Every Moment Counts

Signed. Sealed. Delivered.

Today is going to be the day.

After all the waiting, and the talking, and the planning, and the neighbor interrogating, and the waiting, and the abject fear, and the vomit, and the subzero temperatures blasted in my house at all hours of the day, the moment had arrived. Well, sort of.

My wife Maegen and I reached peak impatience. The third kid had held fast and stood her ground, not ready to move safely to the exits on our expected timeline. We Googled and pinged friends for natural induction methods. We stimulated nipples, we ate dates and spicy food, we looked for pressure points in the feet, we walked, we drank castor oil, and, yeah, we tried that other way, too. But nothing worked, and I couldn’t hold most of it down either.

We awoke the morning of her due date and our intuition kicked in. Maegen hadn’t felt the little soccer star kick her in the vital organs in quite a few hours—which was rare to that point—so we acted quick, found some random strangers to watch our other kids (just kidding—grandparents are the best!), and ventured to the hospital.

I played crossword puzzles to divert my nervous energy into something more productive than pacing the waiting room and asking if my wife was having any contractions every four minutes. Expletive; four letters; ending in -HIT. Time moves at a snail’s pace and you swear they skipped your name on the list. Once we were finally called, a team of people much smarter than me all felt we had a good case to induce right then and there. Buckle up, kids, it’s go time!

But not quite. We settled into a sterile hospital room full of bells, whistles, buttons and tubes, complete with our own en suite and bedpan. Minutes turned to hours as we waited for our new little tax exempt dependent. Maegen was feeling next to nothing as she roamed the halls, sat balanced on an exercise ball, and read a trashy novel in which she constantly assured me she hated. I toggled among a myriad of playlists, from pop punk and reggae to EDM and classical. As I was contemplating the best list of songs with “baby” in the title, she stopped abruptly and winced for a few moments. “OK,” she said.

No more than eight minutes later, chaos. Nurses transcended like The Avengers and our doctor was quickly donning medical scrubs from head to toe like he was sitting front row for Blue Man Group. I, being the quintessential supporting figure with no discernible skills, danced around the delivery room, like a helpless goofball. Just like with the first two kids, I was able to find every square foot of that room where I could be in the way. Sorry, honey, I would let you break every bone in my hand during this process, but I’m too busy apologizing to the nurses and avoiding the doctor’s scalpel. And on top of it, I’m trying to be mentally present in the moment, questioning whether photos and videos are appropriate in this timeline.

My wife alerts the other seven floors of the hospital, as well as the neighboring Jamba Juice, that this baby is coming. My doctor echoes the sentiment with an untimely joke about a football wide receiver. I pause for a nanosecond, realizing that my life and everything that defines normal for me will forever pivot into another alternate dimensional tangent. Three kids!? What were we thinking. Two is a lot. And I’m old. Can I even rock a baby without getting winded? Our house is too small. Will I ever get to choose what to watch on TV?

And then it happens. My baby girl is just there. She is calm, breathing new air in a new world. I look at her toes and flying hands, awed by the power of life. My wife can’t unload the dishwasher, but she just created another human. A perfect human. My breath returns, just in time to be handed scissors for the ceremonial cord cutting. The baby is brought to Maegen. And I’m still in the way.

I get a nod of approval and relief from my wife, and I float into the hallway, phone in hand, ready to tell the world. But I’m frozen and shocked and happy and peaceful. I don’t recall the details of the ensuing conversations, but the reactions of joy, relief and sympathy for the life ahead with three daughters were palpable. All of a sudden, a new sister, cousin, niece and granddaughter had arrived. And I was a dad. Again.

About an hour later, we were ushered to our overnight accommodations, now featuring a father-sized Murphy bed perfect for the fetal position under a paper-thin sheet. I knew the drill. For next 24 hours or so, a turnstile of nurses, doctors and administrators would ensure our baby (and its overly-tired and afraid parents) was ready for the new world. Sleep would be hard to come by and the hospital food was barely sufficient, but it all really didn’t matter. These were the first hours of our new normal, focused on swaddles and feedings and poops, reruns of a great sitcom with a few rough early seasons.

These next few hours will be relatively quiet, aside from newborn coos and distant chatter from the nurse’s station. Little does our new family member know, she’s about to enter a realm of lawlessness, irrationality and bedlam. She will be poked, prodded and knocked around by two other humans also figuring out this life thing. Her naps will be interrupted by barking dogs, terrible tantrums and “Baby Shark” on volume 11. She will live in the shadows of her sisters while defining her own personality, her own traits that make her one of a kind. And we get to be there for every second, playing sage, caregiver and referee. A new chapter begins and the book will never be the same.

Welcome to the world, baby Navy.