or doesn't get into the baby's bloodstream at all i think something like that i'm fairly sure wouldn't you damage a nerve by stabbing it with something you don't i guess i don't know how it stab the nerve itself what do you stab you stab into the area where the nerve is i have some

thoughts about that process though how how was it getting having them put the thing into your back mark because thankfully i was watching do it to mandy okay i was asleep that's good it's not a great process because i understood before this what an epidural was and so it's basically like putting it's more complicated and delicate, but it's basically similar to putting an IV in, right? You stab with a needle and then that over that needle, you feed a little like plastic tube. And then that plastic tube delivers the medicine directly into the little hole that you made.

How do they get it into her back if she's pregnant and laying on her back? They made her sit up and then arch her back forward so that her back was like a big stretched out arch and then they're just like sit real still stabbing your nerves but also the process of finding the right spot was way less precise than i would have thought i i watched they didn't let me watch from the side where they were doing the stabbing i was in front of mandy so i couldn't see but the anesthesiologist comes in and they call an anesthesiologist because it's a difficult and important procedure to do correctly

and they get it all set up and they sterilize her back and then they put a dressing over and stuff all this stuff to make a sterile field on in the area and then the anesthesiologist just took a needle and started poking mandy's back and was like you you know, it was like poke. And does that hurt? And Mandy is like, yeah. And they asked you to tell us about. Okay. Okay. Wrong spot.

Wrong spot. Poke somewhere else. Does that hurt? Mandy is like, well, less, but yeah. It's like you're poking my back. They did that for like 10 minutes. They were just like, poke up. That hurts.

Poke. Oh, that hurts more. Sorry. Poke, poke, poke, poke until they find one where it doesn't hurt. And it doesn't, Mandy doesn't feel it in their legs or anything. They kept asking her questions. And then when they find the right spot, they're like, all right, that's the spot. And they mark it. And then they do the epidural.

Mandy's bruise on her back from getting the epidural, like several days after when we were trying to leave the hospital was like six inches around it was a big bruise yeah and that's not how i would have thought you would do that in such a delicate area as the spine where you're just like poke poke does that hurt ah darn it that does seem relatively barbaric i don't think that's standard procedure. I'm going to go off on a limb and say like they know what spine piece they're looking for and there's like a place to what would they gain from knowing what hurt? like poking around on the left side and then found kind of the edge of that and then went over to the other side and was kind of doing the same thing and eventually what she was aiming for was a specific some piece of anatomy or whatever in the middle of that area where mandy didn't feel the pain presumably is where she wasn't hitting any nerves that were running down mandy's spine and

it was like i don't know it was like a you know an artery or something that where the medicine was supposed to go but it just was a really concerning thing to watch it didn't bring a lot of confidence and also like after the anesthesiologist finished doing this and put the tube in and got it all set up she then gives like a test dose of the drugs and is like let's see if it works let me know if your legs start to get numb you know and it takes like 10 or 15 minutes so you're sitting there like, are your legs numb? No? Okay.

Just keep waiting. God, I hope it's in the right hole or whatever. But I get why they don't. I mean, aside from it being sterile and I couldn't go where the sterile field was, I get why they don't want the dads to watch. It didn't seem like a great process. I feel like they could refine that one a little bit. Yeah, that doesn't seem like how I would have expected it.

I thought they would just have some super bed that's got like a hole underneath pre-planned for applying the epidural it's like okay just lay down stay comfortable we're just gonna unscrew this little spot we're gonna stab in the epidural and you're good to go not lean forward pretend you're trying to touch your toes while also there's a baby in the way now we're gonna hammer your back for 10 minutes. Oh, this might be it here. Let's get another 15 minutes while I just wait and see. If we're not numbing your legs, something will be numb.

I hope it's not something important. Look, man, people think that medicine is a lot more elegant than it is. It's really pretty barbaric. Some of the things you have to do because doctors don't have green Healy goop in the back. You know, they kind of just like stop green healy goop in the back you know they kind of just like stop the red life goop from getting out of your body and hope your body knows what it needs to do to make that not happen anymore that's kind of like the entirety of medicine well in the hope that the chemicals they slurry in there all mixed together real good

and don't do any crazy stuff yeah i like to think there's a cauldron in the back and they just add ingredients stir it up and they put it in a needle like yeah this is what they need hopefully we didn't have eye of newt but hopefully i have uh salamander works instead dude that's literally it except they have more technical names for it the injection of theseus i is salamanderous you know they thought you would have figured it out a while a few hundred years ago but when they discovered blood types you know before that it was real weird yeah sometimes people just got bad blood you put blood in and it don't it gets not blood that's weird is that what that taylor swift song is about i didn't realize that was about medicine yes it's actually a historical song going back in time that song was about robbing banks you do a you do a blood injection and the person gets worse and you're like ah now we got bad blood damn it

probably there was a way to check that so this is not related to our uh birth story at all but i learned in researching all of this and preparing for uh what was going to happen apparently not preparing well enough but trying trying to. Tribes on the continent of Africa have apparently been giving totally successful C-sections since like the 19th century. I don't know the details because I'm not a medicine person. And also I didn't continue to try and research down that hole because I didn't think that applied to Mandy's pregnancy, hopefully. But apparently the white guy who discovered C-sections, Mr. Caesarian or whoever his name is, went to Africa and saw them do it and was like, holy shit, you just cut that lady

open and took the baby out and she's fine. We don't even know how to do that with our fancy Western medicine. I don't know the details, but I thought it was fascinating. Literally hundreds of years ago, tribes were doing midwives and tribes in africa were capable of doing a c-section surgically removing a baby and both the mother and the baby would survive and recover and be just fine which is wild i wonder if they applied the epidural the same way they they really got nailed it down with one one prick epidural they probably had beds with holes in them they they figured it out it's the bed hole you're right they had the super beds long

