Dad's Voice

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Dad’s Voice
Gerald Plummer, Burbank, CA

June 21st, the longest day of the year, I stood beside a hospital bed while the girl of my dreams, my best friend, my wife, endured labor for the first time. During the routine ultrasound, the nurses had a look on their faces that made our hearts start to sink.

The baby, they explained, had the umbilical cord wrapped around its neck. It happens in as many as 25% of births and, while it can lead to complications, it rarely does.

There was a discussion of possibly doing a C-section just to be safe. It upset my wife. She didn’t want to be knocked out. She wanted both of us to experience the birth of our child and was afraid I would be left out of the room, missing the birth.

As they rushed around calming my wife, keeping her comfortable and checking her vital signs, they noticed something unusual from the ultrasound. In the womb, our son Jerrod had been facing toward the left, but now was facing toward the right. They couldn’t figure out how it had happened until they looked at me. I had moved to the other side of the bed to stay out of the way and was speaking softly to my wife to soothe her labor pains. It appeared that maybe the sound of my voice had caused Jerrod to turn toward my voice and face toward the right. This gave one of the nurses an idea.

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For the next half hour, my wife would turn on her side, then shift to her back, then turn to the other side, while I was instructed by the nurse to move to one side or the other of the bed and keep talking. Jerrod followed the sound of my voice and slowly unwrapped the cord from around his neck!

When Jerrod was freed from the cord, he was ready to be born. My wife pushed, and I coached, and Jerrod entered our lives. I cut the cord (a surprisingly tough piece of tissue to slice through) and, after spending some time in his mother’s arms, I held my son for the first time.

As I looked at his little face, I felt an incredible rush of emotion. My son knew my voice before he was born. Talking to him while he was in the womb made it so I was able to help him get unwrapped from the umbilical cord and make his birth less complicated.

I had thought our bond would not develop until I first held him. I was wrong. It started months ago while Jerrod was growing comfortably in the womb. He heard my voice. He knew I was his dad. I loved him from the moment I knew he was coming into our lives. When I held him for the first time, I discovered he had loved me for just as long because he knew dad’s voice.

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Gerald Plummer is the dad to two sons and a husband to his wife for 20 years. He was born in Missouri, raised in a three-room “shotgun” house without running water and is a country boy at heart. He has been successful in many different industries; Chemist, College Instructor, actor, writer, director, producer of stage and TV, ran for California governor when Arnold ran, and most recently, construction project manager for multi-million dollar projects up and down the west coast. A couple more years of “tax deductions” and he and his wife will become empty-nesters. Gerald and his family live in Burbank, California.

Hogan Hilling is a nationally recognized and OPRAH approved author of 12 published books. Hilling has appeared on Oprah. He is the creator of the DADLY book series and the “#WeLoveDads” and “#WeLoveMoms” Campaigns, which he will launch in early 2018. He is also the owner of Dad Marketing https://dadmarketingconsulting.wordpress.com/, a first of its kind consultation firm on how to market to dads. He is also the founder of United We Parent, www.unitedweparent.com. Hilling is also the author of the DADLY book series and first of its kind books. The first book is about marketing to dads “DADLY Dollar$” and two coffee table books that feature dads and moms. “DADLY Dads: Parents of the 21st Century” and “Amazing Moms: Parents of the 21st Century.” Hilling is the father of three children and lives in southern California.
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Originally published in Dads Behaving DADLY: 67 Truths, Tears, and Triumphs of Modern Fatherhood Copyright © 2014 Motivational Press. Reprinted with permission.
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