Next to the hazardous waste.
“I don’t usually like people standing behind me, but this room is set up funny. So, why don’t you stand over there?” The doctor points to the corner of the room next to a box labeled “hazardous waste.” I get up and head in that direction, doing my best to press my more than two hundred pound frame up against the wall. Somehow her tone makes me wish I were half my size.
Wait. Just so that we’re on the same page. I’m delighted even to be allowed in the room! Due to COVID-19 restrictions, I haven’t been allowed to participate in any previous pregnancy appointments—nothing beyond giving my wife a ride to the hospital and getting briefly patched in via video call. I wasn’t there for the 8-week ultrasound that confirmed we were pregnant. I wasn’t there for the 16-week appointment when we learned we were expecting a boy. I wasn’t there for the amniocentesis after learning that my wife and I may be carriers for Spinal Muscular Atrophy, nor was I there for the 19-week “full scan” after the baby got a clean bill of health.
It’s our 36-week ultrasound. We’ve been waiting for almost an hour. My wife sits on the exam table, and I’m awkwardly on a chair that’s positioned like an afterthought, behind the only entrance. The door swings open. I tuck my legs in and over to avoid colliding with whoever’s coming in.
It makes me simultaneously feel clumsy and in the way.
The doctor greats us saying, “How’s everyone feeling?” I open my mouth before realizing that she’s not at all talking to me. She briefly looks around before commenting about the room being “set up funny” and directing me towards the corner next to the hazardous waste.
So, here we are, awkwardly shuffling about, when I realize the harsh reality of what’s going on. Put bluntly, I don’t need to be there. The pandemic pushed the medical establishment to communicate it directly, in fact. Only those medically necessary were allowed in the hospital. The bald palpable truth makes the room feel smaller.
There’s no space for Dad. I’m unnecessary.
Maybe I should have taken a hint while in the waiting room. The nurse called my wife in to get her vitals, then said, “We’ll come to get you in just a moment.” Meanwhile, a small line began to form at check-in. The medical receptionist dutifully gathered the necessary paperwork from each patient. Then, realizing the limited space, she asked “the fathers” to step outside into the hallway. I didn’t hesitate.
Does it count as chivalry if a third party solicits it? I want to think that I would have given up my seat for a pregnant woman regardless, but I’m not sure. I was waiting to join my pregnant wife after all. The nurse said, “just one moment,” and it felt like I was “next in line.” Regardless, after a few minutes of waiting in the hallway, the nurse popped her head out, saying, “Oh, there you are! Your wife’s right this way.”
In total, the appointment took about an hour. Out of curiosity, I started the stopwatch on my wrist when the doctor came into the room and stopped it when she left. She spent nine minutes and seventeen seconds with us. Running a few diagnostics using the ultrasound, she predicted the baby’s birth weight to be about seven pounds with a margin of error of about fourteen ounces. We waited for a little over forty minutes in the waiting room, some of it in the hallway for me, then about ten more minutes in the exam room.
Honestly, it felt a bit anti-climatic.
On the way out, my wife apologetically commented, “I’m sorry, hun. I thought it was going to be more interesting than that!” I looked at her and shrugged. “Uneventful is probably a good thing at the hospital. Looks like everything’s normal. How are you feeling? Does the baby have the hiccups again?” We go back and forth like that during the car ride home. We’re good at making space for one another, but I can’t shake that institutionalized feeling of “being in the way.” I’m not yet a Dad, so I wonder, “Is this what it feels like?”
I don’t want to be in the way. I want to be involved. I want to support my wife and show my son how much I love him. I want to go to PTA meetings, make cupcakes for school, and bring drinks and snacks after the game. But I guess that’s weird for Dads. The Dad space requires a stiff upper lip, a baseball glove, and maybe a boxing lesson or two. It requires stoic silence, stern looks, and sparingly used but firm pats on the back.
Look, I get it. Pregnancy isn’t “about me,” at least not obviously about me, since I’m not pregnant. Still, in so many situations, we can rely on social scripts to guide our experience. Usually, these social scripts grease our interpersonal wheels. They make it easier for us to know what’s appropriate and what’s inappropriate. So, why does the “Dad script” have a blank page here? I’m certainly not the first soon-to-be Dad to feel like they’re in the way.
Why was it so awkward for me to be there?
Moreover, if the room lacks space for Dad, what about other less “traditional” partners? What about same-sex couples? Or hopeful parents and their surrogates? COVID forced hospitals to differentiate between the medically necessary and everyone else, that makes sense, but that room wasn’t designed after COVID. The space has been this way for a long time.
One of my old psychology professors used to say,
“If you want to see a grown man cry, ask him about his relationship with his father.”
Standing there, next to the hazardous waste, I couldn’t help but wonder if it would have been better had I been absent. Maybe I didn’t need to come to this appointment. Perhaps I don’t need to join the next one. Each seemingly small decision building on the previous one until the default becomes an absent father. What does that say about our relationships with our fathers? What does it say about fatherhood and about feeling “fatherless”? Have you ever felt like your father was absent? Have you ever wished he were in the room?
Well, I want to be there. Simultaneously, I get the sense that there’s no room. My wife wants me in the room. No one said, “Don’t be in the room.” But that was the nagging sense I got. That was the script. That was the space. Why isn’t there room for Dads? Why do Dads stand next to the hazardous waste?