long ago they mastered that actually we've lost the art but anyway i just thought that was an interesting medical fact because that means that they were doing surgery which basically predated a lot of successful you know sort of western medicine surgical techniques and stuff very interesting yeah that's a long time ago to be doing that kind of operation and it turning out okay at least in my head considering how barbaric medicine is now with apparently all the knowledge and technology we have yep well that's your historical medical fun fact of the day but unfortunately we have to go back to the epidural which definitely worked right the first time you know what here it ended up being totally fine all of the day but unfortunately we have to go back to the epidural which definitely worked right the first time yeah you know what here it ended up being totally fine all of the the process of the

epidural made me super uncomfortable but it ended up working perfectly her legs got numb and then they started giving her the full dose of the drugs and uh and so the epidural was in and that was going to stay in until the baby was born and so we come to the end of the chapter that is called The Bad Part. Oh, good. Okay, so the bad part's over with. So logically speaking, this must be the good part. Obviously. Okay.

Yeah. I'm glad the bad part's over with. That's why the next chapter is titled, of course, The Badder Part. Oh, no. Come on. No one saw that coming. No one would have seen that coming. I was hopeful that it wasn't. part yeah well of course it's not over it never ends that's the last thing I have written on my my notes for this by the way he is just kidding it never ends

because now there's a baby in my house turns out you bring that home with you and then there's a whole other set of things that happens the epidural worked then we just cut to baby in house now it's worse yep that's the whole story wow no yeah so the batter part the next part so like the epidural worked her legs went numb and they started giving her the the regular dose of the medicine. And so she was going to be in, you know, almost no pain at that point because the contractions were not getting very painful yet. And they checked her and Mandy was four centimeters dilated.

Four out of 10. For those of you who don't know what the correct answer is, she was almost halfway. And that's great. Four out of 10 is better than The Last Jedi I got. Yeah. Better than a lot of movies get. Not even in Rotten Tomatoes. It's always movies with you, Wade.

How many more are you stealing? Well, I gotta be ready for the next episode, I hope. Yeah, so for about 10 minutes, the epidural is working. Everything is fine. And then 10 minutes goes by and Manny starts to feel kind of funky. Remember I said that drugs tend to have a very strong effect on her. She starts to feel kind of weird. And suddenly, you'll never guess what started to happen. The baby started having another extended bout of deceleration.

Come on, James. Deceleration two. Or three. Three. The decelerating. De three the slowening so so slow it was the slowest it had ever been this decel was so bad that it dipped under 20 beats per minute at some point it didn't go into single digits but it dipped even lower than previously and this time it got worse kind of quickly everyone rushes back in all the nurses are back the anesthesiologist is back and she's all oh shit what did i do because it started where you know after the amateur role started happening

and manny keeps feeling like worse and worse the baby's heart rate keeps edging lower and manny keeps feeling worse at one point manny was in so much i don't know if it was pain but it's like distress and discomfort and everything the The doctors were asking her questions, trying to gauge, you know, what she's feeling, what's happening. She couldn't even respond. She heard them talking to her, but she could not like focus and get her mind together enough to give them a response to the question. And so the doctor asked, it was like, you know where where does it hurt how how much out of 10 how much is your pain and she would look at them and then she couldn't speak and they were kind of like hmm so a lot of pain probably interesting interesting is that normal i know i don't think it is uh the epidural is supposed to not do that uh but anyway what they

think happened after everything cleared up and i sort of talked to them for a second is that the epidural did what it was supposed to but also somehow it accelerated her contractions remember she was having almost constant contractions because of the medicine they gave her initially well at this point the contractions were just actually constant she was just contracting like 100 of the time it wasn't stopping they gave her a drug that's supposed to stop contractions from happening specifically no effect whatsoever and this this was going on a long time and they kept watching and it got to that point where the doctors were kind of talking to me and trying to explain to mandy we might have to do an emergency c-section

you know if we do that we're going to rush you out of the room all that same stuff uh and at this time just kept getting worse and everyone kept getting more stressed and they were like can we give her this like no we already gave her that can we try this i tried that before it didn't work to this point all the medical people had been super calm you know they were working very with purpose but they were all calm and they were like all right we're gonna do this we're gonna try this we're gonna but it got to the point where even the nurses and the doctors were kind of like do this right now see if she responds to this no response okay we need to try like it was escalating and i could tell from the mood that it was escalating and the doctor at one point the

doctor just looked over at me and was like we have to do it and then looked at the group and was like emergency c-section let's go it was like a tornado of activity they gathered the iv all this stuff they unplugged the things they look what move the bed whoosh out of there and i am left standing in a room by myself well they just rushed my wife and baby out of the room to an operating room to start an emergency surgery and i just stood there for a second kind of shocked right yeah i'm shocked though they. That was so fast. Yeah. From the doctor saying the words to me alone completely in a silent room, maybe 20 seconds.

Everything just pull the plug, get the thing, roll the bed, get out of here. We're gone. We're moving. It's crazy. I can't believe Mandy and the baby put you through this. It turns out someone's at fault and we'll get to that. Oh, I can't wait till that chapter. Oh, interesting.

It's not me, right? It's not you. I would be amazed if somehow it was you. Do you have a friend named Wade? Because this is all his fault. I do. Actually, I knew it. Points for Wade for predicting the future.

