When Reality Hit My Gaming Husband During Labor

You know how they say you never really know someone until you live with them? Well, I’d like to add another one to that list: you never truly know your partner until you’re about to give birth and they walk into the delivery room with a full gaming setup.

Yeah, that happened to me. And honestly, I’m still processing it months later.

Let me back up and tell you the whole story, because it’s one of those situations where you really need the full context to understand just how wild this whole thing got.

My husband Danny and I had been together for about four years when we found out I was pregnant. We’d been talking about kids for a while, so it wasn’t exactly a surprise, but you know how it is – there’s a difference between talking about having a baby and actually seeing those two pink lines staring back at you from a pregnancy test.

Danny’s always been what you’d call a “gamer guy.” Not in a bad way, necessarily. He works hard at his job in IT support, deals with frustrated people and broken computers all day, and when he comes home, his way of decompressing is jumping online with his buddies and playing whatever game they’re all obsessed with that month. For the longest time, it was Call of Duty. Then it was some fantasy thing with dragons. Currently, it’s some battle royale game that I can’t keep track of.

I never minded it, honestly. Everyone needs their hobbies, right? Plus, it meant I got plenty of time to myself in the evenings to catch up on my shows or read or just do whatever I wanted without having to negotiate over the TV remote.

When we first got pregnant, Danny was actually really sweet about the whole thing. He’d pause his games whenever I needed something, he came to all the doctor appointments, and he even started following this pregnancy app that would send him updates about how big the baby was each week.

“Babe, guess what?” he’d say, looking up from his phone. “The baby is the size of a lime this week! Can you believe something that tiny has fingernails now?”

It was actually pretty cute. He seemed genuinely excited and engaged with the whole process.

But looking back now, I realize there were some warning signs that I maybe should have paid more attention to.

Like when we took that childbirth class at the hospital. You know, the one where they show you all those videos that make you question every life choice that led you to this point? Danny brought his Nintendo Switch. Not just brought it – he was actively playing it during the breathing exercises.

“Danny,” I whispered, trying not to disturb the other couples who were all very seriously practicing their lamaze breathing. “Can you put that away for like an hour?”

“I’m listening,” he whispered back, not looking up from the screen. “I can multitask.”

The instructor, this really patient woman named Carol who had probably seen it all in her twenty years of teaching these classes, came over and gently suggested that maybe he’d get more out of the experience if he participated fully.

Danny looked genuinely confused. “But she’s not actually in labor right now. This is just practice, right?”

I should have known then. I really should have.

Or there was the time we went to register for baby stuff. I had spent hours researching car seats and strollers and all the million things that apparently become essential when you have a baby. I had lists, I had spreadsheets, I had read more online reviews than I care to admit.

Danny came with me, which I appreciated, but he spent the entire time at Buy Buy Baby looking up walk-throughs for some game on his phone.

“What do you think about this one?” I’d ask, showing him a car seat that cost more than my first car.

“Looks good,” he’d say, not looking up.

“Danny, you didn’t even look at it.”

“I trust your judgment, babe. You’ve done all the research.”

At the time, I thought he was just being supportive, letting me make the decisions since I was the one who’d been obsessing over all the details. Now I wonder if he just… wasn’t really thinking about any of it as real yet.

The thing is, Danny’s not a bad guy. He’s not selfish or mean or anything like that. He’s actually really thoughtful in a lot of ways. When I was having terrible morning sickness in the first trimester, he’d wake up early to make me ginger tea before he left for work. When my back started hurting in the third trimester, he’d rub it without me even having to ask.

But there was always this feeling like he was thinking about the baby in abstract terms. Like it was this thing that was happening to me, and he was being supportive, but it wasn’t really happening to him yet.

His parents, Linda and Frank, were over the moon about becoming grandparents. Linda would call me directly sometimes, just to check in and see how I was feeling. She’d ask really specific questions about whether I was getting enough rest, if Danny was helping with household stuff, whether we’d thought about childcare yet.

“You know, Danny was always a bit… scattered when it came to big life changes,” she told me one day when she’d come over to help set up the nursery. “Even as a kid, he’d get so focused on whatever he was doing that the rest of the world just kind of disappeared for him.”

