2 pm: I was eating Chicken on a Stick. I had yet to discover my emotional limits. Sarah Silverman’s bodily functions blared in the background. In the foreground, grunts, sighs, and screams emerged. This was Labor Day.

Week 41 and our odyssey had only just begun. The contractions came on full force — nothing like anything you’d see on an instructional video. Bam: three in a row — no rest. Maybe it was the primrose oil; spicy food; the sex?

Her sister and brother-in-law came to support. We all held on tight; the pain shook her to the core — her legs dropping out. Speaking gently, rubbing lotion, brows furrowing; we all paced.

I was oddly cool. My usual fog gave way to lucid task mode: grabbed bags, checked listed, called relatives. Then it was time. They say you just know. We did.

The trip was easier than in the movies — less dramatic, no wrecks, potholes, or traffic jams. I parked and escorted her inside. She was waddling. I braced to deliever a baby in the lobby.

“Umm. We’re having a baby. We’re registered here.”

“You’ll just need to follow us, sir.”

We were ushered into an elevator. Seconds later, it opened. I was pushed out one exit and an attendant moved my birthing wife out the other.

“Standard policy, sir. We’ll call you.”

“But…I.”

And they were gone. A few minutes went by; I was antsy — headed back through the STAFF ONLY doors.

“Where is my wife?”

Just then I saw her legs behind a curtain. A nurse stood with a clipboard.

“Sir, I have to ask you to leave. We need her to fill-out some forms.”

“But, we’re registered here. The birthing class said…”

“I don’t care what thee class said. That’s incorrect.”

“You can’t separate us. I’m not leaving.”

“Then I’m calling security. Marsha?”

She walked back to speak with another nurse. I watched as she pointed at me. A walkie was produced. I walked back to the waiting room.

I could hear her calling my name. They relented. The domestic battery suspect was permitted to join the party. I held her hand and heard her water break. It soaked the bed. I yelled for backup.

This qualified the experience: labor. We wouldn’t be headed home that night. This was it. In the birthing room, we turned down the IVs. The nurses were not pleased — they argued sarcastically with us for hours; the midwife was nowhere to be found.

Hours later, a bleary-eyed doctor showed up.

“I hear you have refused medication.”

“We’d rather go natural.”

His eyes said it all. We were in for a long night.

The contractions were being monitored. Pain levels flew off the chart — little breaks and then big agony. The hours took their toll. Another doctor showed up to assess the situation. They bickered over dilation rates.

“We may have to do a C-Section.”

She burst into tears. Hours scraped by with little change other than big exhaustion. An eventual anesthesiologist was woken after midnight. He prodded at her back with a giant needle.

“Eh. Oops. No.”

“Eh. Ooops. No.”

Over and over. Her back looked like a bloody dartboard, but the good drugs were in after forty-five minutes.

By 4 am a tiny head was poking out only to be sucked back up continually. Heart monitors flashed and doctors napped. The operating room was being prepped. More tears poured all around.

No explanations…only actions. I waited alone in my silly scrubs wondering how to tie my mask. I was sentenced to solitary while they scrubbed and yawned. Another forty-five minutes scraped by and I approached the nursing station.

“Can I see my wife?”

“Just a moment, Mr. Koop.”

Ten minutes later, I staggered into a room of scalpels. Organs laid on tables, bloody cloths and gauze soaked the floor. A nurse led me around to my wife’s head.

“Are you ok, honey?”

“I can’t feel a thing. I could and then they turned it way up.”

Her giddy eyes lit up.

“He’s in the pelvis — strapped in,” a doctor shouted.

“I’ve got him,” another replied.

She started to cry and I stroked her forehead. I saw my son pulled from the messy open surgical hole.

“Why isn’t he crying?” she worried.

“Trust me. You don’t want him crying with this in his throat.”

Suction work began and his lungs unleashed a healthy cry. His number one and two orders of business: unloading an array of bodily functions. Cleanish but slimy, I held him in my arms…overcome with emotion.
7:03 am: The hardest day of my life became the best.