Is it his fault? It's his fault. But you lose those points for it being your own fault. I need to get legal counsel for this. actually you should have received a uh received service at this point if someone knocks at your door asking for mr barnes definitely answer it and confirm who you are who they're looking for before you do anything else okay i'm gonna trust you on that but yeah so i'm left alone in the room and And at that point, I wasn't really sure what was going to happen. Because normally the father can be there if they want to be for like the birth of a baby,

right? If it's a natural birth, I'm holding Mandy's hand, you know, very stereotypical. Even if it's a C-section, I'm allowed to be in there. They put up a drape or whatever, and I'm allowed to sit by Mandy, the top half of Mandy, and hold her hand while they do the thing. Because they don't make you go unconscious mandy is totally conscious during the c-section in this story which must feel pretty freaking weird but yeah i didn't really know what's going on and then at some point after they were all gone a nurse just came and brought me some scrubs and was like put these on and then we're gonna put you in like a place to wait and if there's time they'll bring you into the operating room maybe oh and so i did that and she walked me over to this room which was the recovery

room where they were going to bring everyone after a successful surgery hopefully and i was put in there alone and i swear to god it felt like an hour normally you know that sounds like a stressful situation probably and maybe a very upsetting situation telling the, that sounds like a stressful situation, probably, and maybe a very upsetting situation. Telling the story, that's like how I feel. I still feel pretty upset about this. At the time, it escalated from me being worried, upset, anything like that, to like, rage. Like I was going to fight God if he came and tried to take mandy or the baby away or whatever i don't know i was in that room clenching my fists thinking and saying stuff that is burned indelibly into my memory and that i would never in a million years have thought that i would say or do or

even think i want so badly for someone to have come in here and be like, see, I told you I'd be okay. Yeah, the doctor examined Mandy's cervix, and I was like, I don't think it's big enough for a baby to get through there. And the doctor was like, oh, yes, it is. I'm sorry. And I forgot there was a pipe under there and just So they pulled the baby through and all I hear is

Water's going everywhere There's gotta be some kind of shut off somewhere You'll find it See I told ya Can you hold this for a while I gotta go get something Just pinch it shut See, I told you. Can you hold this for a while? I gotta go get something. Just pinch it shut.

You want stitches or put a bandaid on this? No, you just hold it. Just kink it. Kink it over. It'll stop. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to detract from Clenched Fist Bob. Just reminded me of when that dude said that to you.

I appreciate that, actually, because I wasn't sure if I'd be able to tell this part of the story and keep it together. But like, this was the actual worst part. I was in a room, an empty room, and the lights were off. It was like, you know, it's like emergency lighting only or whatever. By myself, it was probably more like 15 or 20 minutes. It felt like forever. I wasn't sure what was happening, if it was bad that it was taking a long time because something bad had happened or if it was good and they were just busy i had no idea no one came and updated me at some point some poor nurse or somebody came through and was just like

doing their job looking you know they came in and were like i need this thing and and they saw me and i must have shot them just a craziest fucking glare. I can't imagine because of what I was thinking and saying in my head. Um, but that is, and hopefully will remain the worst 10, 20 minutes of my entire life. I don't know how to express what I was making promises to God and, and any God that would listen. I was making, you know, bold claims about what I would change my whole life. I was doing all the most cliched things, right? Where I was just like, I would give anything to even know if it's okay or not in that operating room to make sure that they come back. If one of them doesn't come back, what is going to happen? All this stuff,

all the possibilities were racing through my head. It was really awful in like a very angry way because all I wanted to do was rush out of there, find the room where they had her and go in and see what the hell was going on. But I had to wait because I didn't know where they were and they were going to get me once it was okay, once it was time for me to go in the room. And I couldn't, you know, I didn't want to bust in there and mess it up because then it's my own fault. But that was just an insane time.

I've never felt like that in my entire life. No amount of anger or rage or sadness has ever risen to that level. And it was really unexpected. Sort of went into this whole day expecting it to be a lot of boring waiting around and Mandy being in pain and me bringing her, you know, whatever I could and trying to help. This was not, when we got to the hospital, mind you, about 10 hours before that moment of me in that room, this was not an option that existed because there was no reason to expect that Mandy was perfectly healthy, the baby was healthy,

everything was chill. There was no reason to expect that it would deteriorate into an emergency C-section at midnight in the middle of the night when, you know, the staff isn't even necessarily full. They called in nurses from other areas to come help. It was crazy. And I'm sure other people have experienced worse than that in terms of, you know, hospital situations, life and death situations i hope that anyone listening and that you guys never have to be in that situation you said it was like 20 or 30 minutes of waiting which doesn't sound like a lot but that is like when every second your heart's racing and you're panicked that is such a long time i remember during the drowned man saga when i found water dripping out of an air vent and i went upstairs saw water pouring out of the fan

and the ceiling light and my thought was mo Molly drowned in the tub. And it was about five seconds of feeling that, you know, however long it takes to run up a staircase, five, 10 seconds of feeling that. And that felt like an eternity. I cannot imagine that on the minutes to 10 minutes to whatever half an hour type scale. That is a long time to be feeling that. Yeah. I sort of lost the point of what I was getting at i guess but it's for me this is the most unforgettable life-changing part well maybe holding my son for the first time but who cares about that it it was an experience that definitely changed the way i feel about i don't know life being alive staying alive and i will say in that moment i also wish that we had done every

little tiny thing that was available to us while Mandy was pregnant so that could have changed that outcome even the slightest little bit. Because there's all this stuff. When a woman gets pregnant, there's all these rules and, you know, you can't eat sushi and can't have caffeine and all this sort of stuff. Those might be obvious, maybe not to some people, guys who don't know how this works like i didn't at the start of it but there's all this little stuff where it's like you know you shouldn't lay in certain positions you should take this you know make sure you're taking your vitamins take these things do there's all these hundreds of things you can do at any moment and it got to a point