“Scattered how?” I asked, genuinely curious.

Linda laughed, but not in a mean way. “Well, when he was twelve, our neighbor’s house caught fire. Not a huge fire, but enough that the fire trucks came and everyone was outside watching. Danny was inside playing video games with his headphones on and had no idea anything was happening until Frank went in and physically dragged him outside.”

“Oh wow.”

“He’s not lacking in empathy or anything like that,” Linda continued, carefully folding tiny baby clothes. “He just gets really, really focused on whatever’s in front of him. Sometimes to the exclusion of everything else.”

I filed that conversation away in the back of my mind, but I didn’t really think much about it at the time. I mean, every family has their stories, right?

As my due date got closer, I started trying to have more serious conversations with Danny about what to expect during labor and delivery. I’d read all these books about how important it is for your partner to be your advocate in the hospital, to help you make decisions if things got complicated, to be your emotional support through what could be a pretty intense experience.

“I might need you to speak up for me if I can’t,” I told him one night. “Like if I’m in too much pain to think clearly, or if the doctors are talking too fast and I can’t process what they’re saying.”

“Of course,” he said. “I’ll be right there with you.”

“And I might need you to help me through the contractions. Like, we practiced that breathing stuff in class, remember?”

“Totally. I’ve got your back.”

“And Danny? I know labor can take a really long time, and I know it might be boring for you, but I really need you to be present. Like, actually present. Not just physically there.”

He looked up from his game – finally – and met my eyes. “Babe, this is our baby. Of course I’m going to be present. This is like, the biggest day of our lives.”

I felt reassured. He seemed to get it.

Famous last words, right?

My water broke on a Thursday morning at about 3 AM. It wasn’t dramatic like in the movies – no big gush or anything. More like I woke up feeling damp and confused, and it took me a few minutes to figure out what was happening.

I shook Danny awake. “I think my water broke.”

He sat up immediately, looking surprisingly alert for someone who’d been dead asleep thirty seconds earlier. “Are you sure?”

“Pretty sure. And I think I’m having contractions.”

“Okay, okay.” He was already getting out of bed, reaching for his phone. “How far apart are they?”

I was actually impressed. He remembered from the class that we were supposed to time them. “I don’t know yet. I just started noticing them.”

“Right. Okay. Let me get the app.” He’d downloaded a contraction timer months earlier, which had seemed very responsible and prepared at the time.

For the next couple of hours, we timed contractions. They were irregular at first, sometimes ten minutes apart, sometimes fifteen. Danny was actually being really helpful, rubbing my back during the stronger ones and making me toast when I said I was hungry.

“Should we call the doctor?” he asked around 6 AM.

“The contractions aren’t consistent enough yet,” I said. “She said to wait until they’re five minutes apart for an hour.”

“Right, right. Okay, so we wait.”

By 10 AM, things had definitely picked up. The contractions were getting stronger and closer together, and I was having trouble talking through them. We called my doctor, Dr. Martinez, and she said it sounded like it was time to head to the hospital.

“You ready for this?” Danny asked as we grabbed our hospital bags.

“As ready as I can be,” I said.

What I didn’t know at the time was that Danny had packed his own bag. And his definition of “hospital bag” was apparently very different from mine.

We got to the hospital around 11 AM, and they got me checked in and settled in a delivery room pretty quickly. The nurse, whose name tag said “Jackie,” was this middle-aged woman with the kind of calm, competent energy that immediately made me feel better.

“How are we feeling, Mom?” she asked, helping me get into one of those hospital gowns that somehow never seem to cover everything they should.

“Nervous,” I admitted. “But ready.”

“And how about Dad? You doing okay?” she asked Danny.

“Yeah, I’m good. Just trying to stay out of the way.”

Jackie smiled. “You’re not in the way. This is your baby too. You can be right here next to her.”

She got me hooked up to all the monitors and checked my progress. I was about 4 centimeters dilated, which meant we still had a ways to go, but things were definitely happening.

“First babies can take a while,” Jackie explained. “Try to rest between contractions when you can. Do you have a birth plan?”

