Two months ago - May 28th to be exact - my wife and I were blessed with the birth of lovely, healthy baby. We didn't find out the gender ahead of time, we wanted it to be a surprise. It was an incredible moment in our lives, full of joy and happiness. I already have a hard time remembering life before we had a baby. Yet it was also an intense, seemingly forever moment of time, packed with raw emotions - fear, pain, suffering, helplessness - and far more blood than I imagined.
The baby seemed to take forever to arrive. First, there was the long pregnancy, ending two weeks late. Often times people will say about anything that takes a while to arrive, "oh, the waiting is the hardest part". Those people are right. Sort of. But also not at all. The waiting was excruciating - going to work everyday, being ready to bolt out the door at the second the text message arrived declaring the imminent arrival of our dear little baby. This lasted for two weeks - two long, long weeks of unceasing alertness and readiness. That text message never came. Instead, the waiting ended with us having to evict the stubborn little peanut from the womb with medical induction. The waiting was over.
Next, there came the actual hardest part - the neverending labour - nearly 40 hours of intense, painful contractions. I am in awe of the stamina and strength of the woman I love. While I slept - albeit fitfully - she suffered through a night of constant, uneven contractions, contractions that went on for over a day and a half. We arrived at the hospital, after more than 24 hours of contractions and multiple phone calls to the nurses station advising us "oh, just give it more time". Once we got there, we were told we may be sent to another hospital, as Surrey Memorial didn't have enough beds to accommodate every expectant mother in triage. We watched as one couple was sent to Royal Columbian, another to Peace Arch, and a third sent to Abbotsford. Then the water broke, and we were allowed to stay.
We got a room, some pain medication was administered, and a brief couple hours of sleep followed. Then came a couple of hours (that felt like an eternity) of gut-wrenching pushing, which very nearly ended in a C-section, and resulted in our little darling being born on the operating table in case a last minute attempt at anything but a C-section failed - thankfully it didn't.
I tried my best not to look towards the doctors as they worked, not because I'm squeamish - but because I wanted to focus on my wife, on comforting her. I made the mistake of looking over once - and seeing far more blood than I ever imagined seeing at a birth. They don't tell you about that during prenatal classes - none of the videos or talks or books mentioned how incredibly visceral things could get.
They lifted this tiny, incomprehensibly small person onto my wife's chest, and wrapped them in a towel. I cried. I squeezed my wife's hand, and practically sobbed out a few words - "we have a baby girl."
I spent the entire pregnancy boldly declaring "I'm not a baby person"; "When do they stop shitting their pants? I'm excited for them to be that age"; "I wish we could adopt a fully grown person who doesn't need anything from us".
The moment I laid my eyes on her, I was smitten. I've never felt love so deep and powerful - it's such a raw, tangible feeling that tears at your heart. I became a baby person in the blink of an eye.
