Silly Little Miracles

About the birth of my daughter

Silly Little Miracles

A little after 3 a.m. on a Wednesday, I was awoken by a sharp jab to the ribs. In and of itself, this wasn’t all that unusual. It had happened several times over the preceding months, and was typically followed by my pregnant wife, Nancy, saying something along the lines of “I want a Pop-Tart,” or “I just thought you should know how it feels to wake up because something is poking you. Now imagine it’s happening on the inside.”

This one, though, was different.

“I think my water broke,” said my wife, very matter-of-factly.

The lack of any accompanying panic, which I always assumed would naturally come with such an announcement, left me unconvinced.

“Are you sure?”

In hindsight, it seems obvious that you shouldn’t ask a woman whose water has broken if she is sure of what’s just taken place. But then again, I’ve always insisted on learning things the hard way.

Several minutes and a few choice words later, we were on our way to the hospital, which, luckily, was only a mile or two away. Not too long after that, a kind, matronly nurse answered the unspoken question keeping both of us on pins and needles:

“You’re having a baby today.”

Nancy and I looked at each other for a moment in silence, a unique emotion swelling inside of us that could only be described as equal parts pure joy and abject terror. The months of nausea and discomfort,  which had tortured her and mildly inconvenienced me, were finally at an end, and the baby girl we’d spent so much time dreaming of and preparing for would be coming home with us.

There was just one thing.

That meant a baby. Coming home. With us. Which we would then raise.

We quickly shrugged off these concerns--because, well, what else were we going to do--and smiled and hugged and told each other that, at last, our daughter would be here soon.

Only, it wasn’t soon. The eighteen hours that followed were some of the longest, most uneventful hours of our lives. Something about knowing a life-changing event is coming, but not actually having any real sense of when makes time slow down to a crawl. We were in the hospital for three and a half days, all told, and three of them were in that first afternoon.

The lone highlight of the day was getting our Roku to work on the hospital television. We entertained ourselves for a few hours by attempting to shock any nurse or doctor foolish enough to enter our room with our choice of binge-worthy TV on this, the day of our daughter’s birth. When documentaries about Donald Trump and Adolph Hitler didn’t produce the desired response, we abandoned any pretense of subtlety and put on the more bluntly titled “Making a Murderer.” And yet still, we seemed not to offend. We idly hoped we would be better at parenting than we were at convincing others we shouldn’t be allowed to.

Around 8p.m., things finally began building to a crescendo when the decision was made to bring in a ringer. Calls were made, calendars consulted, and soon a stocky, middle-aged woman wearing short, dirty-blonde hair, and tiny, square-rimmed glasses boisterously entered the room. She was friendly, but brusque, in a way that suggested she was more suited to coaching than nursing.

“Ah’m Karen,” she announced, although honestly I don’t remember now if her name was Karen or not. She seemed like a Karen, and, for the purposes of this story, that’s what matters.

Her gait was a couple of steps too wide, somehow appearing to fall outside the confines of her otherwise unremarkable frame. It would’ve been perfect if she were, say, a rodeo clown, but seemed out of place in its current setting. Her handshake was firm, her tone, authoritative. “Y’all ready to pull that thing out?”

Now, as a general rule, I try not to refer to other humans, large or small, as things. But, in that moment, it made the task ahead seem more doable. It was an objective to accomplish. She was my daughter, my very precious, very fragile daughter, who would soon attempt to fit her entire body through an opening which was normally no larger than a lemon. Karen had the right idea.

“What we’re gon’ do,” she began, very much as if she were about to tell us how to change our oil rather than deliver a baby, “is we’re gon’ start pushin’ every-time you have a contraction. Got me?” We nodded our heads in agreement, though even if we didn’t, it wouldn’t have mattered because Karen was on to her next thought as soon as the previous one finished.

“See, all those contractions you been havin’ been getting’ your body ready  to spit that sucker out. We’re just gon’ help things along by giving an extra heave ho, y’know?” I had so many questions. Some were about the birthing process, but mostly I was overcome with a rapturous urge to know Karen’s entire life story. She was fascinating.

Still, she continued.

 “Now we’re gon’ start with a normal push. When I say go, you’re gon’ give me three sets of pushes, ten seconds apiece. Then you’re gon’ rest for a minute or two ‘til the next one.” Oddly, a part of me was jealous of the abdominal workout my wife was about to get. I silently made a note to myself to start going back to the gym.

