There is very little about the past few days that turned out as anticipated. Sure, at the end of it all we had a little baby, as the previous nine months of pregnancy had accurately predicted. All of the fingers and toes were appropriately attached, and young Carter cried on cue to announce his arrival. But I find myself baffled by how different I feel after that single moment of joy.
I have a number of friends who have children already. Some are working on their 3rd and 4th kids, or have boys and girls entering junior high school. When their Big Day first came, I was happy for them. The closer that person was to me, the more excited I became. But looking back, it didn’t feel any more important than news of a new job or house. It wasn’t until my boy’s head popped out of my wife’s body that I understood what the fuss was all about. The proverbial cosmic tumblers clicked into place and let me in on the “Ah-ha.”
The week leading up to “Carter: Day One” was like stolen time. I had worked very hard until that point to try and clear my project calendar, both at Indiana University where I work by day and in the Real World Creations home office where I toil by night. Every minute after my self-imposed deadline was my final moment of Coupledom. At any time, a call could come prompting me to drop my current life and rush to the hospital to pick up another. Dad-dom beckoned.
That call never came. The message was delivered in the form of an aborted nap with my wife of 7-plus years. Amy had a “feeling” something was going to happen over the weekend, Monday at the latest. The original due date was January 29 but had been adjusted to February 2 after the first doctor’s appointment in June. That put us squarely in the Red Zone, but neither of us thought we wouldn’t get at least one more night’s sleep before labor started. I had been up since 5 a.m., so an all-nighter wasn’t appealing. (Back-to-back all-nighters even less so.)
I’ll admit to panic Friday night. I had a website I wanted to prepare, a car seat not yet installed, very little packed for myself, and a sensation that the world was about to end. The gush of amniotic fluid had interrupted our nap — something Amy initially mistook for beagle drool — giving me the impression Carter was already through the lookingglass. The doctors at Aegis advised us to stay put, if we could, and come in at 8 a.m. Saturday morning to be admitted.
An interesting thing about contractions … They really do come every few minutes. In planning for labor, I knew to expect a 12-20 hour ordeal. Breathing with my wife and arguing about a middle name would only kill so much time, I figured, so I brought books, paper, pens and a pillow for much-needed cat naps. I soon discovered that, when broken up into 5-minute intervals, there really isn’t much time for anything but the breathing. The commercial breaks on TNT are often longer than the down-time of labor.
If breathing was all I was going to be able to do, then daggummit, I was intent on being good at it. The lamaze class we took wasn’t like it is portrayed on television, with a circle full of new age couples breathing rhythmically on the floor. It was information and diagrams and videos. Lots of lecture, little lab. While this was a pleasant surprise for someone who thought it odd that I would need to practice breathing after 31 years of doing it so well, I felt untested. But when push came to, well, push again, Amy and I had become the best breathing team this side of the Breathing Cosbys.
There is nothing more frustratingly painful than to sit idly by and watch a love one suffer. Amy was defying entertainment logic by looking great all through the birth process (no sweaty brow or baggy eyes), but no movie I had ever screened could prepare me for the agony she went through. We breathed. We showered. We ate ice chips. She winced and screamed in pain.
Our pregame birth plan had called for a full press to delivery. No medication, if possible. Avoid epidurals at all costs. Opt for three days of labor before giving in to a C-section. The pain was tolerable for Amy as long as there was some progress to show for her effort. Through the first shift of nurses, that was the case. But the idea of suffering for that long in escalating fashion with no change in dilation … We conceded it was time for an audible. The meds came at 7, the epidural just after 10. Merciful sleep followed for Amy shortly thereafter.
I didn’t dare sleep. A veteran of multiple-day days, I knew my limitations. To succumb to sleep now was to write off any chance of seeing the birth until it was released as a home video on Monday. I sat in the darkened room listening to my unborn child’s heartbeat on the monitor and the syncopated accompaniment of the various IV monitors plugged into my wife. Worse-case scenarios started popping into my head … The child would suffer brain damage … Amy won’t wake up … Carter would be still born … I’ll be rushed out of the room suddenly by men in black coats trying to halt the spread of an alien flesh-eating virus … All of the above AND I’ll miss the Super Bowl. When one is that tired, nothing seems to turn out right.
None of this happened, of course, except missing the Super Bowl. Amy woke up fully dilated at 2 a.m. and started the last leg of this creation marathon. During the pushing stage, I found myself less of a teammate and more of a spectator. I could breath with Amy, but my empathy-pushing didn’t feel as effective. Amy did fine on her own, with some additional support from sister Meg. I kept watch for signs of a head, a face, a familiar-looking nose, and ultimately whether Carter had an appendage needing circumcision.
This lasted 5 hours and brought the grand total to 34 hours of labor, two hospital nursing shifts in the delivery room, and over 50 hours since my last restful sleep. It also brought our son.
Carter’s head popping out into the world triggered something in me. The tapes will show me mimicking my friend Don Kaiser’s remote-control dance that occurs whenever he gets out the second television to watch the Cubs and Bulls at the same time. There are pictures of me nearly cutting the cord in the wrong place, and pictures of Carter taking his first few breaths under a heat lamp. I bounded around the room watching it all unfold, muttering the only two words I knew at that moment: “Oh, my.”
This little human — who had spent the previous 9 months preparing for this moment in my wife’s gut — had familiar features. His skin was grayish-blue, but the eyes were mine. The nose was Amy’s. We made this person with nothing more than a romantic evening and a lot of patience.
Ah-ha.