A Million, Billion, Trillion Tiny Feelings Pt. 22

Notes from a father's first pregancy

Before getting into it, I wanted to again say thanks to all of you who’ve paid for a subscription, which has given you access to the serialized version of this longform story. I’m so happy I’ve been able to share it with you and even happier that your subscriptions have allowed me to donate a nice chunk of cash to the Pregnancy Justice foundation, who are helping people fight pregnancy-related causes.

That said, I’m going to keep the paywall off of this one. I hope you all enjoy it and I hope you’ll consider upgrading to a paid subscription, even though I’m not entirely sure what a paid subscription will bring next year. But I’m all ears if there’s something specific you would like to see, hear, or read. More Dad Talks? Fucked Up Moments in Fatherhood? A Podcast (which I definitely don’t have time for)? Something else entirely?! Speak up, have your voices heard. I’m all ears. All I know is, I want to keep writing checks to a good cause and, thanks to you, I’ve been able to do that more than usual this year.

I hope you have a wonderful holiday season with your babies. I just ask that you remember that there are so many kids out there who aren’t as lucky as yours. So go buy some Christmas presents and drop them at your local Ronald McDonald house (something I do with my son a few times a year. It’s an amazing experience that I cannot recommend enough. Just FYI, they only take new toys, still in package) or go buy a bike or two and donate it to a kid whose parents can’t afford it. Contact your local foster care agency and see how you can help. Take the skills and the talents you’ve learned and developed as a parent and let others feel the love. Anyway, thanks again. Merry Christmas, Joyous Kwanzaa, and a light-filled Hanukkah.

Without further adieu, here’s the part where my son was born. The end (or) the beginning of this story.

Peace and love.

February 9, 2018

Within a few hours, Emily’s contractions had come on in earnest. She bounced on a big gray yoga ball while gripping her lower stomach and breathing deeper than I had ever heard. The pain was extreme and when Emily could talk, she marveled at women who give birth without painkilling drugs. Like my mother did. Twice.

The sun had set outside of our wall-length window and the lights of Chapel Hill flickered below us.

“Turn something on the television,” Emily said. “I need to be distracted.”

“Oh!,” I said. “The opening ceremonies are on,” figuring our sequester would be as good a time as any to watch the ridiculous pageantry of an Olympic opening ceremony for the first time.

“Whatever,” Emily said, wincing in pain. “Just put something on.”

****

The only way the Winter Olympics will matter in any real sense to me going forward is the way in which they relate to you, kid.

I think how those games will be markers of your life, how every four years, as the opening ceremonies commence, your mom and I will recount the night you were born, about the terrible food court egg rolls I devoured and the big grey yoga ball on which she bounced.

The Games were in South Korea when you were born, on the other side of the world. This meant we could watch bobsledders and skiers and figure skaters live, in real time, in the middle of our night. I think I’ll always remember how, during your first few weeks, we watched the Olympics together, mom and dad exhausted on the couch, baby boy sleeping silent and content on our chests at all hours of the day and night.

I think of the near and further future.

You are four and I am explaining what exactly a luge is as we sip hot chocolate under our fuzzy Mets blanket while mom putters away in the kitchen, as cooking for us makes her happy.

You are eight and have been to a few mountains, ski trips with mom and dad. You’ve taken some lumps and gotten back up, ready to tame the wild hill. You learn how to fall, how to take a mouthful of snow without giving up. You learn resilience.

You are twelve and skating circles around your creaky old man, with a preternatural sense for puckhandling and a devastating slapshot. I insist on telling you stories of the pond hokey I used to play on Otis Bog Road when I was your age, but you don’t care. You just smile and nod at the story I’ve told you a thousand times before.

You are sixteen and you’re hitting the massive halfpipe, much to your nervous parents’ dismay. Your confidence is higher than it will ever be. You are invincible.

You are twenty. You’re a man now and are starting to create your own life.

Maybe you’re off at college. Maybe you’re across the street at UNC. But we’ll talk on the phone while the Olympics play on the television and I’ll remind you once again about the night you made us a family. And, even though you’ve heard this story and you have a million better things to do, you’ll listen, because you know telling this story makes me happy.

Whether those years culminate in Olympic glory or not doesn’t matter to me. All that matters is that you’re safe, healthy and confident. There are far too many variables to make any sort of a prediction as to where your life might lead.

The only given is that by then, we’ll be done changing diapers.

****

“Go to sleep,” Emily said.

