“Push, push, push, push, push, push, push, push,” sputtered the nurse while the obstetrician reached into my wife’s crotch.
Twenty-five hours previously, my wife and I had been watching the movie Sister Act in the living room of our best friends. Just as the movie was reaching its climax, my wife announced, “I think my water just broke.” She stood up, revealing the embarrassing spot of wetness on the couch. Our friends brushed away my wife’s apologies as they joined in the excitement of what was about to begin: the birth of our first child.
“Do we have to leave right away?” I asked. “Can we see the end of the movie?”
My wife looked at me as if I were a Neanderthal. “Yes, we have to leave right away.”
We drove home, picked up the pre-packed hospital bag full of clothes, photos, toiletries, and everything else suggested by the La Maze class, and rushed to St. Francis Hospital—the oldest, largest, hospital in the heart of Peoria, standing like a fortress on a hill.
So many women packed the labor rooms that night that the staff relegated us to a converted closet and wedged us in. Irregular contractions continued through the night while Laurie lay uncomfortably in her bed, wired to a flashing and scribbling machine. I tried to slouch in a chair that was crushed against the bed, but could find no position that allowed for sleep. In the middle of the night I drifted down the hallway to the lounge where I discovered rows of chairs with hard-edged arms—nothing that would allow stretching out. I pulled the chairs into various configurations, but no combination would approximate a bed.
In the morning, when a cold December sky shone through the lounge windows, a nurse administered a drug to induce Laurie’s labor. Two hours later her parents arrived. Together we sat and waited, or wandered and waited, as the pain slowly increased for Laurie, but nothing else happened. In the mid-afternoon, an anesthesiologist inserted a needle at the base of her back, numbing all of Laurie’s pain with an epidural. But a couple of hours later it stopped working properly: she felt nothing on the left side of her body while the right side experienced agonizing contractions.
As the afternoon sun faded from the windows, a rhythm of cries emerged from one room after another. “Ahhh!” a woman would shout. “Ahhhh!” a few seconds later. “Ahhhhh!” she would scream. And then after a few moments: “Waaaa! Waaaa! Waaaa!”—the cry of a brand new voice.
This seemed to happen every half hour, but it never happened in our closet. Laurie pushed with all her might in ten-second bursts while the contractions racked her body, but with little progress. I turned on the video camera to capture the drama of the moment, which caused me to delay slightly the beginning of the next ten-count. Laurie’s anger sizzled as she quietly informed me: “You have to start counting when I start pushing.”
At 8 p.m. the doctor ordered a second epideral, banishing the pain, but also the sensation of contractions and pushing. An hour later the obstetrician ran out of patience. “I’m going to move you into another room where I’m going to do a forceps delivery.”
A nurse wheeled Laurie’s bed into a large room of green-tiled walls and bulky stainless steel equipment—an old operating room. While nurses ringed the bed, the doctor ordered me to stand at the head of the bed, behind my wife. I felt disappointed. At that angle I would not be able to videotape our baby emerging into the world. On the other hand, what I could videotape would be viewable by others. On a second stool, shoulder to shoulder with our obstetrician, sat a young, female intern, learning the skills needed for pulling out recalcitrant babies.
“Push, push, push, push, push, push, push, push—that a girl!” encouraged a nurse. My wife strained, unable to feel her muscles.
The doctor twisted shining pokers and pliers behind a blue curtain held up by my wife’s knees. He leveraged the forceps around the baby’s head and began to pull.
“Look at the size of that head,” blurted the intern. “My goodness! Whoa! Poor mom!”
“We just have to get the shoulders now,” explained the obstetrician. “One more push.”
My wife pushed her paralyzed muscles, not knowing if she was actually doing anything, but a moment later the obstetrician exclaimed, “It’s a beautiful little boy!” He raised the grey and bloody baby into the air and placed him on Laurie’s tummy while the gang of nurses wiped him down with towels.
My guilty hope was fulfilled. We had not known the baby’s sex ahead of time, and I was happy for it to be either way, but I was grateful that our first was a son, one through whom I could replay a part of my own childhood, one whom I thought I would understand.
“Born at 9:22,” I reported as I videotaped.
“9:21,” a nurse corrected.
The nurse held the video camera while I crouched down close to my wife and we whispered to each other. I then took our son in my arms and held him close to my face. He reached out a tiny arm and pushed my chin away repeatedly.
“How much do you think he weighs?” asked the nurse.
With a goofy, giddy smile on my face (I’ve seen the video) I answered, “I have no idea. I don’t know.”
“Over nine pounds,” guessed the obstetrician. Others in the room concurred. The nurse took the baby to the scale. Eight pounds, eleven ounces.
While in the nurse’s arms, the baby sneezed seven times in a row.
The obstetrician stooped down next to my wife and said in a low voice, “I didn’t think this day would ever happen.”
After three years of infertility, fibroid tumors, surgery, miscarriage, and the reemergence of the uteran tumors, the miracle baby had pushed his way through—and been pulled.
For the next two weeks I basked in a blissful dream. I stayed home most of the time, watching sunlight stream through gauzy curtains while my son slept and I rested in the silence of new life. I wrote exuberant passages in my journal, full of exclamation points, so unrestrained they are embarrassing to read today.
God never felt closer nor the world warmer. No conflicts mattered, no problems, no concerns. I was a father. I had a son. Nothing else mattered because the greatest joy was now mine.