simmo3801 said:
... we're expecting our first baby ...
Simmo,
YOU need to prepare now for the emergency C-section (your good lady doesn't, they give
her Class A drugs to blot it all out)... all of this takes place in temperatures of at least 90°F, so wear appropriate attire for the prevailing conditions.
All progressing nicely, suddenly the midwife starts looking concerned, calls consultant... the bed in the delivery room is detached from the wall and they're off up the corridor at a jog with the anaesthetist asking SWMBO questions and contingent on the answers pumping drugs into her from a bandolier arrangement over her (the anaesthetists) shoulder. If you're lucky someone then pops their head around the door and tells you to get your arse in gear. This all happens in about 30 seconds.
You zip off up the corridor at a sprint to catch up the other party with the bed and get ushered into the room where there are lots of gowns & over trousers and overshoes that don't fit anybody, so you struggle into the least-worst fitting set and wait to get ushered into the operating theatre. This part seems to take around 3 days, this is where you pace up and down panicking that they've forgotten you.
Optionally at this point your SWMBO will start to slip in some comic lines - mine for instance said to the theatre sister (a bearded Northumbrian chap called Dave) "I think I might be pregnant". Dave reassured her "aye pet, but not for long". She then asked "any chance of some liposuction while you're on?"... "Pet, there's nee lipo to suction"
DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES GO TO THE GOAL END OR LOOK OVER THE SCREEN - if you want to, get training by attending car crashes and hanging around the abattoir - there looks like there's a zillion gallons of blood and it all belongs to your SWMBO.
Eventually after much snipping, pinging & comedy one-liners from your SWMBO there's a squeal and your offspring is hatched. If you're really lucky you get to hold them first and you can have this over SWMBO forever in arguments ("I carried him in my belly for 9 months" "yes, but I held him first"). Now it all starts to wind down. You're ejected, baby is tagged, weighed, measured, prodded etc. and they get on and rebuild your SWMBO.
What seems like a week later they bring her back to the room you started in and she looks rather ill and they start battering fluid in to her to replace the blood on the OR floor... then the nursing Gestapo arrive and tell you you need to leave. As I left the the hospital at 0315 I was sold 24 bottles of continental lager in suspiciously French packaging and the clamp they'd popped on the car magically disappeared.
At this point you must now call both sets of grandparents - if you don't, they will be on your case for
months. Probably best to call hers first, but make sure you have all the details to hand in imperial units - they have no idea what 3.175kg is... time to the nearest minute is sufficient though.