So last May my wife and I were in Miami visiting my mother-in-law. We didn't know it at the time, but Brittany (my wife) was pregnant. We were watching some show about women that didn't know they were pregnant and then had the baby in a public place of some sort. It was the weirdest show I've ever seen.
This combined with the multitude of other "emergency deliveries" that I've seen in my life (all of them on TV) caused me quite a bit of duress when after 5 hours of my wife being in labor last Saturday the nurse came in and told us that she probably had 10 more hours to go! I give the credit to the media, I knew that labor wasn't the same as it was on TV, obviously, but I didn't understand that it would take so long! Of course not all labors are that long, but the average first labor is 12 hours! Anyway, I
understand why they do it the way they do it, I wouldn't watch a 12 hour labor and I don't think anyone else would. I just think it's one of the interesting ways that the media has shaped my perception of the world.
