So I have been working on a different story for a while now and I’m really not feeling it as much as I think I should so I am going to change gears and go in a different direction. As fate would have it I’m actually on the doorstep of having my second child, my first daughter, literally any minute or hour or day now. Filled with so many emotions right now I felt that this would be as good as any other time to write about my experience with the birth of my first child, my son. For me it was definitely a day that I’ll obviously never forget but not for all the reasons that one would think. Sometimes the most amazing experiences in life can get muddied up, which is unfortunate, but it’s what you choose to remember that matters. So here we go…
I want to first start off by telling you about a championship high school football game that was played in Texas against Plano East and John Tyler high schools (give it a view, it’s pretty amazing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHkABO0VwCg) . Long story short Plano East was down 41 to 17 with 3:03 left in the game. Plano East ends up getting a quick score and then proceeded to kick and get three onside kicks where they were able to score after each one to take the lead with only 22 seconds left in the game. Can you imagine how high those kids’ emotions were from Plano East after they scored that last touchdown and take the lead with only 22 seconds left and how excited they must have felt to feel like they just won the championship game after being down by 24 points. Butttt….. as you should already know, life is a bitch sometimes. On the preceding kickoff Plano East kicks the ball deep and the unthinkable happens, the kick returner for John Tyler’s takes the kickoff all the way back for a touchdown. This is probably one of the greatest comebacks in football history by Plano East and there visions of holding that title was dashed in an instant. Last year was the 20th anniversary of this game and ESPN did a big story about it where they spoke to several players and coaches from the game. I sat there on my couch and watched the whole thing in amazement as you got to hear the perspective of what happened from both the winning and losing teams. They end the documentary by talking to the then head coach of Plano East (the losing team). I’ll always remember his comments, he said “when you watch that game and you get to the end and we’re up 44-41 you cut the tape off and we win, we win for life.” For some reason that line gave me different perspective on a few things and what he said just stuck with me. So I’m sure I lost you by now but stick with me and I’ll try and bring this thing full circle.
It was around 9pm on a Sunday night and my wife started getting pretty serious contractions so I started to time them. All the tell tell signs that she was going in to labor were there. She was not feeling great, contractions were about 5 minutes apart, lasting for about 60 seconds, and she had the constant urge to go to the bathroom. Me being me I already had the car packed up with all our shit and ready to go so I only needed my cellphone and iPod and we were rolling. One of the most important days of my life and I’m worried about an iPod, you say. You damn right, in the weeks prior I went ahead and made a legit going to the hospital baby time mix. I had two playlists locked and ready to go that were dependent on the type of the mood during our ride to the hospital. Some smooth R&B and hip-hop if we were not in a big rush and straight up hit a mother fucker rap if we needed to get our ass to the hospital ASAP. Fortunately for us there was no immediate rush and we could take our time getting to the hospital, so the R&B and hip-hop mix it was. We get to the labor and delivery unit and I got three bags of shit, a pillow, blanket, and camera all tucked under my arms and around my neck and we make our way back to a triage room. We get back to the room and they hook my wife up to their machines and start tracking heart beats and contractions. Being as anxious as I was it felt like forever before someone came in and spoke with us about the situation and ‘checked my wife’s oil’. Four centimeters dilated and her water had not broken yet so they decided to keep us there under observation for another hour. The minutes tick by so slow and they finally come in and check her again, still just four mother fucking centimeters. They didn’t see enough progression in her labor and even though she was still having intense contraction pain, they decided to discharge us. They told us to us to keep monitoring the situation but she might just be having Braxton Hicks contractions. With a sigh, I loaded up all the shit that I just carried back to the room and we make our way back to my truck. There was no music playing on the way home, just silence as I think we were both disappointed that we were sent home and not going to see our baby that night.
We get back home and I jump out of all my clothes and hop into bed immediately. It was late as shit and I was already beat from everything I had going on that day, including that emotional roller coaster I just got off. It felt like I only closed my eyes for a second before I felt my wife poking me to wake up. It’s 2AM and I open my eyes and try to focus on her face; she is standing in front of me with tears in her eyes and is not looking like she is in good shape. Because we were sent home only a few short hours ago when she was feeling the same, I didn’t want to jump the gun and rush right off to the hospital. We again start timing contractions but now in between each contraction she is rushing to the bathroom because she constantly feels like she has to pee. Everything is lining up again in the same way as it did the first time we went to the hospital but a little more intense so I decide to call the emergency number to her OB doctor. I get a call back within a few minutes from someone with the softest polite voice “Hi, what seems to be the problem tonight.” I hastily explain to her all my wife’s symptoms and what we just went through a few hours before at the hospital and ask her if we should head back to the hospital. She responds with “well…. If you think you need to come back then go ahead and come back.” (You really have to imagine a super soft and quite voice for this one) Now me having as short a fuse as I have, I just hang up on her dumb face and say “that bitch is dumb, put some clothes on we are going to go back to the hospital.” We are loaded up again in the truck but now the mood is a little more intense so you know which playlist I went with that time… hit a mother fucker rap. Yep I am on my old school DMX It’s Dark and Hell is Hot tip and once again we are rolling. Luckily it’s a little after 2AM in the morning and no one else is on the road so I am able to drive at a little higher speed than normal but I’m still being cautious.