It was almost midnight.

“It’s gonna be a while,” she said. “Get some rest. I’m gonna need you later.”

I pulled a pair of gym shorts from the overnight bag, put my glasses and phone on the window ledge and stretched out on the hard couch, listening and counting along with our baby’s amplified heartbeat as it rang out across the room.

February 10, 2018

4:25am

I was asleep on the hard couch, lulled by the rhythm of his amplified heartbeat for a few hours when the nurse tapped my shoulder.

“You might wanna wake up, daddy,” she said in a buttery North Carolina drawl. “You’re about to have this baby.”

A million thoughts roared through my head, the first of which was how completely and absolutely unprepared I was to be a father.

All of the thoughts I had, the feelings I felt, the preparations Emily and I had made in the nine months leading up to this night flew out the room-length window and all I could think was how terrified I was by the nurse’s simple, declarative and very imminent statement.

“You’re about to have this baby.”

I’m not ready yet.

It didn’t matter because he was coming.

But I thought I was.

It didn’t matter because he was coming.

How on Earth were we going to take care of this baby?

It didn’t matter, because he was coming.

I have no clue what I’m doing.

It didn’t matter, because he was coming.

Couldn’t Emily just rest for a few more hours?

It didn’t matter, because he was coming.

I thought of my father, how elated he’d be to have a new grandson, and of Emily’s father, one building over in the psych lockdown, battling the demons that have plagued him for over a decade.

I thought of our mothers, both dead, and how this boy would never know a grandma’s love.

It didn’t matter, because he was coming.

I wondered how we might do this without their guidance. I wondered what would happen to all of the questions that only our mothers could remedy. I wondered what he might miss out on as a boy without grandmas.

But it didn’t matter, because he was coming.

I rose faster than my mid-night legs would allow, almost running into a table that brimmed with various bagged and sealed syringes, sterilized tubes and color-coded caps that meant nothing to me, but everything to the team that would be coaxing my son from his womb. I shuffled my feet around our overnight bag, bursting with the supplies we might need for an unforetold stay in the hospital; an extra pair of shoes, the little Bluetooth speaker that would play our carefully curated labor playlist, comfortable underwear for Emily and a pair of gym shorts for me to sleep in, my notebook and a favorite pen, extra bottles of water, Tylenol and plenty of socks.

“Mike,” Emily said as her legs were lifted into stirrups by a series of gloved hands.

“Yeah? What do you need?”

“Glasses.”

“Glasses. Right.”

I began to root through the overnight bag, tossing aside a sweater and a few extra pairs of socks.

“Em,” I said, my focus still trained on the bag. “I don’t see your glasses.”

“Mike,” she said.

Her response that was so calm that I looked back over my shoulder and saw her somehow smiling at me despite our child passing through her birth canal.

“Your glasses.”

“Right. Glasses.”

I reached behind the couch where I had left my glasses, wallet, and wedding ring before I had fallen asleep and grabbed my thick-rims. The room came into focus.

Emily was in the bed, two doctors below her waist, discussing the course of action that would transpire over the next few minutes, two nurses lifting and moving her body, pulling industrial grade lighting fixtures from hidden ceiling compartments, positioning her body at the ideal angles for pushing.

I grabbed the Bluetooth speaker from the overnight bag and moved to Emily’s side. We’d decided long before that I would stay topside for the duration of the pushing. Queasiness? Maybe. Cowardice more likely.

“Can you start the music?” Emily asked.

I cued up the playlist we had mapped out in the weeks leading up to this moment. At the ready were Claude Debussy, Fairport Convention, The Pretenders, Otis Redding, Big Star, Nilsson, the Carpenters, Sam Cooke, Pinback, Mary Lattimore, The Sea and Cake, Perfume Genius, Bobby Darin, Belle & Sebastian, Little Joy, Bob Dylan, Patsy Cline, Sigur Rós, the Velvet Underground, Bill Fox, Nick Drake, and dozens of others. We had no idea how long this whole thing was supposed to last.

The nurses began to cue Emily on how to push.

“Curl your pelvis up,” one said, “and kind of push toward the ceiling.”

Emily moved her hips and shimmied her lower back down toward the doctors.

“That’s exactly right,” the other nurse commended. “Now when the contractions come, I want you to push.”

She grabbed my hand and squeezed with power and strength I had never witnessed in our nearly decade together. She was pushing.

