The Day My Son was Born

Based on the advice we got from other mothers in the family, we took our time getting to the hospital. Once we got there, a nurse had You Know Who sign a bunch of papers and hooked her up to practically as many wires and tubes.

As clear liquids dripped into her veins, a monitor displayed line graphs and numbers which plotted some vitals. I could see her heart rate, baby Davey’s heart rate, her blood pressure, and her contractions. Later, my eyes would be glued to these readings for the rest of the night and well into the next day.

With not even a centimeter dilation, the doctor ordered a Pitocin drip for You Know Who to help move things along. Her contractions were so faint that she didn’t realize she was having any.

Sometime after noon, the doctor made his visit and declared it was going to be a long night. “7 am tomorrow,” he joked. Everyone, including the nurse, let out a fake giggle. “I’m just kidding,” he said. “Probably around 3 am.”

“I am going to go get something to eat,” I told You Know Who.

I intended on sitting down and enjoying some food I’m not supposed to eat, but just as I pulled up to a Panera, I got a text: Go through the drive-thru and come back.

The Pitocin had kicked in, and You Know Who now felt her contractions. They were just a couple of minutes apart and very painful.

I ate my sandwich as I drove back to the hospital. By the time I arrived, Grandma was already there. She had no intention of missing out on her grandson’s birth.

I tended to my wife as best as I could. I helped her to the yoga ball, plugged her wires back into the monitor after a pee break, and wiped her tears. I even shed a couple of my own. It killed me to see her in so much pain.

With the encouragement of every female nurse that made her way into our room, You Know Who gave the ok for the anesthesiologist to administer the epidural.

“That will be your last painful one,” the anesthesiologist, named David, said as he injected You Know Who with the drug while she wrenched through another painful contraction.

Relieved to be pain-free, You Know Who told the anesthesiologist that we would name our son after him. “I’ve been waiting 25 years for that to happen,” he said.

You Know Who lay at a slight incline in bed as the contractions came and went with only lines on the monitor to make me aware of them instead of her tears. We resumed our wait for our son’s arrival.

It didn’t take long for our nurse to return. “Your blood pressure is kind of low,” she said. The nurse checked You Know Who’s BP again and then made a call to David the anesthesiologist who quickly returned to the room with a syringe.

Just as he was about to inject something into my wife’s IV, two more nurses appeared. One of them slung the privacy curtain back so fast it was as if she was trying to scare the piss out of someone.

They were there to save my baby’s life.

The monitor that You Know Who was hooked up to also had a read out at the nurse’s station. They had seen something they didn’t like.

Everyone went to work on You Know Who while mostly communicating between themselves in what appeared to be in another language. The one nurse, who slung back the curtain, must have seen a look of concern on my face.

“Baby’s heart rate dropped a little,” she said to me.

Without moving my head, I looked over at the monitor. There wasn’t a readout. They had been repositioning You Know Who in an attempt to make the baby happy. They moved her from laying on her left to putting on her right. The baby did not like the right side.

Back on the left the sensor came undone, and they could not get a reading of his heart rate, so they connected one directly to his scalp. I watched the monitor — 74 bpm. His heart rate before all of this was around 144bpm.

Now, I was really concerned.

I paid attention to the facial expressions of the nurses. They communicated with each other almost without words, but I still managed to eavesdrop. As they worked frantically, I could see their glances at each other. I had a feeling that they were going to cut my son out of You Know Who.

“Call the doctor,” one of them said.

“We need you in room eight,” the other nurse said into her little mobile phone she carried clipped to her scrubs.

When the doctor came in, I knew right away that she was going to give the command and that they were going to roll that entire bed out of the room and straight to the operating room.

“I want her up,” the little middle-aged doctor said. She referred to the angle of You Know Who’s bed.

While all of this was going on, David the anesthesiologist, who was as cool as a cucumber, administered the medication to help bring You Know Who’s blood pressure back up.

It worked. As her BP came back up, so did the baby’s heart rate.

You Know Who, turned and looked at me with a crocodile tear rolling down her face. “I’m scared,” she said.

I just winked and smiled at her. “Baby’s heart rate dropped,” I said. “But it’s ok. It’s coming back up.”

And just like that, the team of medical professionals that came in to save my son’s life was gone. They came in, did their job, and then went on to save someone else’s baby, I guess.

Twelve hours later, at 3:40 am the next day, You Know Who’s doctor pulled Davey out of her and tossed him up onto her chest. I was completely stunned.

I always thought for sure that I would in this very moment sob like a baby, but I just stood there in silence looking at my son as the nurses wiped cheesy matter off of his skin.

I cut the cord, and they took him to the other side of the room to examine and weigh him. “Come on over, dad,” they said to me. “Take some pictures.” I grabbed my camera and went over to take the first picture of my son.

When all the commotion was over, and even grandma had gone home, I remembered what I wanted to do. I wanted to play a song for my son.

I got out my Bluetooth speaker from my backpack and synced my phone to it. You Know Who was quite curious as to why in the hell I had brought such a big speaker to the hospital with us. I found the very song I wanted — Hermoso Cariño by Vicente Fernandez — and hit play.

As soon as the horns began to play, I felt the tears coming. I could tell the nurse thought my choice in music was odd. She must have felt like she was at a Mexican restaurant during Cinco de Mayo. You Know Who’s thought it was odd too, but she is used to me doing strange things.

When Chente finally began to sing the first words of the song, Hermoso Cariño, that’s when it hit me. I have a son — a beautiful and darling son.

I sobbed like a baby, for the rest of the song.

This was the best day of my life.