Round 2. My wife is now in worse pain than when we left the hospital last. We get to the automatic door to get into the hospital and it won’t fucking open. Someone comes over the speaker by the door and says “Can I help you? Yea, my wife is going into labor so can you let us in.” (I can pretty much guarantee that I was more of dick than that but I can’t really remember what I said) We get all the way back to labor and delivery and they try to get my wife to fill out some paperwork that we already filled out the first time we were there. This is where my wife goes into straight up gangster boo mode and essentially says fuck this paperwork and throws the clipboard at me and proceeds to walk back past the front desk and find her own triage room (did I mention she was in pretty serious pain?). This time I carry no bags in to the hospital with us because I still slightly felt that they were going to check her out and send us home again so I didn’t want to have to carry that stuff for no reason. We get back to the room and in a blink she is naked with a gown loosely thrown over herself and is demanding someone come check her out. Funny enough, we get the same nurse practitioner that checked us out the last time. She strolls in the room and sees it us and immediately has a look on her face like we are wasting her time again. She gloves up and checks my wife’s oil again and her eyes look as if they are going to pop out her head, she says “8, Mrs. Ramos you are 8 centimeters dilated and we need to get you back to a delivery room now.” I look at the nurse practitioner and ask her if I have enough time to go get our stuff out of my truck; she tells me to hurry. I tear ass out of that room and run through the hospital halls to the parking garage and grab all the bags, camera, and pillow out of my car in what seemed like a flash.
I’m now back with my wife in the delivery room full of adrenalin and ready to be the most supportive husband to ever help their wife give birth. Being a new father and naïve I just assumed that once I got back to the delivery room the baby was just going to come on out and introduce himself to the world, WRONG. Now time just sort of slows down as the uneventful continues to take place. My wife is pushing and after pushing for a while the nurse begins to chit chat with her in between pushing cycles. After some brief back and forth talking, the nurse and my wife come to find out that they both lived in the same area during their high school days and actually knew some of the same people. Sounds pretty cool right…. Fuck no, shit got real annoying real quick. I mean my wife is there struggling to push her little heart out and this chick keeps asking her dumb ass questions “Did you know so and so and did you ever eat at blah… oh my gosh blah blah blah I knew her too.” Now my wife is a polite person and entertains this nurse but all I want to do is tell her to shut the fuck up and focus on what we are trying to do, like have this baby. The time continues to tick by and I begin to fade, I had already been awake almost 24 hours now with only the short nap I was able to take in between hospital visits. Luckily for me I thought ahead and brought all kinds of candy with us in our overnight bag. I start throwing back sweets and being to do moderate exercises to keep the blood flowing to my brain. Yea I am sure I looked like a crazy person stuffing snickers into my face and doing pushups next to my wife with her legs in the air, but you got to do what you got to do sometimes. I hop back up by my wife’s side each time it’s time to start pushing again “keep breathing babe, you’re doing great. I love you, keep breathing.” She begins to sweat and feel nauseous but I tell her she looks beautiful and try to reassure her that everything is OK. Now, we have our nurse and two more nurses decided to come and join the party. I hear our main nurse tell me she can see some hair and the tip of our baby’s head, I get excited but I stay focused. They continue to tell my wife to push and encourage her but all of a sudden she just throws up from all the pushing and nausea. Fortunately they were able to get her a vomit bag right before so she didn’t make a mess all over herself. Back to the pushing, keep breathing. I am holding one leg and a nurse has the other while another nurse starts poring mineral oil on my wife’s lady parts to try and help grease the baby out of there. The nurse looks up at me for a moment and asks if I want to see the baby’s head. I look back at her and say “fuuuccccckkkkkk no, I am not ready to see all that. It’s going to ruin me.” She takes it in good fun and has a short giggle but asks me again if I want to take a look. Now I told myself before all this went down that there was no way I was going to look down there while the baby was coming out, no way no how. Well, something about the second time she asked me switched something in my brain and I decide to give it a look. I really can’t describe what I saw when I looked down there but for me it just didn’t seem real. I mean I have seen one of those (vagina) before but for some reason this didn’t look like what I had seen previously… mind blown. Anyway back to the task at hand. I jump back to my wife’s side and just focus on her for the duration of this ride. One nurse calls for the doctor because she feels like the baby is almost ready to make its grand entrance. Within a matter minutes the doc comes through the door and I swear it’s a sight I’ll never forget. She strolls through the door in what looks like a full hazmat suit, including face shield, with rubber gloves pulled almost up to her neck. She calmly goes to the edge of the bed and roles out what looks to be a tarp and says to my wife “well, looks like it’s time to have this baby.” This is now what I consider ‘fucking go time’.
“Come on babe you can do this, give me one more big push. I’m here with you.”
“Come on Mrs. Ramos, take a deep breath one more big push for me.”
“I don’t know if I can push anymore, I’m so tired”
“Come on babe, you got this.”
And then, time stands still for a moment and I hear nothing. I look back quickly and boom, I see a wave of amniotic fluid burst out of my wife (there was still some left over from when they broke her water) and cover the front of one of the nurses. The nurse shakes it off and keeps the focus on assisting the doctor in pulling my baby out to safety (mad respect to that lady for taking the fluid facial and not budging). There he is, my ace, I can see him. Sound returns, time starts again, I hear my son for the first time and I smile.
I know everyone has their own delivery story but for me, this was one crazy ass night. Now to close the loop on this story I refer back to the football game I mentioned earlier and the words of the head coach of Plano East, “you cut the tape off and we win, we win forever.” That experience is what I choose to hold onto from that night/day. The memory of the birth of my first child, my son, is something that will always be with me every time I see his face or hear his voice. That’s what I choose to hold on to, whatever happened after that is just wasted thought and murky water.
I cut the cord and hold my son for the first time. I shed a few tears as i look into his eyes because now I feel like I’m finally a father….
Stop tape.
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