“And if that don’t work, we’re gon’ play a lil’ game of Tug-of-war.”

Wait. What now? I’m sorry; did you say--

“Tug of War?” Nancy beat me to the question.

“Yup. I take one end of a sheet, you take the other, we both pull. Helps with the push. But you gon’ have to pull hard now; I’m a big girl.” Suddenly I remembered every game of tug-of-war I’d ever played. Usually, the objective was to avoid being pulled into a pit of mud. The winning team might get a trophy, or a snack, but at no time did I remember anyone ever being awarded a baby at the end.

“I should warn you; you might puke. You might poop.” This part felt like more of a warning to me than Nancy. “But that’s okay. Pushin’ things out uses the same muscles no matter which hole you’re doin’ it from.” If there was a lesson to be taken from all this, I thought, that was it. I didn’t know when, or why I’d ever need to know again that vomiting, releasing your bowels, and bringing another human into the world was basically the same bodily function, but I was determined to remember.

Seemingly satisfied that the evening’s activities had been sufficiently explained, Karen set herself to preparing the area. Over the next five minutes, I rattled off every supportive cliché I could think of, from “you can do this,” to “I’m right here with you,” to “remember how you wanted to have our next child soon after the first? Still up for that?”

Once the room was prepared, Karen walked over to an ominous looking red light switch. It was the same color red as the phone Batman used when Gotham was under attack and he needed to talk to Commission Gordon, or that I imagine presidents use to call in the nuclear launch codes. It was a red that carried an undertone of danger. “This may be a little bright,” Karen jeered, and flipped the switch.

Suddenly, we were bathed in light. Actually, that’s underselling it--SUDDENLY, WE WERE STANDING IN THE CENTER OF THE SUN. EVERYTHING AROUND US WAS LIGHT. WE WERE LIGHT. ALL WAS LIGHT.

“I told ya it might be bright,” Karen said gleefully, as if blinding people was at least her second favorite part of the job.

We stared at the contraction monitor in collective anticipation, waiting for some unseen green flag to wave and tell us the race had begun. Time became an infinite loop, seconds expanding into minutes, and from there into hours. I imagined this must be what death felt like, a series of never-ending moments stretching end-to-end into eternity.

Then, the line on the screen began trending upward, and, as if to compensate for its prior laziness, time lunged forward. Karen barked a series of orders, “Ok girl, spread them legs!”

That’s what got her into this mess, I thought, looking around the room to see if anyone else had the same idea. If they did, it didn’t show.

“When you push, I want you to push hard!”

That’s what she said. I scanned the room again. Not even a smile.

“And long!”

That’s what SHE said. How was no one laughing?

“And no matter how much it hurts, or how tired you get, I want you to keep pushing!”

THAT’S WHAT SHE SAID. DAMN IT, KAREN, YOU’RE DOING THIS ON PURPOSE.

I braced myself for what was coming next. Years of watching television shows and movies about childbirth had prepared me for almost anything. Maybe I’d have my hand broken by the Hulk-like grip of a woman in the throes of labor pains. Maybe I’d hear the words “I hate you” again and again, interrupted only by the occasional sob or plea of “why did you do this to me?” Or maybe, just maybe, the child would come out looking like my best friend, dramatic music would play, and I’d find out I’ve been living in a Spanish telenovela this whole time.

I’d have been better prepared for any of those things than I was for what actually happened, which was my wife, normally a frantic ball of kinetic energy, being calm, focused, and determined. Her demeanor was steadfast, her expression resolute. If anyone could be accused of losing their cool, it was me, when Nancy asked me to wet a rag for her and I couldn’t find the rag for two minutes despite already having it in my hand.

Once things got going, it quickly became obvious why Karen had been called in.  She deftly shifted between challenges such as  “you call’at a push? Ain’t you ever been constipated?” and reassuring statements like “your vagina ain’t broke, sweetie; you got this,” depending on my wife’s mental state at the time. She would goad and prod until Nancy almost broke, and then, just when she wanted to give up, be tender long enough to regain her trust.

Over the course of three hours, my wife pushed, and pushed, and pushed some more. Tug-of-war was played, and a small piece of my childhood was forever altered. Nancy showed more courage and will in those hours than I ever dreamed possible, and I felt a love for her unlike any I’d ever known. I was in awe.

Still, by around 11pm, exhaustion set in. So, Karen tried something different.

“Dad, come look at this,” she commanded, pointing to the opening between my wife’s legs.

