We all know the trope of the “Man Cold.” It is that special phenomenon where a sniffle turns a grown man into a helpless invalid who needs a juice box and a warm blanket while his partner continues to run the entire household with a 102 fever. But one husband on Reddit just took the Man Cold concept, injected it with steroids, and brought it into the delivery room. He decided that his wife’s labor was the perfect time to make his own dental neglect the star of the show.
The story is told from both perspectives, which is a rare treat that usually confirms our worst suspicions. The husband starts by explaining that his wife went into labor three weeks early. It was unexpected. He had been developing an intermittent toothache over the prior couple of months. Note the timeline here. Months. He had months to fix this.
About two or three hours into his wife’s 19-hour labor, our hero decided to have a snack. He ate something “delicious.” I love that he emphasized the quality of the snack while his wife was likely restricted to ice chips. Immediately after eating, his tooth started hurting in an “ungodly way.” He describes it as sharp, eye-watering pain.
Now, toothaches are terrible. Nobody is denying that nerve pain in your face is a nightmare. But most people, when their partner is about to push a human being out of their body, would perhaps swallow a Tylenol and suffer in silence. Not this guy. He admits, with zero irony, that the toothache became a “competing topic of conversation with the imminent birth of our first child.”
A competing topic. He viewed his molar as a worthy adversary to the arrival of his firstborn son. He didn’t want to leave her side to get medicine until her parents arrived, which sounds noble until you realize he just sat there complaining to a laboring woman instead. Eventually, he found numbing medication at the hospital gift shop, popped some Excedrin, and was fine just as the real contractions started.
Then we get the wife’s perspective, and it is the final nail in the coffin of his defense. She reveals that he had been complaining about this toothache for months. She had begged him to go to the dentist. He refused. He actively chose to ignore a medical issue until the precise moment she needed him to be strong.
She admits she wasn’t in “terrible pain” yet, but she was mentally preparing to, you know, give birth. And instead of focusing on her or the baby, the conversation was dominated for “a couple hours” by his throbbing tooth. She even felt bad for him because she is clearly a saint who has far more patience than any of us.
The issue isn’t the pain. The issue is the timing and the preventability. He saved his medical emergency for her medical emergency. He took a situation that required him to be the support person and turned himself into the patient. He made her manage his emotions and his physical comfort while she was strapped to a fetal monitor.
So is he the ahole? Yes. He is the ahole. He ignored his health for months and then let the consequences of his own laziness crash his wife’s delivery. He essentially brought an uninvited guest to the birth of his child, and that guest was his own ego. Next time, go to the dentist when your wife tells you to, buddy.