Six days of daddyhood

As sleepless nights have blurred into restless days for this past week, I have little concept of time. Looking at the calendar, I can tell that only seven days ago my wife and I were downing ginger pork and coconut chicken soup at our favorite Thai place, our last decent meal before heading to the hospital for induction. I was jittery and somewhat irritable. I couldn't finish my dish. I always enjoy a glass of plum wine with Asian food but this time I came close to asking if I could order it by the bottle.

Our first night in the hospital was spent in our labor and delivery suite, which by hospital standards was rather spacious. There was dim lighting and faux hardwood flooring. To my wife's delight, there was cable television, something we normally manage to do without, and to my delight the hospital provided free wireless internet serivce. To my chagrin however there was the saddest excuse for a pullout sleeper you could ever imagine. It was barely comfortable to sit on, much less lay on. Rather than leather or fabric it was covered in coarse plastic like you find on the seat of a school bus. It also wasn't a pullout couch; it was a pullout chair that after great efforts on the part of the soon-to-be victim extended out into a cot about the size of a massage table. This thing was so uncomfortable that I seriously considered spreading my hospital-provided bed linens out on the faux hardwood and sleeping on the floor. On top of all that, my wife and I both were kept awake most of the night by our neighboring patient's delivery which by the sound of her wailing was done à naturelle.

The early part of the next day consisted of a barrage of people parading in and out of my wife's room to take her blood pressure, take her temperature, shove things up in her down there place, take things out of her down there place and bring her a feast of chicken broth and ice chips. Clearly my role in the whole thing was minimal. One nurse actually asked me my name which made me swoon, but come to think of it her reason for asking may have been just for billing pourposes. After all, I did help myself to the popsicles and cranberry juices which were supposedly reserved for delivering preggers.

Around ten that morning after much poking, prodding and examining, my wife's doctor suggested she go ahead and get the epidural. They had her sit on the edge of the bed with her knees in between mine. I don't know what purpose this really serves other than maybe indulge me to think I play a vital role in all of this. More likely it's so that as an anesthesiologist works a needle up through her spinal cord the woman can give the evil eye to whatever guy got her into this mess to begin with. I did just fine for the inital alcohol swabbing. When the doctor said he was inserting the needle, I was fine for that too. It wasn't until he threw that intravenous tube up over her shoulder that I nervously looked up at the nurse and asked if she could take my place. While some people have a problem with needles, my problem is with things going in a vein. Finger pricks I can handle and even dental needles I can live through, but when something's going inside a vein, I need the cold compresses and my feet propped up. The day my daughter was to be born was no exception.

"I need some crackers and peanut butter in here for my dad, please," the nurse shouted into the intercom. Meanwhile I staggered back to that God-forsaken prison-cot-slash-chair like a rookie player heading back to the bench. Queasiness was something I had feared would happen. Oh well. The crackers were pretty good.

At around 2:45PM that afternoon I was on the phone with my mom trying to give her an idea on when we might be delivering a baby. Elaine and I had taken bets. I said 10:30PM while she had guessed 8:30PM. It turns out we were both wrong. When the nurse came in to check on Elaine she announced that we were at ten centimeters. Even a pregnancy illiterate like me knows that being dialated ten centimeters in delivery is like being at the top of the ninth in baseball. As nurses were stammering around quickly trying to assemble the various baby birthing tools and summon the doctor, I hung up with my mom with the promise to call her back once we had more news. I got up to look at the down there place. There was what looked like the top of a head with hair. I asked the nurse to confirm my suspicions. Indeed, the baby was crowning.

Originally I had planned to be what they refer to in the obstetric field as a "north daddy" where the equator is an imaginary line running from one of your wife's hips to the other. In the heat of the moment however, I decided "south daddies" are where it's at. I wasn't going to come this far without seeing the grand finale. Elaine's first push happened around 2:55. A few minutes after that she pushed again, thus expelling the baby's head. The third push which happened at 3:05 in the afternoon was a grand slam. As Elaine's delivering obstetrician so eloquently put it, "You could drive a truck through her pelvis." Meryl Elizabeth came out crying loud and proud. The daughter I had been waiting months to meet finally had arrived. She was strong. She was invincible. She was mine.

Since we began dating my wife and I have celebrated May 5 as Email Day. It was that day in 1997 that I first emailed her after having acted in community theater together. For weeks we exchanged friendly emails and later our exchanges became more intimate. It was a private holiday that just she and I shared. Now we share a daughter and her birthday is May 5, 2006. How fitting that Meryl's birthday is on Cinco de Mayo when our trip to Mexico, which occurred two weeks into her gestation, was my daughter's first foreign travel experience. At the time, we had no idea. In utero, Meryl had sangria, she ate the salsa and she even drank the water.

Had she been a boy, we were thinking Montezuma.