Well eddybody, I now have a son.
I've struggled with writing this post for awhile now. I don't want it to be just a basic recounting of details and events because everyone who has ever had a child knows the story of that child's birth and, while I'm sure it's interesting to them, it probably isn't terribly interesting to everyone else. Besides, a mere list of facts has never been the point of this blog - I want to communicate how I feel about this child and how I feel about being a father. The problem is, I'd much rather spend my time experiencing those feelings than I would writing about them. The other morning I woke up and walked into the den where Mag had just finished changing our child's diaper and I scooped him into my arms and sat down on the couch to look at him. I didn't move for three hours [that's like three and a half blogs!]. I never turned on the television, opened my laptop, or set the tyke down. I just lay back and watched him sleep against my chest, drifting in and out of sleep myself, pulling back his blanket to watch the way he crossed his ankles and how he tucked one arm under his head and held the other across his torso. I've never looked at anything inactive for that long. Not a painting, not a beautiful woman in repose, not a picturesque sunset (granted, sunsets do not, on a general basis, last for three hours).
On Saturday, October 15th, 27 days before my son's due date, Mag came home from work feeling like crap. Her back was hurting, she was having pre-labor contractions, and feeling chilled and goofy. After taking her temperature a couple of times and giving her a list of reasons why ignoring medical issues makes them all go away, she finally called her doctor's office. It was a Saturday and so they were closed of course, but the doctor on call told her she needed to go to the hospital. This felt like a bit of an overreaction to me, but we went on up there so they could monitor her and the baby. They decided to keep her for a few hours while giving her some fluids through an IV and some Tylenol to bring the fever down. Stubbornly, her fever refused to go down, her contractions (caused by the fever) refused to stop, and the nurses refused to let her go. They pumped her full of some drug that is supposed to stop contractions but all it did was make her very, "loopy" (that's a euphemism for straight up insane) and entertaining. We were both wearing University of Alabama shirts, since it was College Football Day so they moved us to a room so we could watch the game and then, around midnight, said they were going to keep her overnight. Nights spent in hospitals are never relaxing (I assume. I'd never stayed in one before) and this was not an exception. Since they were constantly pumping Margaret full of fluid she had to get up constantly to use the bathroom. I was perched on some hard bed that was five feet off of the ground and she'd call me when she needed to get up. I'd go unplug the monitors from the machine, drape the cords over her shoulders, pick up her IV pole and carry it into the bathroom, wait a few minutes and then repeat the process in reverse. It's comforting to know that her contraction and baby heartbeat monitors can become completely disconnected half a dozen times during the night without the nurses every noticing.
The next morning they sent us up to another floor for a frightening ultrasound (where the super-professional tech said to the doctor, "He's not breathing" referring to our baby. This caused Margaret's eyeballs to literally pop out of her head and the doctor to immediately reassure her that babies don't breathe before they're born and then to chew out the tech and tell her that you should never use that sentence in front of a pregnant woman). The doctor who had just shown up was the doctor on call and, of course, not Mag's doctor. Her doctor that she's been seeing the entire pregnancy was on vacation that weekend and entire week. We met the new doctor and he sat down on the ultrasound couch with Mag and said, "Listen, everything's going to be fine. You have a high fever that we can't bring down and it's causing contractions. We can't figure out where the infection is and you're already dilated. You're going to have this baby today." He hopped up and shook our hands and said some brief jargon to the nurse and then disappeared. They pulled a curtain closed to give Mag and I a brief moment and we just sat there and kind of grinned at each other and said, "Oh well!"