where it wasn't just like i was like blah that's stupid got to a point where mandy was like i don't have energy for this like i want to be we want to be the best parents possible. And she did everything she could. Like, it's not like she was ignoring, you know, obvious and helpful things, but it got to a point where how, how, how much will this help versus I'm exhausted because I'm pregnant. And I was just like, man, I wish we had done everything we possibly could. I didn't realize this could be this crazy. Cause I always sort of imagined emergency C-sections were like, you know, you're in a car accident or something, something crazy happens and it precipitates, you know, something where the mother's in danger, the baby's in danger. And they're like, we got to get them out now. This

baby needs to come out. But I didn't think it would just happen out of nowhere. And, you know, I guess that's always possible. Medical complications can just happen, but it really had never crossed my mind. And I don't think it crossed Mandy's minds either. But eventually after what felt like forever and saying and thinking and doing things I never thought in my lifetime, I would, a nurse came and got me and brought me to the operating room. And right as we were walking in, I was expecting to see, you know, them doing surgery and on Mandy and hopefully our baby, whatever, being held by a nurse. As we're walking in, she's like, right as we got into the operating room, the baby on his own for no apparent reason came out of it and his heart rate went back to normal. So we didn't do the C-section yet. We've been preparing the you know surgical field we've been

getting ready we're gonna still do the c-section but it's not emergent anymore and so you're gonna get to be there before they start i got to sit there with mandy and hold her hand while they were doing it and it's incredibly lucky i don't know what would have happened if it played out differently and if anything bad happened i honestly can't imagine because I was surprised at what I was thinking, just waiting to hear the news. Uh, but it turned out fine, which was really jarring and shocking because I was, you know, expecting any of the worst things I could imagine to be what would really happen there. I walked in, Mandy was on the table. They had given her a bunch of drugs, drugs obviously so that she didn't feel the surgery but she was still conscious and I sat down and said hi and it was all right she was really

drugged up trying to stay awake but she was awake for it and they just started the surgery oh I even forgot as I was walking in I saw them starting the first incision which was another thing I never thought I would see who yeah I walked through the door and they had it was like a tv show the doctor was there with her hand on manny's belly and it was like scalpel and took it and just started slicing the slice on the outside of manny and i was like oh take me to the other side of holy what the hell you got in there they were just like no no no we gotta show off our skills it's like when someone walks into the kitchen when they're cooking. It's like a hibachi grill. He tosses it up in the air and catches it in his head.

Impressive. Cheer him up. He's probably really stressed out. This will cheer him up. Pulls out the sake bottle for you. Escort it in my mouth. He cuts up the placenta. He's like, all right, all right, open, open wide.

Goes to the back of the room. King, I missed. Yeah, so I didn't want to see that, but I only saw it for a little bit of a moment. That's burned into my memory too, but for like completely different reasons. Watching someone cut into your wife with a scalpel is weird and concerning, even when you totally understand what's happening.

But yeah, they started doing that, and I cannot imagine what it must feel like to be a woman giving birth and to be awake and conscious even if you can't feel it but to be awake and conscious while people are cutting into you and removing a huge baby from your deepest inside areas it's not like they're cutting off a mole or something it was weird yeah like i sat on mandy's side of the thing and it was like, it was almost like a cartoon, you know, where they do the surgery and there's like car maintenance noises and there's like things flying around and it's like, like it was like that.

It was weird, man. I don't know what Mandy felt. I hope she didn't feel anything. She didn't complain about it, but it was wild. Since she was was talking at this point she was no longer like unable to speak she was able to speak and communicate normally yeah i mean it's like she was really drowsy she could talk she was just trying to stay awake she was just really sleepy and yeah so this isn't like a funny story like the fridge or anything and i don't really it's not i try to like make some funny moments you guys are helping with that but i just felt like I had to share that as the worst part of my life that's happened so far,

which probably is lucky for me. I know it was an awful experience. I still can't think about it because it makes me incredibly upset. It brings back a lot of feelings. But I'm sure that compared to some people's lives, it could be way worse. So, and the punchline that I've already given away, because I told you all that we brought him to some people's lives, it could be way worse. So, and the punchline that I've already given away, because I told you all that we brought him home and he's fine, is that we have a baby. They got him out. We heard him scream for the first time, which was pretty,

pretty wild. And then we saw him get passed over the curtain to a nurse and brought to a warming table. They examined him. He was moving his arms and legs they said he was fine he handed him to me and i held him up next to mandy's face so she could see him and they started wrapping up the surgery they started suturing up her incision and whatever they do to finish that and that was it for the part that preceded giving birth that was the end of that it was a crazy roller coaster it involved several moments that i thought would be the worst part of my life, and then it kept escalating. And I don't know.

I guess I just feel like I wanted to talk about it, because for anyone else who's having a baby or has had a baby, I'm curious how normal that is. Is it normally like a joyous thing where the mom is in pain, but the whole time you're like, it's worth it. There will be a baby when you do this. pain, but the whole time you're like, it's worth it. There will be a baby when you do this. Or is it, it's an insanely stressful, like life-changing experience in the other way that I had it. Nobody, nobody talked about that. There's a lot of stuff involving pregnancy and having a baby

that I feel like people did not accurately describe or people just didn't talk about, but maybe we just had a really wild pregnancy. Well, Mandy had a really wild pregnancy. I watched. I mean, I know. Oh no, you go. Well, Mandy had a really wild pregnancy. I watched. I mean, I know. Oh, no, you go. I'm speaking from ignorance, so I yield the floor. I know from my mom's perspective, raising the kids was the worst part of her pregnancy. So I think normally I don't have an answer. You made the right choice, Mark.