Another classic misconception about childbirth is that, if you stand up by Mom’s shoulders, you don’t really see anything. That isn’t true. You see a lot. I saw my wife’s vagina do things that day that defied the laws of physics, things I never would’ve believed if I hadn’t witnessed them firsthand. Honestly, her vagina could’ve locked itself in a box and thrown itself into the Hudson River while wearing a strait jacket, only to escape two and a half minutes later, and I wouldn’t have been more amazed than I already was.

But this, this was different. Karen was asking me to stare directly into the abyss. What would I see? What if I looked too long? What if it looked back?

It’s not that I was opposed to looking, per se. It’s just that, one of the other things TV and movies had prepared me for was the absolute certainty that I would faint upon seeing my tiny, mucus and blood covered daughter tunnel her way out of my wife like she was Andy Dufresne in the Shawshank Redemption. The color would rush from my face, my eyes would roll back in my head, and I would slump to the floor just as my daughter took her first breath and the doctor said something humorous like “well, she’s fine but you might want to get him looked at” to the uproarious approval of everyone in the room. 

So, let’s just say I wasn’t exactly opposed to not looking, either.

I closed my eyes, attempting to summon the necessary will. I tried to remember all the beautiful things I’d seen in my life, and assured myself that if this was it, if I died on the spot or went blind and never saw anything again, I’d had a good run. I also said a quick prayer. I’ve never been particularly religious, but when faced with the unknown I figured it was best to cover my bases.

When I opened my eyes, what I saw, and the feeling it produced, was so totally unexpected that for a moment I didn’t say or do anything at all. I just stood there, eyes fixed, mouth agape, staring dumbly at my wife’s nether regions until Karen’s gruff voice brought me back to reality:

“DAD, what do you see?”

“Our--our daughter’s hair,” I stammered, suddenly on the edge of tears for no reason other than it was the only way my brain could process the sensory overload that came with seeing my child, even if just a small part of her, for the first time. “Babe, it’s our daughter’s hair.”

The look on Nancy’s face instantaneously changed from one of weariness to one of defiance, and she attacked her contractions with a renewed strength and purpose. Every so often, I took another peek at the growing patch of jet-black hair slowly revealing itself, and described its progress as eloquently as my adrenaline addled brain would allow. But to tell the truth, if I said anything more coherent than “BABY. COME. NOW.” I would be shocked.

Before long, Karen removed her facemask, teased “I guess y’all decided to have that baby after all,” and picked up a nearby phone to call in the doctor.

The delivering physician entered our room at 11:50p.m. Ten minutes later, at exactly midnight, my daughter’s head escaped from its cervical prison. 60 seconds after that, my wife’s labia stretched once more, to seemingly impossible lengths, and, in one final, miraculous act of violence, expelled the remainder of our little girl’s body into the doctor’s waiting arms.

They say that, just before you die, your life flashes before your eyes. What they don’t tell you is it also happens when your first child is born. In the euphoric glow that followed our baby’s arrival, I saw the whole of my existence laid out before me. I saw my past--every stupid indiscretion, careless act, and unfeeling word. I felt the weight of my wrong-doings, and promised to be better than I’d ever been before. I saw every tear, sleepless night, and broken heart. I felt the pain of all those scars, and swore I would protect her.

I saw my present too--how much I’d grown and accomplished, and how far I still had to go. I saw all I had learned and discovered, and how much still was left to know. I resolved to do everything I could to prepare her for this life.  I saw the love I had for her mother, the infinite gratitude I felt to be at her side, and all the things I’d had to lose along the way to make it possible. I vowed I would teach her to be thankful for what she has, and say “I love you” as often as possible, because you never know what tomorrow will bring.

And finally, I saw my future--a wrinkly, old man who’s always having to look the other way for a moment, or walk into another room so no one sees him wipe away his tears. He doesn’t cry because he’s sad; just the opposite. He cries because he’s overwhelmed by the joy of it all. Of homemade greeting cards, spontaneous hugs, and quiet summer evenings on the back deck. Packing school lunches, attending recitals, and afternoons with her on his lap, watching their favorite Disney movie for the 47^th time. For all of it. Every bit. Every silly, little miracle in his silly, little life.

I stood there, quietly, savoring the splendor of blessings I knew I was never capable of deserving, but would try to all the same, until Nancy’s voice brought me back to reality:

“Honey, are you ok?”

Handing our newborn daughter to my wife for the first time, the doctor quipped “well, she’s fine, but you might want to get him looked at.”