We talked through what I was hoping for – I wanted to try to go without an epidural for as long as possible, but I wasn’t opposed to pain medication if I needed it. I wanted Danny to be able to cut the umbilical cord. Pretty standard stuff.

“Sounds good,” Jackie said. “I’ll be checking on you regularly, and don’t hesitate to call if you need anything at all.”

After she left, Danny seemed restless. He kept walking around the room, looking out the window, checking his phone.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Yeah, just… you know. Waiting.”

The next few hours were honestly pretty boring. Contractions would build up, I’d breathe through them, and then there would be these long stretches where nothing much was happening. Danny was sweet about it – he’d hold my hand during the painful parts and make conversation during the quiet parts.

But I could tell he was getting antsy.

Around 3 PM, Jackie came back to check my progress. Still 4 centimeters.

“Is that normal?” Danny asked. “For it to take this long?”

“Completely normal,” Jackie said. “Every labor is different, but it’s not unusual for first-time moms to labor for 12 to 20 hours.”

Danny’s eyes widened. “Twenty hours?”

“Could be less, could be more,” Jackie said cheerfully. “We just have to see how things go.”

After she left, Danny was quiet for a while. Then he said, “Babe, I’m gonna run out to the car and grab something. I’ll be right back.”

“Okay,” I said. I was in the middle of a contraction and couldn’t really focus on what he was saying.

He was gone for about twenty minutes, which seemed like a long time to just run to the car. When he came back, he was carrying a backpack that I didn’t recognize.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Just some stuff to help pass the time,” he said. “You know, in case this takes as long as the nurse said it might.”

I was expecting maybe some books, or crossword puzzles, or something to help him stay occupied during the long stretches. What I was not expecting was for him to start pulling out what appeared to be a complete portable gaming setup.

First came a laptop. Then a wireless mouse. Then a gaming headset. Then what I’m pretty sure was a portable WiFi hotspot.

“Danny,” I said slowly, watching him arrange all this equipment on the little rolling table that was supposed to hold my water cup. “What are you doing?”

“Setting up,” he said, not looking at me. “Don’t worry, I can pause whenever you need me.”

“You brought your gaming stuff to the hospital?”

“Just in case. I mean, if you’re going to be in labor for twenty hours, I can’t just sit here staring at you the whole time. That would be weird for both of us.”

I stared at him. I literally could not think of words.

“Plus,” he continued, plugging his laptop into the wall outlet, “the guys are doing this raid tonight that we’ve been planning for weeks. If I miss it, they’ll have to find someone else to fill my spot, and we’ve been working toward this for like a month.”

“Danny.”

“What?” He looked up at me, and I swear he seemed genuinely confused by the expression on my face. “I’ll be right here the whole time. I’m not going anywhere.”

Before I could respond, another contraction hit. This one was stronger than the ones I’d been having, and I had to focus all my attention on breathing through it. I reached for Danny’s hand, but he was still messing with his computer setup and didn’t notice.

When the contraction passed, I was about to say something when there was a knock on the door.

“Come in,” Danny called out, not looking up from his laptop screen.

The door opened, and in walked Danny’s friend Marcus. Marcus, who I liked fine as a person, but who I definitely had not expected to see in my delivery room.

“Yo, how’s it going?” Marcus said, looking around the room. “This place is nice. Way nicer than when my sister had her kid.”

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Danny texted me,” Marcus said, like this was the most normal thing in the world. “Said you guys were gonna be here for a while and asked if I wanted to hang out.”

I looked at Danny. “You invited your friend to my labor?”

“Not to your labor,” Danny said, finally looking up from his computer. “Just to hang out while we wait. I thought it might help keep things relaxed.”

Marcus had apparently also come prepared. He had his own laptop bag and was already scoping out where he could set up.

“Is there another outlet?” he asked Danny.

“Over there by the window,” Danny said, pointing.

And that’s when I realized that not only had my husband brought his gaming setup to the hospital, he had also planned a LAN party in my delivery room.

I tried to find words. I really did. But I was so shocked by the audacity of it all that I just sat there with my mouth open.

Marcus got his laptop set up and pulled up a chair next to Danny. “Okay, so what’s the plan? Are we doing the raid, or did you want to do some PvP first?”