You let the one who knows go first. All right, fair enough. I was really glad you set the table and made it look like I really knew what I was going to talk about there. So thanks, buddy. All I know is from my mom's story, which she has repeated to me at length at least a few times a year about my own birth, which was traumatic in a way that much like you described, she didn't have to get a C-section. But it was still just like, it seemed like even less care was applied. She didn't have kind of like the attentive care. And she can attribute that to like being a foreigner. She

thinks that was like there was also a language barrier. And so it was very difficult for her to get the kind of care she needed, which also led her to want to become a nurse so she actually was a nurse in labor and delivery she was a labor and delivery nurse so she did that because she didn't like how little care she felt she got and she wanted to make sure that other people got the level of care she desired but it's exactly as you described everyone in there like the nursing staff probably were very attentive and cared as much as they could anyway given that people are probably running and being like i need to know what's in there like the nursing staff probably were very attentive and cared as much as they could anyway given that people are probably running and being like i need to know what's going on in this room in two seconds because there's a crisis so information needs to be exchanged pretty quickly

and then you know like when to make the call the doctors with one foot in the door one foot out like and then um like i i just think some people probably have a relatively normal quote-unquote birth some people have a terrible time i don't know i'm a man i can't speak for any of this yeah i don't know how it feels to you but like you guys might be listening to me and be like oh he's been through it now he knows how it works no the fuck i don't as a man it all feels very alien and it feels really weird to me how some people public figures politicians can just speak about something like pregnancy or issues surrounding pregnancy or women's health more generally and feel like they have any idea or authority to say anything about it because it is wild and man is it feel like you're on the outside the

whole time as a man with the doctors and everything that happens and it's crazy so even though i was there and technically i went through that in my capacity i still feel the same way that it's wild it is such a crazy ride i wonder how many teams they have of like the doctor nurse combo like rushed in whenever the deceleration happened is it like a room of like people just wearing their bands like on the start track and like a whistle blows and they take off and whoever gets in the room first gets to claim that room uh kind of the way that it seemed to work is there was the floors were divided into sections the way that hospital was laid out it was kind of like half and half there was a nurse's station on each side of the floor so they seemed to be responsible for the

rooms on their side and then there were like five to seven nurses who sort of hung around the nurse's station and they each had their own patients they were caring for so we had you know the shift would change but we had the same nurse for like the whole shift and then when they got off and the new nurse started working they would like introduce us to the new nurse who's going to be like our nurse and tell her what's happening and make sure she knows and then but when something happened any nurse that was available in that area just seemed to rush to the room and the doctors were like hanging around they had other i don't know they weren't always there but they were like on call and it seemed like there were i guess three total doctors on call for the whole maternity floor or whatever and they all showed up

every time it started to happen so they called in like anyone who was available who worked in this area basically but yeah I guess it was pretty serious I don't know if they always do that for anything that happens but the deceleration stuff was, they didn't fuck around. Even when it was before they called the cavalry, the first nurse was kind of like waiting for the right moment to call. She just had to do her first couple things to try and fix it on her own. Yeah. So, so then we had a baby. And if you think that ended the traumatic stuff, boy, did it not.

The real worst, worst part. No. So for me, the worst part was definitely in the room but then after you have the baby they take you well they brought manny into recovery and she was okay she was awake not in a lot of pain even though she had a huge you know incision in her belly and then in her internal her muscles and her uterus and whatever she was okay and then they sent us over to the other wing which is is like the recovery wing, where you hang out with your new baby in a room and they watch everybody and make sure the baby's healthy and that mom's recovering and everything's good. This wing had a bunch of rooms and a lot of them had doors open and they all looked like pretty

normal rooms. Nothing crazy, a little smaller than the other ones, but they look like hospital rooms. They took us over here and they were sort of rolling Mandy's bed and I was rolling the bassinet with the baby in it very carefully. And we passed a bunch of rooms and finally they came to a door kind of near the end of the hall. And that was the one we were going into. And it has to be the smallest hospital room I've ever seen in real life or otherwise. It was so small. they couldn't fit all the equipment inside the room like they were supposed to. I don't know why any of the other empty rooms that all looked perfectly fine weren't available, but I swear to God,

they put us in a closet instead of a hospital room. And nothing bad happened. I just don't understand why they had such a small room. The problem was they couldn't fit the heart rate monitor for Mandy in the room and the IV machine so they could give Mandy fluids. Or if you did have those both in there, then you couldn't open the door to the bathroom very wide. But, you know, it's just, it was weird. They could have given us any room on the whole floor. There was a lot of empty rooms. Maybe I insulted someone. I don't know. But this point started what was probably the worst part for Mandy. And

I didn't experience this. So this is, you know, I was there and I was trying to help and I was taking care of the baby as much as I could and stuff. But this is really Mandy's story. And this was like a big thing, another big thing that neither of us really understood the seriousness of it. But so Mandy physically was okay. We got into the recovery room. Her incision was all right. Her pain was okay. She was doing okay. There were some side effects and stuff and they were treating them. And physically, like from the C-section recovery in terms of that, she was doing fine, doing all right. Got up and started walking eventually. And the thing that was not okay was that they kept trying to give her pain medicine and all these other, well, not a lot, but a couple other medicines

to help treat her side effects, her pain, whatever. And the combination of the medicine that they were trying to treat her with, including, and especially I think the painkillers, with her hormones and what her body was doing chemically inside of itself created such a crazy storm of what I think is fair to say is like postpartum panic disorder. I don't know if that's an official term. I think it is, but she could not sleep and she had random bouts of just extreme like fight or flight adrenaline responses and it kept making her blood pressure spike which was concerning to the doctors you know so they'd come and look and they would come and take her measurement and it'd be super high and blood pressure off the chart not a good sign and then they'd be there and the doctor would talk to her for 10 minutes whatever and by the end her blood pressure would be totally back to normal.

