Editor’s Note: September is ​Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) Awareness Month, designed to honor families who have used these medical facilities and the health professionals who care for them.

My son starts preschool today.

It doesn’t seem like that long ago when I was sitting in the NICU snuggling his entire tiny body on my chest.

My son was a preemie, born at 34 weeks. Those were some long and tough days for us. My wife felt guilty but it certainly wasn’t her fault. She had a normal, healthy pregnancy. We don’t know why he came early and we’ll probably never know. But it happened and we dealt with it.

He was being held in NICU because his lungs were not fully developed just yet. He was hooked up to all kinds of machines … feeding tube through his nose for a bit, a heart monitor and more. I will never forget the alarming sound the monitor would make when his heart rate dropped, and the doctors and nurses came rushing in. They called it a “bradycardia,” or abnormally slow heart action, and it was one of the scariest moments for us.

During our daily rounds with the doctors, they told us that for him to come home he had to have three straight days without any “bradys or spells,” as they referred to them. We would call each morning, crossing our fingers, to see how he did overnight. Then we would pack our lunch, grab coffee and fight traffic each day while heading to the hospital to spend a few hours with him. It was a strange feeling to come home each night and not have our newborn son with us. My wife was in tears at times because we didn’t know how long he would be in the NICU and she was worried about spending her entire maternity leave in the hospital.

Fortunately, her boss was very supportive and gave her extra time off. There were other dads there and I would see them each day and we’d give each other the nod. We became a club; each waiting for our turn to go home with our child. I know we were fortunate. Our situation could have been much worse. There were some parents there with twins, one of whom got to go home and the other one didn’t. Some babies were there for 3 months or longer. In total, we spent five weeks in the NICU.

Today, my son has caught up and except for a slight speech delay, he has met all of his milestones. He is now a tall, active and healthy 3-year-old who loves fire trucks, Paw Patrol and pancakes.

So, it’s an exciting day and I’m a happy dad. My once tiny NICU baby is going to meet his new teachers and make new friends. He’s going to laugh and learn and play and he’ll have a big smile on his face … and so will I.

My son starts preschool today!

About the author

Lou Marino, shown with his wife and two children, is a member of our Boston/Providence Dads Group.

Photos: Contributed by the Marino family

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This post, which first appeared in 2018, is part of the #NoDadAlone campaign. Fathering Together/City Dads Group, the National At-Home Dad Network, and Fathers Eve are joining forces to amplify messages that help dads recognize we are not alone! Follow #NoDadAlone on Instagram, and learn more at NoDadAlone.com.

People often ask me about the big age gap between my second and third child. The five-and-a-half-year difference makes people wonder why we began our journey through babyhood once again. When asked, I usually smile and say simply, “The timing was right.”

The truth is there wasn’t supposed to be such a big gap. Several miscarriages lead to the huge age difference.

How it started

One morning, the rain poured outside as I walked down the stairs into the basement. A good foot of water welcomed me. As I stepped into it, I realized it wasn’t just water. Our sewer line had backed up into the basement. Our upstairs neighbor called a plumber, but they couldn’t come until late that evening. So from 9 a.m. until then, I carried buckets of sewage out our backdoor and dumped it into our backyard. I yelled and even cried with exhaustion as I fought a losing battle with the rising water.

Then my wife walked into the basement. She hugged my sweaty, tired body, and said, “We’re going to have another baby.”

Suddenly, I didn’t care about the basement anymore; I just wanted to hug my wife. We smiled and kissed. She asked if I was happy and, with raw sewage dripping from my pants and shoes, I said I was. Very happy.

Unfortunately, I never got the opportunity to meet the source of the happiness. We had a miscarriage. It turned out to be the first of several.

‘The silence was backbreaking‘

My wife told me she was miscarrying as she laid on our bed. My stomach dropped. I felt like thousands of pounds were upon my back. It was still morning, so I got the kids dressed, fed, and off to school. I returned to my wife, who was still in the same position. I didn’t say anything and neither did she. We just occupied the same room for a little while. She didn’t want to talk and I’m not sure if I wanted her to. But the silence was backbreaking.