“Let’s wait for Jake and see what he wants to do,” Danny said.

“Jake’s coming too?” I managed to ask.

“He might stop by later,” Danny said. “Depends on when he gets off work.”

I was about to lose my absolute mind when another contraction hit. This one was significantly stronger than the previous ones, and I couldn’t help but make a noise – not quite a scream, but definitely a sound of pain.

Danny glanced over. “You okay, babe?”

“No,” I said through gritted teeth. “I’m not okay. I’m in labor.”

“Do you need anything?”

“I need you to pay attention to me.”

“I am paying attention,” he said. “I’m right here.”

But he wasn’t, not really. Even as he was talking to me, his eyes kept drifting back to his computer screen.

Marcus, to his credit, looked uncomfortable. “Maybe I should—”

“No, you’re fine,” Danny said. “She’s just having contractions. It’s totally normal.”

I wanted to throw something at him. I wanted to scream. I wanted to ask him if he had lost his mind completely.

Instead, I had another contraction.

This time, when I reached for his hand, Danny absently offered it to me while continuing to look at his screen and talk to Marcus about some strategy for whatever game they were planning to play.

The contraction passed, and I was gearing up to have a very serious conversation with my husband about priorities and appropriate behavior when Jackie walked back into the room.

She took one look around – at Danny and Marcus hunched over their laptops, at me clearly in distress – and her whole demeanor changed.

“Gentlemen,” she said in a voice that could have frozen lava. “I need to speak with you outside.”

“We’re not in the way,” Danny said, not looking up. “We’re just hanging out in the corner.”

“Outside. Now.”

Something in her tone must have finally penetrated, because both Danny and Marcus looked up at her, then at each other.

“Is there a problem?” Danny asked.

Jackie looked at me, then back at him. “Sir, your wife is in labor. Active labor. This is not a social event.”

“I know that,” Danny said. “That’s why I’m here.”

“You’re here,” Jackie said slowly, “but you’re not present. Do you understand the difference?”

Danny looked confused. Marcus looked like he wanted to disappear into the floor.

“Maybe I should go,” Marcus said quietly.

“That would be appropriate,” Jackie said.

Danny started to protest, but Jackie held up a hand. “Mr. Thompson, I need to check your wife’s progress, and I need you to focus on supporting her. Gaming time is over.”

For the first time since we’d gotten to the hospital, Danny seemed to actually look at me. Really look at me. And I think he finally saw what everyone else in the room could see – that I was scared, and in pain, and that I needed him.

“Oh,” he said quietly. “Oh, shit. Babe, I’m sorry. I didn’t—”

“Outside,” Jackie repeated firmly. “Both of you. Now.”

Danny and Marcus packed up their stuff quickly and followed Jackie out into the hallway. I could hear voices – Jackie’s firm and professional, Danny’s defensive at first and then increasingly subdued.

They were gone for about ten minutes. When Danny came back in, he looked like a completely different person. His face was pale, and he came straight to my bedside.

“Lisa, I am so sorry,” he said, taking my hand. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“You weren’t thinking,” I said. “That’s the problem.”

“You’re right. You’re absolutely right.” He squeezed my hand. “I’m here now. Really here. What do you need?”

Over the next several hours, Danny proved that he could, in fact, be the partner I needed him to be. When contractions got really intense, he helped me breathe through them. When I got frustrated and scared, he reassured me. When I needed ice chips or wanted my position changed, he was right there.

It was like someone had flipped a switch in his brain.

Our daughter, Emma, was born at 2:17 AM on Friday morning, after about 18 hours of labor total. When Dr. Martinez placed her on my chest for the first time, Danny started crying harder than I was.

“She’s perfect,” he kept saying. “Lisa, she’s absolutely perfect.”

The next few days in the hospital were actually really sweet. Danny barely left our room except to go get food or make phone calls to family. He changed Emma’s first diaper (and looked terrified the entire time, which was actually pretty funny). He held her while I slept. He took about a thousand pictures.

But the real test came when we got home.

Emma was not an easy baby. She had her days and nights mixed up, which meant she wanted to be awake and social at 2 AM and would only sleep if someone was holding her. She was also incredibly fussy in the evenings – just screaming inconsolably for hours.