It was a purely physically triggered, like emotional panic attack from the mix of hormones and painkillers and everything that she had been receiving and that they were pumping into her. And it was to the point where one time she had a really bad spike in her blood pressure. She was feeling like she was going to have a heart attack. She was feeling terrible terrible and she looked at me and was like i'm going to die jesus i just want to tell you that i love you take care of our son i'm dying right now good god and it was not i mean i'm sure she was emotional this was a crazy time but this was not like an emotional thing like she's having negative thoughts and got into some kind of cycle.

It was a physically triggered panic attack that made her sincerely feel like she was going to die. She's still, even now, has said that like she doesn't think that was unreasonable, that she remembers how it felt and that it felt completely out of her control and that it felt like she sincerely thought she was actively dying, that she was about to just kick it. And this was another thing that we had heard about. You hear about postpartum depression and postpartum anxiety.

This is a common thing that happens to people, women who give birth. But the extent to which this was, was causing her physical symptoms. Her blood pressure going so high could have caused a stroke, or an aneurysm, or whatever. It could have caused serious medical complications purely from this hormonal, like physical body chemistry response that she was having. And she wanted me, this is very personal and very vulnerable, and she wanted me to talk about this because she was completely unprepared for how it felt and that that was a possibility either. Manny has dealt with anxiety in her life. Grad school was very stressful. She's had, you

know, she's had a lot of stress and she can be a stressy person. She's a perfectionist and she, you know, she stresses about things. She thought she had, you know, experienced anxiety and had coping tools. You know, you can learn how to manage anxiety, how to try and distract yourself, bring yourself out of it before you spiral and spiral down and it gets worse and worse. She thought she knew what that was, but according to her account of all of this, this was a whole other thing entirely. If this is what a real serious full-on panic attack is like, it's unlike any emotional anxiety she's ever dealt with. I mean, she just told him, I was like, do you want me to talk about that? I can leave that out. And she was like, I think you should talk about it both so that, you know, you can tell the story and everything that

happened. It was horrible for her, but it was also stressful for me. Having your wife, your significant other, whatever, look you in the eye and sincerely say, I dying i love you goodbye without you know any doubt or or jokingness or even you know the drama of just you can you know they're being overly dramatic about whatever that was a surreal experience and uh yeah so it's she was like also because i want people to know this is possible that when when women talk about postpartum depression or postpartum anxiety or panic, it can be serious shit. It can be such a strong emotional experience that it causes real physical symptoms to come into, you know, to cause things that could give you a heart attack or a stroke or whatever. It was a serious threat to her life.

And it felt like there was nothing we could do about it because it was so overwhelming and it was so real, no matter how, you know, I don't think there was any reason she was dying except that her blood pressure was going up because she was feeling so panicked. But it was, it was real, even though it was purely from, you know, from her own body and her own brain chemistry manifesting in her experience it was crazy shit so that postpartum stuff that is way more serious than i ever thought it could be i'll say that was the last terrible thing that happened um finally but like that was an experience that neither of us expected even remotely i did not think that was possible yeah that is and it's it's good to talk about because i i think so many people don't talk about it because

I think it's either weird or unrelated. But, you know, man, I can't imagine. I can't imagine and I'll never experience it. So it's one of those things where all I can do is listen. Yeah. Yeah, I can't either. That's such a difficult thing to imagine going through. I'm glad everyone's OK and that it turned out all right.

But in that moment, like after everything you guys have been through having her like basically say her farewells and her wishes like i that would destroy me yeah yeah that whole the sequence in the hospital that was a summary of kind of what happened but that happened over the course of four days following her c-section where i she had a big bed i had a chair to sleep in but neither of us could get any sleep she couldn't sleep because of the the panic stuff just kept happening kept coming in waves and then i was trying to take care of the baby and it was like i couldn't sleep she couldn't sleep and then at some point our parents would come in during the day and I would go take a nap so that I could at least get some sleep and be there overnight to make sure that Mandy's okay and the baby's okay she went for almost three straight days with no

sleep which probably made all of the symptoms and the panic stuff way worse but like it was wild the whole hospital experience after the c-section is like, it's like a quasi dream, very surreal experience all in itself. But yeah, I mean, I guess just to say, and this is maybe showing my own shitty side of myself, but I have known a lot of people and I've heard a lot of talk about mental health and people struggling with anxiety and panic attacks. And I had always kind of felt like, yeah, well, a panic attack does sound hard, but you know, you just got to learn how to deal with it, right? How bad can it be? It's just some, you're just panicking. You just need to calm down. And not to say I dismiss anyone's experience,

but like, I had always sort of thought I knew what a panic attack was and that, you know, that can be hard for people to deal with. The type of thing that Mandy experienced is a whole other kind of level. And it gave me a new respect for and reaffirmed my appreciation for the idea that you cannot judge or even think to understand what another person's mental health might be like for them, for their experience. There's a wide range of experience beyond like, oh, I'm a little anxious. Oh, I'm panicking because of whatever's happening. There's a lot of physical stuff to it, probably body chemistry, brain chemistry, whatever. That's a lot that you can never know about another person's experience. And for pregnant women and or postpartum women, there's a list of all kinds of stuff that can happen. But for anyone, if you have

the right body circumstances, whatever needs to happen in your brain or body, for anyone to assume they know how you feel or what it feels like for you when you're having a mental health crisis is a bold assumption. I will never again look at someone who's dealing with mental health issues and think, I know what they're dealing with. It's not that bad. They can handle it. It was a wild experience. Completely changed my perspective. And I thought I was a pretty understanding person before that but like you just can't know what's happening inside another person's head and uh i'm sure a lot of our listeners already knew that or already had