From there on out things proceeded pretty quickly. They put that stuff that causes contractions into her IV, the doctor broke her water at 11, and then he went to enjoy church and lunch with his family, telling us, "I'm inducing you, it's a month early, and this is your first baby. Prepare for a very long labor." Mag's fever kept rising, regardless of the fact that there were no fewer than 6 different bags of medicines and fluids hanging from her IV pole and being pumped into her, and they had been continuously giving her Tylenol every few hours since we had gotten there around 5 p.m. on Saturday. When she would have contractions Flip's heart rate would spike, hitting 200 bpm and setting off all sorts of alarms. They made Mag wear an oxygen mask to try and get her fever down and I crouched next to the bed with my face beside her stomach and coached our baby. "Come on," I would tell him, "I know you're trying to force yourself to be born immediately. I get it. You've won. You're going to be born today, but you're going to have to work with me now. We're going to get your heart rate down to 170. I know that sounds impossible but just listen to me and I'm going to talk you through it." He's an obedient and attentive son (and I'm a fabulous and handsome non-licensed medical professional) and within a couple of minutes we had his heart rate back down. I paced around the room watching the Falcons play the Panthers while Mag lay in bed looking like a cyborg and texting.
Every 15 minutes or so a nurse and some specialist would come in and do some sort of procedure or hook up some sort of machine or take some sort of reading. First the doctor broke her water, then later the epiduralurologist (I assume that's the title) came in and jabbed the epidural needle in her back and started the pain medicine a'flowing. Mag was simply magnificent. I knew she would be fine physically. Mag is the youngest of five children, and the three directly above her were boys. She's the type of annoying little kid you see in the movies who is all, "I can do it too!" when the older kids jump across the creek and then tries to jump across, falls in, cuts her knee, climbs back out, and pretends like it doesn't hurt. Long story short, she's a trooper. What I was worried about, however, was the panic. I was already quite worried about my part in the birthing process, and my whole part is just to be in the same room when it happens. That seemed like quite a tall order to me. Mag had to actually do all the stuff, and it seems like there's a million things that can go wrong, and on top of it all she had a fever of 103, her baby was coming a month early, and the doctor was saying things like, "You're going to be fine. He's going to be fine. Because of all the things going on though, I have to tell you that you are at a higher risk for having to have an emergency C-section. Even if that happens though, everything will be fine, I promise." Not only was Mag great with the pain aspect, but she acted completely calm the entire time. I won't get into all the gory details, as it was really just a pretty normal birth, but her water was broken at 11:15 a.m. and our son was born at 3:25 p.m.
I, the coward between the two of us, never felt one second of panic the entire time. The doctor and nurses all seemed so calm and rational and professional that I thought, "Well, even if a hundred complications arise, they know how to deal with them and they'll do so. I don't know the exact path from here to there, but I feel confident that by the end of the day I'll have a healthy wife and son here." I thought they were going to put scrubs on me or something but they just pretty much ignored me and chatted as if birth was the most common place thing in the world (let's face it, it is pretty common. Especially in hospitals.) I stood to the side and would pop up to hold Mag's leg and say boring things like, "You're doing good. Chill out, you got this." as she completely ignored me, lost in her own world of birthiness. After he popped out the doctor grabbed him and cut the umbilical cord (I had already explained to him that I wasn't doing it as, "It's what I'm paying you to do.") and handed him off to the nursery attendant and respiratory specialist who were creeping over in the corner of the room. I'll admit, as Mag was doing her whole PUSH thing and I noticed the nursery corner begin to fill up with specialists and nurses I started to feel a little worry, but squashed it down quickly as worry doesn't seem to help things very often. The folks crowded around our baby and talked quickly back and forth in hushed tones as I did my best to ignore them. He didn't cry for almost 2 minutes, and that was the scary part. I had no idea what was going on over there (except I could hear them slapping him around) but I tried very hard to just focus on Mag and try and keep her attention on me. There's no way me hearing what they were saying, or even the tone with which they were saying it, could make me anything except for terrified, and that's why I didn't walk over there or listen in. At some point you have to trust in the abilities of the people in charge and leave it in their hands. Our nurse kept reassuring us everything was fine, and after those two long minutes we heard him attempt a pathetic little whimper. They kept doing whatever they were doing and then he finally started crying a little. They wrapped his white, fleshy, waterlogged and semi-creepy looking body up and let us each hold him for about twenty seconds a piece and then rushed him off to the nursery.
