To Cross the River Ford

As many of you know, my wife recently gave birth to our son. He’s a sizable young man—close to ten pounds—and so the doctor decided to deliver him via C-Section. After the initial shock of the news had worn off, we both agreed that such a procedure was for the best. We also felt fortunate to live in a time and place where such surgeries are almost always successful. This relief was due in large part to the fact that the natural delivery of our daughter over two years ago was not ideal.

The delivery was lengthy and painful, especially for my wife. I’ll spare the reader some of the more grueling details, but one particular element of the experience we’ll never forget was when the head nurse, whom up to that point had been quite pleasant, basically shoved me out of the way, leapt onto the delivery bed, and pushed down on my wife’s abdomen as if she were eagerly flunking a CPR test. I’d never been in a delivery room at that point in my life, but even I knew that the maneuver was not in the standard play book.

The procedure worked, obviously, but our daughter weighed a full two pounds less than her brother. This doesn’t sound like a lot until you realize that two pounds often represents anywhere from twenty to forty-percent of an infant’s weight. Since our daughter had trouble coming into the world on her own, it only made sense to schedule a more pragmatic approach for her heftier sibling.

Many of our friends, when they heard the news, asked me if I was going to watch. I wasn’t sure. After all, there comes a point when you have to ask yourself, “How many ways do I need to watch one person get pulled out of another?” As expected, though, curiosity won out over any fear I had of passing out, which fortunately I did not do. Regardless, the experience did prove to me once again that the decision I made a long time ago not to be good enough at science to pursue a career in medicine was absolutely the right choice. Curious detachment is not an ideal trait for someone whose job it is to cut open and sew up parts of people numerous times a day.

We’ve only known our son for a few weeks, but one thing we’ve realized is that he’s a very loud sleeper. The sounds he makes at night—whimpering, hiccupping, gasps, moans and crying—really run the gamut of baby-noises. These sounds are good, of course, as they suggest he’s still in the room. (One of the main fears of any parent is that their children, particularly the good ones, will be snatched late at night by gypsies, wolves, hobgoblins, or whatever other bogeyman makes the rounds in their part of the world.) Noises are not good for sleep however, and so my wife and I, and by that I mean mostly my wife, are operating on sleep deprivation. For example, some of you may have wondered why it’s been over six weeks since my last column, and that’s because I’ve just recently remembered the password to my own website.

We love him, though, as do the dozens of people who’ve visited him, but perhaps most importantly, his sister likes him, too. There’s always that concern when an infant is added to a family as to how the original child will adapt. Will they want to hold it, ignore it, or share a bag of blocks onto the baby’s face? Our daughter, who is two but often claims she’s eleven, just seems to adore him. She wants to hold him and feed him and feel his face to make sure his eyes and nose and ears are still there. She helps us change his diapers by throwing the dirty ones in the toilet. (Yes, plural. Who’s more to blame, the two-year old who “threw away” the diaper in the toilet twice or the adult who gave her a second chance?)

And also importantly, he seems to like her, too. As to how long this mutual appreciation will last, who knows. A year or so would be nice. And probably optimistic.