4. Two potential baby daddies

I’ve been an OB RN for 10 years and honestly, this is extremely rare. I’ve never seen it and I don’t know any other nurses who have. Babies pretty much all look alike. They don’t have distinctive eye color. Some races look like other races. Even black babies are very light colored at birth. So even if the baby isn’t the assumed father’s, it’s pretty impossible to tell.

I’ve had a few patients who had 2 potential baby daddies. One who was cheating on her husband and he didn’t know, but the boyfriend would come visit after the husband went home. And one who had 2 men with her in the delivery room waiting to see if the baby looked more like one or the other.

5. Even on a different floor it’s awkward

Not a nurse but I work in the blood bank portion of the lab. We type newborn’s blood to detect possible incompatibilities between the mother and the baby. Sometimes nurses call saying something like “If the mother is O Positive and the father is A positive can they have a B positive child?” I usually just say that a lot of people are mistaken about their own blood type (which they are) and we will recheck our testing and paperwork. It’s awkward and I don’t even have to talk the patients.

6. Afraid the baby was going to be half Black

I had one woman that refused to push when she was fully dilated. I asked everyone to get out of the rooms so I could do an examination and while we were alone asked her why she wasn’t wanting to push out the baby. She was afraid the baby was going to be black. Both her and her husband were white.

It was white, she looked at me after the birth with this incredible amount of relief. I felt sorry for her, she must have had a horrible pregnancy knowing what she was potentially facing at the end.