We already knew that they were going to take him as soon as he was born, as he was running a fever as well. They had to do tests to him and draw blood from him (twice in that first day, actually). It was a tiny bit troubling but we now know that everything is just a-ok with him and he's fine and pretty and healthy. The doctor told us that they wouldn't release him until at least Wednesday (he was born on Sunday) since he was premature, had a fever, had to have tests run, etc. He recovered so quickly and acted so charming to all the nurses, however, that they told us Tuesday morning, "You can leave as soon as it's been 48 hours." We got out of there at 3:30 on the dot. He really is amazing, for a tiny creature that doesn't do much of anything. He's been alive for 13 days and has had visitors on at least nine of those days, and most days it was multiple visitors. Mag told me in a text message this morning, "Boone is just too popular!"
Speaking of that, his name is Boone Anderson O'Dell. We had yet to decide on a name (as we thought we had another month) but that's the one we went with. People seem to think that, "Boone" is very strange but we don't really care. I can see into the future and I know it's a fantastic name. It'll be super cute when he's a toddler, neat when he's a Boy Scout (or Gender Neutral Scout, as that's what we'll have by then), badass when he's a teenager, alluring when he's a young adult, and it works great as, "Grandpa Boone" as well. It's a perfect blending of old school and new school, and if you don't like it then you're just a bunch of phonies! (that's in honor of another name I thought of bestowing upon him, Holden). If he doesn't like it he can always go by Anderson and make fun of all the kids around him named Edward Cullen or Jayden/Kaiden/Aiden/Hayden/Braden for rhyming with one another.
Mag is doing really well. I know guys say things like, "She did great! I'm so proud of her!" even if their wives spent the whole labor calling them all manner of unspeakable names and complaining over every little thing and are already trying to ship their newborn off to day care. Margaret did none of those things, however. After her labor she only had two things to say about the process: "Women are a bunch of wussies." And, "I can't believe I was watching Cam Newton play football as my child was actually being born. But at least I was watching him lose." Sometimes I think I'm the woman in this relationship.
Well, I did what I said I didn't want to do - I just listed the facts about the delivery (actually I didn't! 6 lbs 7 oz, 19 inches long. People seem to care about this for some reason. I assume it's because that's the only information there is about a baby). Maybe it's interesting to you, or maybe he can read this one day and see a few details I inadvertently leave in out in my many recountings of that blessed day. In my mind though, the facts come second. What matters to me is the way this event makes me feel, and that's something I struggle to find the words to describe.
I read a beautiful quote in the strange, fascinating, and yet ultimately unsatisfying graphic novel Habibi two days after my son was born. "The Sufi saint Rabi'a Al-Adawiyya was seen carrying a firebrand and a jug of water. The firebrand to burn Paradise. The jug of water to drown Hell. So that both veils disappear and God's followers worship - not out of hope for reward, nor fear of punishment...but out of love. " This is a foreign concept - love without reason. I've never loved like that in my life. I love a great many people, and some of them truly and deeply and completely, but none without reason, or without recompense. I've loved my parents as far back as I can remember - because they've always been good parents to me and because they raised me and provided for me and I would never have made it to the age my son is now without them. I love my wife, but because she loves me back. I expect something back for my loving her. I wouldn't go through my whole life loving her had she rejected me and never given me any love in return. I love my closest friends, but not because I chose a few people to love at random. I love them because of the things we share, the way we fit together, the way life becomes more enjoyable and magical when they're around. Until I had a child I had no clue what it would feel like to love someone with absolutely no expectation of compensation. Yes my son will love me back at some point and I will get great pleasure and pride from raising him. I will invest in him and I will be rewarded. But as of now he can't even recognize my face. He isn't developed enough to understand the concept of father, or provider, or protector, or anything like that. He doesn't love me in return or give me anything that I'm not projecting onto him in my own mind. Nevertheless, I am filled with an inexplicable unquenchable overwhelming love for him. One day he's going to be a teenager and say things like, "Just because you're my dad doesn't mean you own me!" and while I'll give him some response as old as parenthood itself, such as, "I brought you into this world and I can take you out of it!" (hawhawhawhawhawhawhawhawhawhawhaw) in reality, he'll be right. He hasn't given me anything, he hasn't taken anything from me, and he doesn't owe me anything. I love him for the sake of love. I love him because I am compelled. I love him because I am a father.