The first contraction subsided. Emily took her breath while Vashti Bunyan’s “Winter Is Blue” crept from the Bluetooth speaker.

“You’re doing great,” I whispered in her ear.

“Emily,” said the doctor, whose head was buried in my wife’s crotch, “you are doing great.”

The second contraction rose like a tide in Emily, my fingers crushed between hers and she curled into herself, her chin meeting her upper chest as she pushed.

“Deep breaths, girl,” said the nurse.

She pushed again.

I looked over the top of her pelvis and asked anyone who might answer, “Is that his head?”

“That’s his head,” replied the doctor.

I had no idea it could go so fast.

“Em. His head is already there. I see the top of it. He’s almost here.”

“He’s almost here, mama,” replied a nurse.

One of the doctors repeated the sentiment.

“He’s almost here.”

4:33am

The third contraction.

The push.

Nothing.

The previous two contractions had moved our son along so fast and I had assumed that this meant Emily was settling into a long labor. No way it would be over so soon.

“That’s good, Emily,” said the doctor. “Just keep breathing.”

Harry Nilsson’s version of “Everybody’s Talkin’” began lilting from the little speaker.

The next contraction, the next set of pushes, the deep breaths, the tight grip, the nurses’ instructions, the doctors’ hands grabbing at the baby’s head, the bright lights, the sheets twisting beneath Emily, the darkness over Chapel Hill outside of our wall-length window, everything repeated in cycle once more.

Emily breathed one last time, pushed again, squeezed my hand in hers, and just like that, she was done.

I saw the mass of blue-white flesh fall into the doctor’s arms. I saw the nurses rush to clean some of the birth off of him. I watched his little mouth open for the first time, his first breath of air rush through his tiny lungs, his first scream come back out to the world. I saw them bring him to Emily’s chest, to place him skin to skin on her, the residue from the birth canal intermingling with the sweat pooled on her sternum. I saw the elation in my wife’s face. I felt her grip on my hand morph from pained to wonderment.

And for the first time I looked down at what had very suddenly become my family.

****

You’re here, kid. You’re finally here.

You’re in our arms, squirming, crying, trying to figure out what the fuck just happened. You had a long couple of days and I’m sure you just want to be back in the warmth of your mother’s womb. But that’s not your place, kid. Your place is here with us, in the world, with your family.

A combination of exhaustion, wonder, fear, anticipation, excitement and a million, billion, trillion other tiny feelings are flooding my chest.

I want to run the halls, screaming in joy. I want to cry. I want to call everyone I know. I want to tell my father. I want to tell my mother. I want to tell you everything I’ve ever learned right now but I know it’ll have to wait. Right now you have to sleep, kid. You need some rest. You’ve had a hell of a few days.

I was so scared, kid. When I walked into the hospital yesterday, I was more terrified I think than I had yet been. But then I saw a little guy as we checked in. He was about to head home for the first time, brand new in his mother’s arms and I was totally calmed by the sight of him.

In my mind, I spoke to you then.

“We can do this, kid,” I said. “If they can do it, we can do it.”

I took a deep breath and thought about how soon you’d be here. I worried about the next few hours, of course. About the pain that your mom would endure and whether or not you’d know what to do once you came out.

And then we went upstairs, the doctors poked and prodded your mom, they gave us a room and made us comfortable, we watched some Olympics on the television, I went to sleep, they woke me up, your mom pushed and you were here.

Just like that, you made us us, kid.

You moved from a world of fluid to one of air. In an instant, you went from being one with your mom to being a whole and physically independent human being.

In an instant, we became a family, thanks to you.

I thought there would be some sea change, some emotional awakening that would boil over or some new eyes with which I’d view the world this morning. I thought that your mere presence would immediately change everything. But the reality is that, in the grand scheme of things, nothing at all has changed. One day you weren't here. The next you were. The world is almost exactly the same as it was yesterday.

Except it isn't.

And now here I sit holding you, six-and-a-half feet tall, two hundred and fifty pounds, thirty-five years old, rendered terrified by twenty-two inches and eight pounds of tiny, sleeping flesh. And just like you did when you were three centimeters and barely a blob on a grey-black screen, you’ve once again reduced me to a crying mess, speechless, awed, amazed.

I spent the last nine months writing fifty-thousand words about you, kid, and now that you're here I can't find a single one to adequately describe how amazing you are.

All I can think is just how much I love you and how I can’t wait to become your father.

I love you.

Love,

Dad