Queasy fathers: It's okay to walk away

From epidurals to episiotomies, there's plenty that goes on in the delivery room to make men feel queasy and light-headed.

Even the heartiest of men are prone to passing out, as baseball star Alex Rodriguez of the New York Yankees can attest. His wife Cynthia recently revealed that A-Rod fainted during the delivery of daughter Natasha Alexander several years ago.

"I wouldn't say that fainting is common but it does actually happen," says Karen McMahon, a nurse at Toronto's North York General Hospital for seven years.

"We're always prepared for it and I have seen a couple of guys go down. And it's so funny because they're like, `I'm fine, I'm fine.' Meanwhile there's beads of sweat on their forehead, they're yellow ... You tell them to put their heads between their legs, get them juice and they're fine and they say, `Oh my God, I can't believe I just did that.'"

Fainting isn't necessarily the sign of a soft constitution. A lot of the time, it's because men have never seen that much blood before.

"That's very much the cause in an overwhelming majority of cases," says Dr. Nick Shilletto, an obstetrician-gynecologist at North York General.

"Men haven't seen surgery beforehand – the amount of blood isn't like a cut on your finger."

"Usually there are warning signs (before men faint). You see them getting progressively greener. One time during a C-section, you could see the dad getting paler by the second ... We finally convinced him to leave and as soon as we finished closing the door, we heard this loud thump. We opened the door and he was out cold."

Shilletto and McMahon recommend that men take a step back and collect themselves if they feel as though they may drop.