A Birth Story: The Dad’s Perspective

When you’re expecting your first child, the months leading up to the big day feel like YEARS upon YEARS. You’re taking ‘Bringing Home Baby’ classes, you’re reading a chapter or two of parenting books your friends gift you, and you’re rearranging furniture in your house to combat your wife’s nesting instincts that have taken over. But even with all of these levels of preparedness, I still felt like my son came into this world unexpectedly.

We were 3 weeks out from the magical due date that was set (which looking back, had all the accuracy of a first-year weatherman giving his forecast after a week-long bender), and the urgency was at a pretty low level in our household. We had a loosely-packed bag with extra clothes and had purchased a top-of-the line car seat, but the actual threat of a newborn entering our lives didn’t exactly seem super imminent (at least to me). 

For that exact reason, when my wife’s water broke in the early hours of a cold, Tuesday morning – I really thought it was a false alarm. Armed with some unreasonable confidence from reading a page out of “The Expectant Father,” I knew that a lot of first time mothers incorrectly think their water just broke when it really hadn’t. I clued in my wife to this information and refocused myself on getting some shut-eye before I had to wake up and attend some really important (only to me) meetings at my new tech job. 

This didn’t exactly go over well with the wifey. First of all, her water did in fact just break three weeks before our due date, and she knew what was going on because she’s worked in the medical field for years, while I just do Finance. As for that level of urgency that was previously missing? Well it came crashing through our house like the Kool-Aid man through a living room wall at that moment. Now it was about packing the necessities we needed, finding the car keys, texting the family members who would travel to the hospital, and getting on the road. Don’t worry – I was able to cancel my important work meetings and set an Out of Office message for my emails from my work laptop while in the bathroom, “Gathering my toiletries.” 

Something happened to me in that moment as we transitioned from expecting parents to actual parents – my brain turned to absolute mush. I reverted to my caveman cranial capabilities and all of a sudden I was forgetting if it was a left or right out of our driveway to get to the hospital that we had visited several times during our levels of preparedness.

Once we finally got to the hospital, I quickly fell into the role that almost all fathers go through – “non-value added.” I seriously didn’t know what to do – the doctor came out and confirmed that the water broke and this meant we were staying. Friends were texting me asking if my wife was in labor, and I responded with “I don’t think so, because she’s not pushing yet and we’re just sitting in this random room by ourselves.” 

After being relocated to another room, this one in the infamous Birthing Zone of the hospital, the next thing for me to do as the dad was to wait around for as long as it takes. And for us, this was a while. Over 24 hours of a while. The only thing I really recall from this waiting time was sitting on one of those oversized exercise balls while I pondered whether it was socially acceptable to have two eggnog lattes in the same day from the same Starbucks. Would the baristas judge me if they saw me stopping by for latte #2? Should I make up a story about this one being for a friend and not for me? 

The next big wave of excitement came from the administration of the epidural. My wife held out for as long as she could, but after 24 hours of being in that hospital it was time for some pain relief. So then entered this angry-ass looking nurse into our small little hospital room, and she was ready to do her thing. She didn’t care about dispensing any pleasantries to us as first time parents – she was there to jam that needle into the mother’s spinal cord. 

Right before the big poke was about to go down, Angry Nurse all of a sudden pointed directly at me while I was standing near the entrance of the room. For some reason I looked like a faint risk to her, and she wanted me out of the room immediately. I tried to respond quickly that I was the one that did this to my wife, and that I should stay for the whole experience including this epidural, but this lady wasn’t havin’ none of that BS in her life. Next thing I knew I was sitting outside of the door eating a bag of Hot Cheetos while the epidural went down in the room behind me.

Once this was done, I re-entered the room to find my wife much more calm and relaxed. Shortly thereafter, it became go-time, and we were ready to start pushing. The next few hours are honestly a blur to me – there was a lot of pushing, the idea that a C-Section was a possibility and then finally, a vacuum clamped on to my son’s skull to pull him out and into the world.

There’s one moment that sticks with me during this time of the birth, and it’s right after my son was born – I was filled with a whirlwind of tension, angst and nervousness as I waited to make sure everything was good with the little guy. 

I wanted to hear exactly 2 things at that moment: the sound of my son crying a “healthy newborn baby cry”, and a doctor in the room saying, “It’s looking good.” But instead, there was silence initially, and I began to pace a bit with my adrenaline spiking. But after a couple moments that felt like an eternity, we got the confirmation I was seeking in both forms.

Looking back, there should be a button that sits right next to the bed in these rooms. As soon as the baby comes out, the doctor should press a button that either says “Everything looks good,” or “you might need to panic” and then carry on with the process. For real, I can’t believe how anxious I was before we were told that we could relax.

As my wife and I exited the hospital with our first child wrapped in blankets, a nurse followed us to our car just to make sure we met the basic requirements of taking the little guy home. Just to put the finishing touches on my ineptitude during the whole ordeal, I managed to initially set the car seat facing the wrong direction. Yup, my caveman brain returned at the most inopportune moment, and I had to face the accompanying nurse who had a look on her face that screamed: “Who allowed you to reproduce?!” 

At the end of the day, we left with a happy, healthy child and the excitement that comes with the realization our lives wouldn’t be the same. Looking back now on that time brings a smile to my face, and I’m excited to continue making memories with the family.