that appreciation but this was an experience for me that dramatically opened my eyes to how wide the range of experience is for different people in different situations. So again, Mandy wanted me to not leave that out. And that's very vulnerable and personal, but it can happen. She dealt with that for three or four days. She is still dealing with that. Oh God. So it's much more manageable now. It got to a point where it was more like maybe once or twice a day,

she would have the panicky feelings come from hormones or whatever it was. And she would she could deal with them more. They're not as intense. But for four straight days in the hospital, it was like inescapable. And, you know, all day, all night, that panic attack feeling. And for a couple of weeks after we got home, she continued to have it where once a day, maybe not, maybe once, twice a day. She would have that same thing where it was a full-on attack she would be afraid you know she woke up and i had taken the

baby to the other room to like just take hold him or feed him or whatever she would be afraid he was dead that he was gone she would wake up in a full panic have no idea what's happening and uh it's better now it's been over a month now since he was born just over a month but it's better than it was but she still has the same panicky feelings that just come on they're just less intense as her hormones and stuff are changing i guess they're not doing the same thing they were but it's been a long postpartum experience uh for mandy and has been very rough damn sounds like the entire ordeal has been really hard on her like from start

to finish. Yeah for about almost nine months maybe more like eight months now. Eight and a half. It's been pretty rough. Not able to eat food. Extremely nauseous. Throwing up every day. Multiple times a day. All day. Not being able to drink enough water to stay hydrated and then all

the stuff that happened around the birth. None of that is how I thought getting pregnant and having a baby would be for her or for me. Not to play the victim because I'm fine. I mostly was an observer, but it's wild. So when's the next coming? Well, they say she'll be healed up enough in like three or four months to do it again. And I think we should jump right back into it.

I mean, I don't see why not. All the kids. That's what I say. Eight kids. You want a baker's dozen, right? I want to need two cars to go out to dinner. Got to get the oldest one to drive the youngest ones. Yeah, that's the way.

Some people have such a smooth pregnancy that they like miss being i know people that miss being pregnant they enjoyed being pregnant so much you can't imagine that that sounds so like unbelievably like not possible after listening to your story yeah i don't even want to see a baby for the next month just after hearing your story much less i don't even know if there is such a thing as an easy pregnancy i I think even saying that is probably a misnomer. They handle it well, but still. Yeah, it's a hard and traumatic experience for any woman who has a baby, no matter how smoothly it goes.

But I had no idea it could be so bad. Yeah. There's a miraculously large number of ways that the woman can be made to suffer all thanks to the baby and or just being pregnant and what her own be made to suffer all thanks to the baby and or just being pregnant and what her own body does to try and adjust to the pregnancy and get ready for a baby it's a real unfair experience speaking as the father i feel like i watched mandy suffer for

about nine months and then i watched mandy really suffer for about eight hours and then i watched mandy be rushed away and have and worried if she was going to live or not for a little bit then i watched her deal with the aftermath of all that while she was also feeding a baby every three hours from her own body and uh you know yeah i was just there i was fine i didn't feel sick or nothing i mean that was it was traumatic for me but like and as much as like that's the worst moment of my life. And especially in that room waiting to find out what was happening in the operating room. It feels unfair from my perspective to even complain about that given, but that was all happening to Mandy, that she was the one who might've died.

She was the one who grew the baby that might be in peril that might have died and all of that. How could anything be so bad for me that I have any right to complain? No, no, no. Mandy's body did this to you yeah well she put you through this yeah you lost sleep don't forget you know whose fault this is yours for getting her pregnant well hey no that's not that's too far back sorry sorry okay okay uh so it turns out that all of the pre-birth stuff was actually the baby's fault. Oh, yeah. We forgot it's the baby's fault. Yeah.

So it's his own fault, you stupid baby. Apparently what had happened was he got really excited or something when we went to the hospital. He was totally fine before that. But at some point in the hospital, he did a bunch of spinning around for whatever reason. Yippee! Wahoo! He tied his own umbilical cord around his neck. So that's why every time there was a contraction and he got squeezed,

the cord around his neck also got squeezed, and he was a little bit suffocating or whatever. It was bad. He did it himself. The same thing happened to Molly. She had her umbilical cord wrapped around her neck too. Same thing. That's terrifying yeah so we found that after everything settled the doctor sort of talked to us at some point and was like yeah his cord was wrapped all around his

body and it was wrapped really tight around his neck that's probably why he was having such trouble and being in there hanging out because of the thing strangling him turns out having a jump rope in there to get a head start on your athletic career isn't the best idea for babies. Yeah, not worth it. You should start them off with a balance ball. Can't hurt yourself with a balance ball. That's what I say. Can't they replace the umbilical cord with one of those, like, no kink hoses instead?

You're right. At first I was like, there's no way this sentence could possibly be good and then you land it you stop the land thank you thank you you know you'd think they would have worked on that or just just like a pipe you know you can't can't wrap a pipe around your neck that's true it's too pipey well after all the plumbing issues we've had i could help you build a pipe next time just give me a call i'll get some pvc ready just need more mud no just needs a bit more mud. Yeah, this baby's fine.

He just needs a little bit more mud. Oh, your water broke early. Let me patch that up with some mud. I know a lot about water breaking. Anyway, that was a real lighthearted romp of an episode. I know, but... Can't wait to see who won. Technically... Oh boy, oh boy, oh uh technically let me tally the points here uh it's not james this is all his fault it looks like the winner

of this episode where there was a lot of contestant participation uh with two points is wade wait a minute those are two points from the very beginning of this episode yeah those are the only two points that I actually... Oh, no. Didn't I give you two, but then take two away? So let's zero it out. I think you gave it to Wade, so... He would have won, but instead he wins.