I think I muttered a few words. She may have muttered something back. Nothing real was said. Just murmurings. I wanted to comfort her, but I couldn’t.

Deep inside, I wanted to be comforted, too. But I couldn’t be and I couldn’t ask anyone to. She took a little nap and I left the room. I sat down on the couch with my hands covering my face and wept.

In the days and weeks that followed, we didn’t talk that much about it.

I think we both wanted to forget and, by not talking about it, we thought we could. We hadn’t told anyone about the pregnancy yet so nobody knew. There was nobody to give that sympathetic look. There was nobody for us to talk to. We were alone in our sorrow and we weren’t necessarily talking about it together. So I stuffed it into that place in a man’s soul where things are stored and never let out again.

My wife told me a few months later that she was pregnant again. But, only a few weeks later, that too ended in miscarriage. Two miscarriages in less than six months.

Putting up my guard

When my wife told me that we were expecting once again, I put up a guard. As the baby grew inside my wife, I refused to let myself get too attached. I didn’t want the ultimate disappointment to happen again. I’d go along with my wife for check-ups and ultrasounds, but I continued to wait for and expect bad news. When she was pregnant with our other children, I would stare at the ultrasound pictures and dream of their future in wonder. This time, I barely looked. Every day I battled to put on the face of the supportive husband, but inside I just couldn’t let myself get close.

When our baby entered the world, I finally exhaled. Everything that built up inside of me over the years had been released. There was a beautiful and perfect little boy in my arms and I once again felt joy. The barrier of speaking to my wife about the past miscarriages was gone. And we finally felt like we could talk about the experience with other people.

There are days though that I still can’t help but wonder what it would be like to have four or five children, instead of three. I always wanted a lot of kids and dreamed of a house filled with beautiful family chaos. Time has not been kind to my body and the days of hoisting babies into the air are coming to an end. To say that I’m completely over the miscarriages would be very wrong. I’m not over it and probably never will be.

I’ve talked to a few guys since then and it seems that we all feel the same way. We want to be there for the women in our lives and give encouragement and comfort. To try and make our partners feel better. But inside, we’re breaking.

I’ve also seen what miscarriages can do to women. Not only my wife but other women I’ve known. It’s terrible and difficult to talk about. My heart goes out to any woman who suffers through one. And my heart goes out to their men who aren’t sure how to talk about it, aren’t sure how to relate the feelings of great loss when they barely had anything to begin with.

When dealing with tragedies in life, most of us try to find some closure. When someone near to us dies, we talk about the life they lived and what they meant to us. The moment is heartbreaking and we never fully get over the loss. With miscarriages, closure is hard to find. A beautiful promise was there and now it isn’t. Your hopes were high and then … nothing. For the man, we can only observe the physical and emotional pains of the loss of the woman. Helplessly watch.

I’m not sure what my point in writing this piece was. Maybe I wrote this for my cathartic process. Or maybe I was hoping to have men start a dialogue about this issue. Maybe it was to let others know that nobody is alone when it comes to a miscarriage and there is no shame in it. It isn’t anyone’s fault and a miscarriage is just one of life’s many tragedies.

A version of this was first published here and on One Good Dad in 2013, and has since been updated. Photo by MART PRODUCTION via Pexels.

“Push on my belly.”

It seemed like such a simple request from my wife. Once I complied with it, I’d never seen her in so much pain, and I had previously witnessed her giving birth to our two children.

After a little more pushing and prodding, it was clear something needed to be done. Was all the pain and nausea simply symptoms of her first trimester of pregnancy? Could it be something more serious, like appendicitis? A doctor needed to access the situation.

We hopped in the car and drove 20 bumpy and agonizing minutes to the hospital. We arrived, checked in, and were sent to triage.

