Childbirth is gruesome business. In fact, we’d probably do everything we could to avoid the entire process, were we not physically required to be there. Alex Rodriguez managed to get out of witnessing both of his children’s births. When his first daughter, Natasha Alexander Rodriguez, came into the world, in 2004, the New York Yankee passed out during the proceedings. His wife, Cynthia Rodriguez, tells the YES Network’s YESterday’s program:

“The one nurse had a cold cloth on his head. The other nurse had the blood pressure on his arm. And my mother was like rubbing his back. And he is passed out on a couch. And I am there, in the middle of labor…And he is there moaning. In between pushing, I am going, ‘Honey, are you OK?’ and ‘Are you breathing? Are you OK?'"

Geez, A-Rod, why does it always have to be about you?

“As tough and big as he seems, he is real wimpy around doctors or any type of medical situation,” Cynthia Rodriguez said. “I don’t know why I thought the birth of our child would be different. In the middle of the night, I realized that I needed to go to the hospital. I wake him up. The first thing that comes out of his mouth, ‘Can we call your mother?’”

Luckily, the hospital didn’t have to bother with the prearranged his-and-hers dual epidurals to get the baseball star through the birth of his next child. When his wife went into labor with his second daughter, a few weeks ago, he rushed to Miami from New York, but missed the birth by a matter of minutes. —Noelle Hancock

Alex Rodriguez passed out during birth of his first daughter [NYDN]