Our First Child

Being pregnant is an interesting challenge of pain, discomfort and incredible waiting. And before all you women out there get bent out of shape about “Men have no idea what it means to be pregnant or have a baby!” I have only one thing to say, “You’re selfish.” And I feel bad for you. That’s two things really, but it makes me sad to hear women talk like that. Because if you’ve ever loved someone, really, really loved them and watched them go through something that causes them any kind of discomfort, let alone the mind-numbing pain of giving birth and been completely helpless to do anything, then you don’t really understand true partnership or empathy. Every day of our pregnancy was painful for me. Watching Tambee lumber under the weight of our child, and being completely helpless was a new kind of misery that I didn’t know existed.

I have very little memory of her being pregnant except for trying to make it as bearable for Tambee as I possibly could. I told her I would bend to her every wish as long as she didn’t take advantage of me. And she didn’t. Although it did seem like there were quite a few sushi runs during that nine months that were chalked up to “craving”. Although you would never hear me complain about sushi. So we got along pretty good. More than anything I think your first pregnancy is exciting. The physical changes, the anticipation, the shopping, the name choosing, is all so new and exciting. Just anticipating a new baby coming into, not just THE world, but OUR world gave us a lot of joy and hope. And we really looked forward to meeting our first gift from our Heavenly Father.

So it was in the end of November that our doctor gave us a date that we would induce labor. I think it was more for his convenience than it was for any other reason. We were young and it seemed kind of cool that we knew when we would deliver the baby.

So on December 16th we checked ourselves into the hospital and started the labor process. And boy was it a process. The labor went on for six and a half days. In and out, hard and soft. They had to bring in major construction equipment – steal scaffolding, a brick and mortar crew, welding supplies and some under water diving gear. It was grueling.

In the last few hours it was getting tense. Tambee was exhausted, she was having difficulty even pushing any more. Every time she would have a contraction the baby’s heart rate would plummet and my heart rate would race. I felt like I was on black coffee IV drip I was so jittery. I was a first time dad, first time husband, and first time at a baby being born. And I felt as helpless as a hip pocket on a pig. Nothing to do but stand there and look stupid – which, by the way, I’m brilliant at.

The doctor attached monitoring wires to the baby inside of Tambee, just trying to get a read on what was going on with her. Watching that heart rate drop every time Tambee would have a contraction was pure torture for me. The two most important things in the world, my wife and my child, were mutually in peril and I was a nervous wreck. I was completely out of my element, so I did what I was born to do. I made Tambee laugh. I would talk and joke and poke fun at whatever happened as if it were a show at a circus. But inside I was being torn apart. I didn’t know what to do. And as the labor progressed the stress just got worse, Tambee got increasingly exhausted and the delivery crew became increasingly desperate.

Finally they decided to take the baby with forceps. Basically they look like big, stainless steal salad spoons. The baby had been in the birth canal since before Thanksgiving and they were afraid that she was in danger if they left her there any longer. So with a mighty tug and an unappealing slurping sound, they reached into my wife with stainless steal scoopers and pulled my baby out by the head.

Now, for those of you who have never seen an actual baby being born this is one more thing that is not like the movies. New born babies aren’t cute and pink and beautiful. They are somewhere between ash gray and tulip purple. Within a few minutes or hours they warm up, fill out, and become those amazing little creatures you see in the movies. But at first, ugly. And my new daughter was the queen of ugly. She was a light gray, with two half moon indentions under her cheekbones where the salad spoons had scooped her out of the birth canal where she had set up an apartment. There were long, crooked lines running down the length of her face where the wires had been attached to her body during labor and her head looked like a badly shaped melon because her head had been put through the vice of contractions for so long. And then there were the ears. The incredibly huge, misshapen, ears. They had been pulled down and out during the long crawl down the birth canal and now they looked like the geeks at a Lord of the Rings gathering. And she was not crying. She was quite, with her big eyes looking around at the ridiculously bright and cold world that she had just been jerked into.

Now, at this point, we were all exhausted beyond the point of exhaustion. Tambee was physically exhausted, and I was emotionally exhausted. Watching THAT for as long as it went was excruciating. But when she came out and was placed in my arms for the first time. Looking down at that horrible little monster face with her amazing deep blue eyes and then looking at my beauty queen wife, who looked like she had just been through a category five tornado without an umbrella, I knew I was in love again. My heart expanded to incredible proportions and I loved more than I had ever loved before. And not just one person, but two. How could my heart be so big without bursting? And I knew it wasn’t over. I still had something to do. I had to make my wife laugh.

I held my daughter in the palm of my hand and sat her up. Her wobbly, oddly shaped head, mangled face and withered skin made her look like my wife’s favorite Star Wars character. So I held her there, sitting up in my hand and looking at her mom with those bright blue eyes and I said from behind her in a high and gravelly voice, “Glad to be here am I. A difficult journey to get here it was. Happy to see you am I. Love you much I do.” And Tambee laughed. Her face brightened at my inappropriate behavior as it always does and she laughed knowing how much I meant to her. Because telling her would have made me break down and cry. And no one wanted to see the doctor have to give me another dose of morphine for my crying fits. So I stood there and did what I do best. I made my wife laugh. And I held the treasure that was my daughter close to me and thought of Star Wars. How could the day get any better?

And then with a click of her tongue and a disapproving glare, the nurse took my daughter from me for being inappropriate with my own newborn and wrapped her in a warm blanket and carried her gently and appropriately to a room where women knew how to care for babies and thought that husbands didn’t understand the pain of childbirth. And Tambee laughed again and it was good.