One last thing. In childbirth classes, you will be taught, with much ceremony, a Secret Magical Anti-Contraction Word that the woman is supposed to say when things get really awful, when the professional football players in her uterus are wearing skis and carrying sharpened poles. Technically, this word is supposed to be revealed only in childbirth classes, but I have decided to print it below for use in case of emergency.

WARNING: THE NEXT PARAGRAPH CONTAINS THE SECRET MAGICAL ANTI-CONTRACTION WORD. DO NOT READ THIS PARAGRAPH UNLESS YOU ARE SINCERELY IN THE PROCESS OF HAVING A BABY.

The word is “hout.” Rhymes with “trout.” It may not look like much, but it has been scientifically shown to be over twice as effective against contractions as the next leading word, “Ohmigod.” You may hear another secret word in your childbirth classes, but “hout” did it for us. Our instructor had us practice it for hours in class—you have to get the tip of your tongue right on the edge of your front teeth—and it really helped my wife get through those first few contractions. After that, she switched over to “AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGUUUNNNNH,” which is not an officially approved word, but seemed to work well for her.

Childbirth is like vampires: it never strikes before sundown. If you feel something that seems like contractions during the day, you’re actually having what is called “false labor.” Sometimes false labor can be very realistic, in which case you may have to go to the hospital, where you will be examined by a false doctor, who may even deliver an anatomically correct doll.

But real labor always begins at 3:15 A.M. eastern standard time, because that is when every obstetrician in the country is in deepest sleep. As soon as the contractions start, you should call your obstetrician, who will answer the phone and, without even waking up, say: “How far apart are the contractions?” You can give any answer you want (“About two feet,” for example), and then the obstetrician will say, “You’d better come on in to the hospital.” Then he’ll roll over onto his side, still completely unconscious, and resume snoring.

At this time, you should gather up the things you’ll need in the hospital (don’t forget your passport!) and set off. Husbands, here is how you should drive: Sit on the edge of the driver’s seat with your face one inch from the windshield and grip the steering wheel so firmly that little pieces of it keep breaking off in your hands. Every eight or nine seconds, jerk your head down violently to look at the gas gauge, then give your wife’s knee a firm clench for one-tenth of a second and grimace at her and say, “Everything’s going to be fine.” But despite this reassuring exterior, husbands, you must be alert and prepared for any problem that could prevent you from getting to the hospital in time.

At all costs, you must not panic. Stay calm. A good way to do this is to play word games, such as the one where you start with a letter, and then the other person adds a letter, and so on, the idea being that you are spelling an actual word, but you don’t want to supply the last letter. For extra fun, you can say that the loser has to get out and run around the car backwards three times at a red light. Besides livening up the game, this will attract the attention of the police, who might help deliver your baby in a gruff but kindly manner, the way they do in anecdotes from Reader’s Digest. Or they might beat you with clubs.

1. Your car radio could explode for no apparent reason.

2. You could be stopped by police who are looking for escaped radicals, and who think your wife’s stomach is a bomb and call in the Explosives Disposal Unit to cover her with sand.

3. You could get stuck behind a member of the Elderly People with Enormous Cars Club, driving smack dab in the middle of the road at two miles an hour in search of an all-night drugstore to buy new batteries for his hearing aid, so he can’t hear you honk.

At the maternity ward, you will be greeted by kindly nurses who will do a number of unspeakably degrading things to you while the hospital operator tries to wake up your obstetrician. Then you will be placed in a little room where your husband can sit with his little clipboard and stopwatch and time your contractions, just like you learned in childbirth class, until you swat his goddamn clipboard and stopwatch across the room and demand to be killed, which is the sign that you have gone from “contractions” to “strong contractions.”

At this time, you will be taken to the delivery room, where you will be placed in the Standard Childbirth Position. Medical researchers have tried for decades to come up with a childbirth position even more humiliating than this one, but they have had no success.

While you’re in this delicate position in the delivery room, you may be a bit embarrassed, especially since there are people standing around wearing masks and watching you. So let me explain who these people are. You have your obstetrician, of course, unless the hospital operator has been unable to rouse him, in which case he will actually be a life-size obstetrician puppet operated from behind by a nurse trained to mimic obstetricians’ voices. You also have your husband, assuming he has been able to wash away the little crumbled bits of steering wheel embedded in his hands.

Then you have your pediatrician, and an anesthesiologist to stand by in case the doctors decide that the delivery is not costing enough. Also you have at least one nurse to assist each of these doctors; you have three medical students; you have one law student; and you have Billy Ray Johnson, who is actually a retired beet farmer who just happens to like hanging around delivery rooms and watch people have babies.

So that’s it, just 12 of you, unless Billy Ray has brought friends to share this wondrous moment.

And what is it like? That, of course, is what you want to know: What is it really like?

I don’t have the vaguest idea, of course. But I do remember what it sounded like when my wife had our son. I was at one end of my wife, shouting words of encouragement to her head, the doctor and nurse were shouting to the other end of her body. It sounded like a group of extremely sincere people trying to help an elephant dislodge a Volkswagen from its throat:

DOCTOR: You’re doing just great, Beth! Just great! Really! Isn’t she doing great?

NURSE: She sure is! She’s doing just great!

ME: You’re really doing great, honey! Really!

BETH: AAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRUU UUNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG GHHHHHHHHHHH.

DOCTOR: That was just great! Really!

And so on, for quite a while, until finally Robert came out, and immediately demanded to be put back in. My wife and I were very happy. I remember hugging her head.