The pediatrician said it was probably colic and that she’d grow out of it, but in the meantime, it was exhausting.

Danny’s first instinct, I could tell, was to retreat back to his games when things got overwhelming. A couple of times, I’d see him eyeing his computer setup longingly when Emma was having a particularly rough night.

But he didn’t. Instead, he’d take her from me and walk around the apartment, bouncing her gently and talking to her in this soft voice I’d never heard him use before.

“I know, baby girl,” he’d murmur. “I know you’re upset. Daddy’s got you. Daddy’s right here.”

One night, when Emma had been crying for three straight hours and we were both at our wit’s end, I found Danny sitting in the nursery at 4 AM, holding her while she finally slept.

“You okay?” I whispered.

He looked up at me with this expression I’d never seen before – exhausted, but also completely content.

“I get it now,” he said quietly. “What Jackie was trying to tell me at the hospital. About being present.”

“Yeah?”

“I kept thinking that being there was enough. Like, as long as I was physically in the room, I was being supportive. But that’s not how it works, is it?”

I sat down in the chair next to him. “No, it’s not.”

“She needed me to be all the way there. Not just my body, but my attention, my focus, everything.” He looked down at Emma, sleeping peacefully in his arms. “And now she needs that too. They both do.”

“We all do, Danny. That’s what being a family means.”

He nodded. “I’m still figuring it out, but I want to get better at it. I want to be the kind of dad she deserves.”

And you know what? He has gotten better at it. Way better.

Don’t get me wrong – he still plays games. But now he does it after Emma goes to bed, or during her naps when I don’t need help with anything. And if she wakes up crying, or if I need him for something, he doesn’t hesitate to pause whatever he’s doing and come help.

More importantly, he’s learned to be present in the moment. When we’re having family time, his phone is put away. When we’re talking about important stuff, he’s not distracted. When Emma is having a rough day, he’s focused on helping her feel better.

The gaming setup incident at the hospital has become one of those stories that we can laugh about now, though it took a few months before I found it funny. Danny brings it up sometimes, usually when he’s talking to other expectant fathers.

“Don’t be like me,” he’ll tell them. “When your wife is in labor, your job is to be her support system. Not to catch up on your hobbies.”

His parents, Linda and Frank, were mortified when they heard about what happened. Linda called me specifically to apologize for her son’s behavior, even though it obviously wasn’t her fault.

“I should have talked to him more about what to expect,” she said. “I should have prepared him better.”

“Linda, he’s a grown man,” I told her. “This isn’t your responsibility.”

“Maybe not, but I know my son. I know how he gets when he’s nervous or overwhelmed. He retreats into familiar things instead of dealing with whatever’s making him uncomfortable.”

That actually made a lot of sense. Looking back, I think Danny was probably more nervous about the whole labor and delivery thing than he let on, and his instinct was to create a familiar, comfortable environment for himself. The problem was that he did it without thinking about what I needed from him.

But like I said, people can change. Danny has proven that over and over again in the months since Emma was born.

Last week, we had to take Emma to the emergency room because she had a fever that wouldn’t break. It turned out to be nothing serious – just a minor ear infection – but I was completely panicked. Danny was calm and focused the entire time, asking the doctors the right questions, comforting Emma when she was upset, and keeping me from completely falling apart.

“You’re so different now,” I told him on the drive home. “From how you were when she was born.”

“Good different or bad different?” he asked.

“Good different. Really good different.”

He smiled. “I had a good teacher.”

“Who?”

“You. And Emma. And that nurse Jackie, who scared the hell out of me that day at the hospital.”

We both laughed.

“I should send her a thank-you card,” I said.

“We should send her a whole fruit basket,” Danny said. “She probably saved our marriage.”

I don’t know if our marriage was actually in danger – I think we would have figured things out eventually. But I’m grateful that Danny learned the lesson when he did, rather than having to learn it the hard way over months or years.

Being a parent changes you, whether you’re ready for it or not. For some people, that change happens gradually. For Danny, it happened in one very dramatic moment when a no-nonsense labor and delivery nurse told him to get his priorities straight.

Either way, I’m just glad it happened. Our little family is stronger because of it.