After receiving a CT scan, it was time to sit … and wait. There was not much else to do while the doctors checked the results. Over the course of the next few hours, we flipped through several TV channels and finally landed on the movie Fight Club. It had been well over a decade since I’d last seen this movie. I’d passed it up while flipping through channels many times before, but for some reason that night I was drawn to it. I clearly remember one scene where Brad Pitt’s character (Tyler Durdin) holds a gun to the back of a guy’s head and threatens to shoot him. After a few minutes, Tyler lets the man go. He then goes on to talk about the new appreciation that the man will have for his life:

“Tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of Raymond K. Hessel’s life. His breakfast will taste better than any meal you and I have ever tasted.” 

This struck me as a deranged but somewhat understandable comment. 

Answers and more worries

Three hours later, the answer was clear. My wife had appendicitis. An appendectomy is a relatively simple procedure (at least that is what I was told) but everything becomes a little more complicated when your wife is 14 weeks pregnant. And things become a lot more complicated when the part of the body where the surgery will be taking place is essentially right next to an unborn child. As scary and dangerous as the possibilities were, the surgery was necessary. An untreated and ruptured appendix would certainly mean the loss of a baby and potentially terrible consequences for my wife as well.

At 1 in the morning, she was wheeled away for surgery.

She returned to the room at 4 a.m. She was not doing well coming off the anesthesia. My wife began alternating between thinking she was the doctor and giving orders to the nurses about her care, dropping F-bombs about the entire situation, and vomiting into a bucket next to her in the hospital bed. Finally, things calmed down. Off to sleep she and I went.

After a few hours of sleep, the next day was quickly upon us. It was time to see what type of stress the surgery had put on the baby and check the baby’s heartbeat. Our doctor that morning was someone that had our complete trust. Just a year earlier he’d delivered our second child and once someone delivers your baby, there is a lifelong bond you carry with that person. Our doctor arrived in the room wheeling in a Doppler machine. He pressed the microphone to my wife’s belly, no sounds were heard.

“Don’t panic, don’t panic,” was all I could say to myself, over and over.

I gauged our obstetrician’s behavior to help me know how to react. He was calm, so I stayed calm. Maybe there was something wrong with the machine. In came the ultrasound machine. After a minute of fumbling around to get it set up, we could see the baby.

The baby was not moving and no heartbeat could be seen or heard. Panic began.

Waiting on a sign of life

So many thoughts raced around in my head. “Calm down, be strong for your wife,” I told myself. “Stay calm, stay calm.”

Again, I looked at the doctor to help measure my own reaction, this time I could see the fear and sadness in his eyes. I gripped my wife’s hand even tighter. What happened next was the saddest moment of my life. The doctor removed his hands from the machine, looked into our tired eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so, so sorry.”   

There was nothing left to do but cry.

While this was going on, another doctor, a close friend of my wife’s, ran to grab a different type of ultrasound probe. They decided to try a different probe, hoping for different results. Through the tears in our eyes and pain in our hearts, we barely even paid attention to what she was doing.

Then, suddenly, the ultrasound showed MOVEMENT!  

Wonderful, beautiful movement!

Our little baby was fine and kicking away. I have never felt a greater range of emotions than I felt that morning. From the deepest darkest place I didn’t even know existed to a mountaintop high feeling of pure joy. Amazing! Unbelievable! Miraculous! 

We continued to cry, but now it was for different reasons. Once the doctor left the room, we spent a great deal of time trying to come to grips with all that had happened in the last 24 hours. One thing that kept flashing back in my mind was the scene from the movie Fight Club we’d watched the night before. 

Tyler Durden made a good point. Never in my life have I appreciated the joy that is watching a baby move inside my wife’s belly quite like I experienced that morning. And even though it was a stale bagel with a plastic tub of peanut butter smeared on it, Tyler got it right … my breakfast tasted better than any meal I have ever tasted.

A version of this first appeared on Indy’s Child. Photo: © serhiibobyk / Adobe Stock.