Ah, right. Well, you should have had a better... I don't know. You never stood a chance, Mark. Let's be honest. You should have just been better. This seems unfair. Subreddit, defend me!

Rebel against this injustice! This is my time, and that's my subreddit. It's the distract-a-wait reddit. We all know this. Did you know they still count the wins you deducted from me as, like, the overall score? That's canon. Oh, it's a new year

and I'm hosted next. I can do it again. My once a year power. You're right. Well, thanks guys for just letting me completely hijack an episode. I'm sorry it wasn't as variety funny as the last time we did this. I think considering what you went through, we got

more laughs than we probably should have. And I just want to say I am so sorry you guys went through that. Genuinely, I hope everything is smooth sailing from this point forward for you all. And I hope nobody else has to go through anything that bad or forbid worse. And if you guys need anything, just ask. Not talking to the audience. You guys stay out of this. Yeah, you guys don't mean anything.

We care about Mandy and Bob. No, not James. James caused all this. I guys, stay out of this. Yeah, you guys don't mean anything. We care about Mandy and Bob. No, not James. James caused all this. I know. He's a jerk. This is his own fault. Really. That guy. I can't wait until he gets a job search contributing. I know, right? There's child labor laws, but are there baby labor laws? I don't think so.

Might be a loophole. Alright. Sounds like a good loophole to me. But yeah, and thanks for letting me talk about it it kind of felt good to talk about it i'm a little sad now but everyone's fine so in the present it is actually okay despite how everything went uh and thanks listeners for listening i don't know if you're gonna get anything out of this story unless you're having a baby or thinking about i'm not sure hopefully something happened when you felt a connection to some part of the story because it's a lot of crazy scary stuff but uh so much of it i think is hard to even imagine going through until you go through it like you said yeah i really wasn't prepared i

thought we were just gonna hang out and then that meant it would there would just be a baby and they'd be like push and then they'd be like when and then we'd have a baby i thought there would be a great flood some pushing and a baby uh but next week wade will be hosting and it'll be funny i listen let's not set the bar got any sad stories you want to tell this is a sad story podcast go sad all this year we get sadder and sadder every episode i will walk through the entire my memory of my dad dying next week uh buckle up it's a it's a real fear jerker. Can I jump in with that one too? Oh yeah, let's do a dual host.

Oh, you guys can both host. Yeah, double host. We'll script it. I'll let you win and then the next week you can tell your dad story. New year, new distractible. Now we're dissatable.

I know you feel like a winner, Wade. Do you have a winner's speech? Man, I feel like I really deserve this subreddit you've been yelling and finally your answers are being heard really want to shout out well me for having to listen to the story and all the pain it put me through so please pity me

for having to live through Bob and Mandy's tough time by having to hear the story it was a really tough hour and 30 minutes or whatever for me so thank you guys for your pity. Good speech, good speech. And Mark, I'm not going to say you're the loser because that feels unfair.

Oh, thanks. But do you have a non-winner speech? Do you have a participant speech? Just for everyone out there, know that all of this is experiences that everyone goes through or not everyone goes through, but a lot of people go through

and they bear it with dignity and grace, but also sometimes they just don't talk about it. So feel free to speak up, you know, find someone to talk to, you know, it's, you're not suffering in silence. You're not anything like that. Life's hard. Life's real hard sometimes.

Keeping life going is very hard. Worth doing though. I don't know why I want to throw this out before we end. When you were describing the start of your experience, getting to the hospital with security, i pictured babies with like heavy machine guns and like aviators on guarding the hospital ward and i just want to say that's the imagery i've had in my mind this entire time is all of your movement throughout the hospital is guarded by babies and diapers like cigars in their mouth and aviators on as the security already one way

save it for the next one i will forget by the time next time rolls around so i had to share that imagery with the world wow so you're welcome everybody's welcome you should do a tour like that everybody's welcome tour that would never work only if the friends get to come along you probably don't know what we're talking about, listener. If you want to know, you should check out our YouTube channels, and particularly probably Mark's has the most evidence

of the tour that we're discussing, but youtube.com slash Markiplier and other places. Wade is lordminion777 online, and or minion777 on Twitch. And I am IceCrim. It's probably written somewhere. So it's kind of copy-paste that. It's hard to spell, but it doesn't really matter.

Make sure you check out our merch at store.stractablepodcast.com And, you know, thanks for listening. And like Mark said, I think that's a good point, Mark. You don't have to talk about anything that has happened, but I will say, doing this episode, I think, helped me a lot. I was kind of afraid to do it. It's a very vulnerable thing to do.

But talking about it helped me a lot. I was kind of afraid to do it. It's a very vulnerable thing to do. But talking about it helped me process something. I feel differently. I feel better. And if you need someone to talk to, you should find someone to talk to. A friend, therapist, whomever is appropriate. Or don't talk about it if you're not ready. But everyone goes through things. And like Mark said, listen to Mark.

Mark did it better. That's the end of the episode. It'll be funny next week, I promise. Promise. It can't not be funny next week. Yeah, why wouldn't he pick him as a winner? That's how it is. It's going to be funny. That's the truth.

It's a fact already. We are out of here. Thanks so much for listening. Podcast out. Thank you for joining us on that emotional rollercoaster. But do please remember that sometimes the hardships and horrors can make life taste so much sweeter.

Bob now knows the value of his family and will love them all the more for it. So cheer for Mandy and James and gentle listener, love without reservation. Until next week, Undestractable.