How You Were Born

The way I remember this morning, thirteen years ago.

Before Sunrise on November First / made by the author using MidJourney

We stirred awake, your mother and I, and a nurse was opening the shades of the window of the Beehive Spaceship, which is what we sometimes called Good Samaritan, and twilight was casting purple shades over the Superstitions and Four Peaks out east. We’d slept maybe two hours. Then Dr. Hebets walked in, and she checked you and your mother and you still weren’t turned.

“Mindy, you’re fighting hard for your daughter, and we can keep going, but there’s a lot of strain on her body and I recommend we schedule a cesarean,” Dr. Hebets said. “I'll give you time to consider.”

The doctor left, and Mindy, discouraged and weary, began to cry. I crawled onto the bed next to her.

“This isn't how we wanted it to go,” she sobbed.

“I know,” I said. “And we can keep pushing, but you’ve done so much already and you can do this.”

Mindy nodded, and more tears rolled down her cheeks, then she leaned into me and put her hand on the swell of her belly, on you.

“Of course I’ll do this for you, little girl.”

Then we asked God to guide the surgical team and to protect you and her, and when Dr. Hebets returned, Mindy gave consent for a c-section. Surgery was scheduled for eight o’clock in the morning.

We watched the sunrise over the mountains, and then Mindy was wheeled down to prep for the OR, and a nurse directed your grandmother and I down a corridor to a waiting room, where she offered Grammy a seat and coffee. Grammy asked if she could be with us in the operating room, but the nurse said only parents were allowed. Grammy asked if she could wait outside the door and the nurse said no.

Then I followed the nurse down a corridor and through a series of three locked doors to an empty hallway, where she pointed to a metal chair in front of a rack of gowns. She handed me a blue hairnet and a folded pile of scrubs and disappeared into the operating room. I put on the scrubs and sat. The hall was empty, and I felt glad to be alone. I put my hands on my knees and breathed as evenly as I could. What I thought was: These are your last minutes before fatherhood.

Then the nurse reemerged. She talked me through washing my hands and what would happen next.

“We’ll walk into the OR. There'll be a chair next to your wife’s head on one side of a curtain. That’s where you'll sit,” the nurse explained. “Try and ignore what’s happening on the other side of the curtain.”

I nodded and scrubbed my hands up to the elbows, then the nurse ushered me into the operating room. Mindy was lying down, with a curtain shielding her lower half from view, blankets covering her torso all the way to her chin, and a matching blue hairnet. Oxygen was hooked to her nose and she seemed to be dozing. Over on the other side of the curtain was a team of doctors and nurses.

I was told not to look, but I did anyway and caught the the pink and red coils of her intestines. Then I sat down in the chair, dazed.

Your mother opened her eyes.

“Hi, Jor,” she whispered.

She reached for my hand.

“We’re almost there, hon,” I said, then prayed again.

Beyond the curtain, the surgeons and nurses were at work, and Mindy’s body began to jerk, like a tiger was gnawing at her legs. I remembered how she’d witnessed what her body was going through, remembered her telling me c-sections heal best when the skin is torn open rather than cut. A twinge of sympathy rippled through my abdomen. The wrenching continued. The surgical team snapped orders to each other. Each member was in motion.

“Push up from the other end,” said the surgeon.

Then they pulled you free.

“Whoa,” Mindy murmured and her eyes went wide. “There’s, like, a space in me.”

The nurses toweled amniotic fluid from your body and we heard your faint cry. Then we waited one last agonizing moment, our eyes at the top of the curtain.

Then we saw you, held fast in a nurse’s hands, passing over the curtain toward us. Your cheeks were round. Your eyes were closed. Your tongue stuck out a little. Then we saw that you looked strange. Your head was misshapen, as though you had a single wrinkled forehead, and, above that, another forehead, nearly as large as your face, and we were stunned into silence for a moment.

“I guess she'll have to be funny,” Mindy whispered.

The nurse wrapped you in a blanket and pulled a soft striped pink and blue cap over your fivehead. A moment later, the surgeon explained the cranial swelling was a routine when labor went on this long and your noggin was returning to a standard baby shape as we spoke. We felt relieved, and also a little embarrassed at feeling so relieved.

“Hi, little one. Welcome to your family,” Mindy said, and you stirred at her voice as the nurse passed you into my arms, and I held you for the first time in the crook of my elbow. You were beautiful, small, and surreal. You squalled a bit. I brought your tiny face near to your mother and her eyes were fiery with love. 

We had a few moments together at most, then Mindy was sent to post-op, and I was assigned to stay with you in a recovery room. I felt awed at being your guardian and sad for Mindy. Even if the separation was temporary, that was the furthest she'd been from you in nine months.

The nurse took you back and swaddled you and set you in a clear plastic tub on a wheeled gurney. I followed her out of the OR and back through the series of corridors, where Karlene had breached two of the locked doors and was pacing alone in a hall. She rushed over to see you and clasped her hands to her heart.

“She's amazing!” said your grandmother, and she beamed.

We wheeled on to Recovery, where the nurse unbundled you and you cried at being unwrapped. Your wail was soft and gravelly, and I was surprised to find I didn’t mind the sound at all, but your body was caked in a tarry layer of olive-green meconium, and that was gross. The nurse thoroughly wiped the meconium away while you made pitiful moans, then wrapped you again like how I’d learned in the parenting class, folding the blanket around you like a tortilla.

Then you calmed down and the nurse left to check other patients, and I was alone with you. Your eyes were open, and you wiggled from side-to-side, like a true-life Glo-Worm.

I already didn’t know what to do, and in that uncertainty the role of Father opened up before me—an unending vista—and if I had no plausible idea how to care for you for in the small moments, how would I meet all the countless moments still ahead?

I pushed back against the angst by pulling out my phone to take a picture, but this only took a few seconds. Then I took a deep breath and I drew close to you and ran my thumb over your cheek.

“Hello, little girl. I’m your dad.”

You blinked, and your tongue lolled. I picked you up and rocked you in my arms and sang a melody which sprang to my mind:

You're a baby-flavored burrito
A baby-flavored burrito!

I sang it a few times, and you laid there in my arms with no choice but to listen.

This is my daughter! I thought.

Then I wanted Mindy to be with us, and I wondered how long we'd have to wait. It didn’t seem like long but pain is the most quickly forgotten of our memories so what I remember is when she was wheeled in, exhausted but conscious and smiling. I passed you over to her and leaned in to kiss her forehead.

She held you for the first time, in a haze yet joyous, gazing at her daughter. Your face moved about as you stretched and expressed your muscles and mouth, feeling the air, feeling the world in the arms of your family and Mindy echoed your expressions. She made soft sounds to remind you who she was. We’d hoped for you in our own way all our lives, but this was the day we were introduced and the new adventure of being your parents began.

A family portrait.

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