A couple of short hours after falling asleep, Liz woke me up. The earthquakes were getting closer together. We’d never been pregnant before so we didn’t really know what to do. The breathing classes don’t prepare you for the real thing. We’d never had any “how to give birth” drills in elementary school and reading a book or watching a birth video seemed incredibly inadequate at this point. I was just trying to wake up let alone prepare for the birth of my son. We told each other, “The doctor should know what to do, shouldn’t she?” It was the middle of the night so our doctor would be paged and then call us back. Those 15 minutes lasted forever. The air in the house was getting harder to breath. “Lungs should be working; I’m not a Marlboro man.” I thought. Was this it or were we just nervous rookies up at our first major league at bat. I can still hear the doctor calmly saying, “Well, I think you should head to the hospital”. To counter her calmness, I started running around the house, picking up anything that we might need just in case we got lost on a deserted island somewhere between our house and the hospital. We grabbed the diaper bag, our five cases of luggage and some snacks and were on our way.
The short trip to the hospital was like something out of a George Romero movie, minus the walking dead people. It was pouring down rain. The cemetery across the street from the hospital seemed a bit too obvious. Life and death were battling in the street. It was pitch black, and there was almost no one on the roads. Perfectly selected birth music and Liz’s short, pain filled breaths filled the car. We were on the adventure into parenthood all by ourselves.
Checking into the hospital moved quickly once the nurse heard Liz have one of her contractions. “Ok, we can do this paperwork later” she said. Once we got into our room, time sped up. Everything was coming at us in light speed, like when Marty McFly hit 88 mph. Nurses were hooking Liz up to all kinds of machines. One of them must have been a flux capacitor. I was filling out the paperwork…life was getting blurry. Who am I, when was I born, what’s my address, am I a US citizen?
The room itself was clean; clean like a hospital should be. The nurse was so routine about everything. She asked questions that you’d ask a statistic, “How are you feeling? On of a scale of 1 to 10, rate your pain.” Didn’t she understand? We were about to have our first kid and she’s talking to us like nothing is going on. I wanted to grab her by the neck of her flowery scrubs and shake some sense into her, fortunately for her and my criminal record; I was too tired to make that move.
I was a zombie, walking around on Nyquil, just trying to stay standing. Where had the sleep I so desperately needed gone to? Liz was pacing the room just trying to manage. She couldn’t lie down because someone had put knives in her back and you can’t sleep while you’re standing. “We’re pregnant” had a whole new meaning.
Several painful hours had passed and it was late morning. Suddenly, Liz had the urge to throw up. She did, which seemed unexpected. I knew that a there’s a lot of juices during a delivery but for some reason I hadn’t counted on vomit being one of them. Soon after I noticed more nurses and equipment coming into the room. I felt like everyone knew something that I didn’t. I asked one of the nurses,
“Are we getting close or something?”
She replied, “When the fluids start flying, it’s usually a good indicator”.
I definitely needed a breather. I sat down and my head went immediately into my hands. I was about to have a baby. I was about to be responsible for another human being. I could handle being responsible for my wife; she’s an adult, but a helpless little baby, that was a whole new ballgame. Whether it was the thought of feeding every 15 minutes or sending my baby to college, I just wasn’t sure I was cut out for this. My baby was going to need me more than any other person in the world. I never thought that being needed would be so frightening. I could feel myself breaking out. I needed a walk.
Down the hallway I ran into members of our families that had somehow shown up and were sitting in the lobby. The nervousness mixed with excitement on their faces was so clear it was almost written. Parents were about to become grandparents for the first time, brothers and sisters turning to aunts and uncles. The seasons were changing for all of us. Winter was about to become spring. Life was coming and there was nothing that we could do to stop it.
After an update for the family I found myself back in the room amidst chaos. Liz had started pushing. 88 mph seemed like nothing now. Hours flew by. Tears and screams of “I can’t do this anymore!” were commonplace but somehow with every contraction she continued to push harder and harder. I saw her then as the woman I had met three years earlier and was reminded of why I love her. I knew her as the strong woman who grew up moving every couple of years and living on her own in a foreign country. This was a whole new kind of strong that I’d never seen in her before. I was convinced now that she was not only made for me but also made to be a mother.
The screams of “PUSH!” began filling the room. Trying to be optimistic and not lie is very difficult to do. I honestly did think our baby was almost out. His head had been visible for over an hour and I was sure that it was just a matter of time until we were holding our baby in our arms. Three hours had passed and our arms were still empty. I was beginning to question whether this baby was ever going to get here. Liz’s face was drenched in sweat and her pushes were becoming weaker and weaker. I wanted this to be over, not for myself but for Liz. “Come on baby, almost here!” I yelled over and over again with every contraction. I didn’t know how much longer she could keep this up and I wasn’t sure if she would.
Suddenly, as if God himself had come down and told our baby to come out, my son appeared. My, son. I have a son. Tears filling my eyes, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry or curl up in the fetal position. Somebody flipped a switch that turned on an indescribable joy. Warmth came over my body that carried with it a desire to be a father. I looked at my son as he lie on my wife’s chest, he was perfect. He was covered in goo, had a wookie like cone head and his nose was flattened, but he was perfect. He looked like he just went 12 rounds. I was waiting for him to yell out “Adrian!”
“Is his nose normal?” I asked one of the nurses with an equal amount of worry and fear in my voice.
“Oh, yeah. A lot of the time their noses actually get broken on the way out.” She said.
I did a quick check for all ten fingers and ten toes, they were all there. He could have been Sigourney Weaver’s alien baby and I wouldn’t have cared, nothing was going to convince me that my boy wasn’t perfect.
We spent the next couple of days at the hospital admiring our new baby boy. We named him Jonas. We were constantly trying to figure out what each different sounding cry meant in between diaper changes that occur every 3.4 seconds. It seemed as if every five minutes someone new would come into our room asking us if we wanted to run tests on him or take pictures of him. I just wanted to be alone with my boy. Frustration reached its peak when I had the urge to bite the photographer’s head off. I just wanted to get home and sleep. I could hear my bed calling my name.
I headed to the hospital that night desperate for sleep. I go to bed every night still desperate for sleep, a sleep that never comes. It’s been seven weeks and I’m not convinced that life is never going to be the same for us. Our son is going to grow up and become an adult and we are responsible for how responsible he is. We’re responsible for the kind of dad he will be one day. The weight of this hits me every time that I hold him. It is a weight that I wouldn’t give away for anything in the world. The weight is a gift.
