Seth Meyers is a Father: ‘I Exploded Into Laughing and Sobbing at The Same Time'

Seth Meyers had a good excuse for missing work on Monday. His wife gave birth to their baby boy and first born.

“We were really not expecting this to happen,” Meyers said Tuesday night, explaining to the audience that on Sunday March 27, his wife Alexia Ashe and him were preparing to go out when suddenly she began to experience some back pain and other sensations that go along with the early stages of giving birth.

And while the journey of life with a newborn is plenty exciting, Meyers related an equally exciting story of Ashe’s water breaking in their apartment, forcing them to summon an Uber car and rush them to Lennox Hospital on the Upper East Side.

“Her water broke and ugh wow,” he said. “It sounds like what water would sound like if it broke. It’s incredibly well-named for what it is.”

While in the car, Ashe’s pain continued to increase. And with no other outlet, she screamed for the whole ride.

“It was hard to keep your cool because, one, obviously you wanted to get there in a hurry and two my wife was on her knees in the back seat holding onto me, we had to roll the window down because she was getting car sick and she was just screaming out an open window. Screaming,” Meyers said. “And only in NYC could you drive that way and not have people say ‘that woman’s being abducted. There’s an abduction taking place right now’.”

He continued, “She would be screaming while we were stopped at, like, stop lights and people would be crossing the street and my wife was screaming out the window, ‘I don’t like this.’ And I just feel like New Yorkers were like, ‘it’s New York nobody likes anything’.”

At the hospital, doctors told them that Ashe was already fully dilated. But what really kept Meyers’ attention were the hospital staff wearing bunny ears to mark Easter Sunday.

This all seemed funny for Meyer but, as he explained, “my wife was in a place where bunny ears could not change her mood.”

Reflecting on the experience and his decision to observe the whole birth, Meyers said, “It was the most fantastic thing. It was the best”

His wife, he noted, took no drugs at all.

“I was trying to score some for myself,” he said.

Finally, the couple’s boy was out in the world.

“It was just this crazy moment where I exploded into laughing and sobbing at the same time,” Meyers said.

They named their son Ashe, after his wife.

“I can’t picture a better way to honor what my wife did,” Meyers said, “than by naming him after her.” 

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