September is National Infant Mortality Awareness Month. It focuses on children who lose their lives before their first birthday and the causes of those deaths. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the infant mortality rate in the United States is 5.4 deaths per every 1,000 live births. In 2020, that amounted to just under 20,000 infant deaths.

Twenty thousand.

Twenty thousand who will never speak their first words, walk their first steps or make their first friends. Children who will never go to school, form families of their own, work, play or experience the trials and joys that make up our world.

Here are some more startling facts:

• The U.S. infant mortality rate ranks among the worst among wealthy nations.
• Maternal mortality rates in the United States, defined as the death of a mother during pregnancy, delivery, or the first 42 days following delivery/termination, are also among the worst globally.
• Black women in the United States are three times as likely to die from pregnancy-related causes as white women. 

In simple terms, it’s more dangerous to give birth in the United States than in many other nations. It’s also more dangerous to be a baby. And it’s even more dangerous to be a mother or child if you’re a person of color.

But what can dads do about it?

On a broad level, it starts with policies.

Paid family leave helps babies, parents, families

One major reason behind these sobering statistics is the lack of paid leave for working parents. America lags behind just about every other nation in terms of paid family and medical leave. Researchers at the National Institutes of Health note: “Mothers’ and fathers’ leave-taking may improve child health by decreasing postpartum depression among mothers, improving maternal mental health, increasing the time spent with a child, and increasing the likelihood of child medical checkup.”

Paid family leave gives parents time to bond as a family as well as care for an infant and each other during those intense, early times. When I became a first-time father, my teaching job offered just three days of paid leave. That wasn’t nearly enough time to help my new son or my wife or to become a family. It’s a big reason I chose to become an at-home dad. Some states have started implementing paid leave policies, but we have a long way to go. Advocating for paid leave policies is a big first step.

And perhaps paid family leave should start before birth. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, an interesting thing happened globally. Premature births, the second leading cause of infant mortality in the United States, declined dramatically. Is it possible that being home before birth helped lower stress and create healthier births? Research from the University of California, Berkeley, suggests that paid leave before birth may decrease the number of premature births in women.

Paid leave is a no-brainer. It is a significant step forward to decrease infant mortality and maternal mortality, not to mention a step toward economic, racial, and gender justice.

Support new mothers from the start

However, dads can do more than just advocating for leave, or take all the leave available to them. Supporting mothers during those early weeks and months is vital.

For example, breastfeeding is one of the best ways to increase a child’s health. However, it isn’t easy for many mothers and isn’t possible for some. Do you know how to make a good oatmeal that supports breastfeeding? I do. I made it for my wife almost every morning after she gave birth to our son.

However, being there for mothers is about more than just physically being around. Take time to listen to your partner. Know how her postpartum healing is supposed to progress and help monitor it. Learn the warning signs of postpartum depression. Check in with your partner often about how they’re feeling and if something seems off, make sure they get to a doctor.

Thousands of babies and mothers are dying. We need to do better for them.

We need policies in America to change this situation.

And we need dads to support and nurture their partners and families.

Yes, being a dad is a life-saving activity.

And a life-altering one.

And still the best job there is.

Infant mortality photo: © Prostock-studio / Adobe Stock.

We live in an age in which we can’t survive without our phones. We rely on them for everything.

Communication.

Banking.

Exercise.

Music.

You name it.

I’m no different. Throughout the day I’m constantly scrolling, checking my text messages, email, social media and stocks. Every day. Rinse and repeat.

One of my favorite pastimes is looking at the thousands of pictures I have of my son in my phone. I’m constantly taken aback at how time has flown by and how much he has changed in a few short years. He’s approaching his third birthday yet it seems like yesterday when it was my turn to get up in the middle of the night to soothe his crying during those first few weeks of his life. I have photos of it all. I have no doubt I’ll be taking just as many, if not more, pictures when our second baby, our baby girl, arrives later this year.

A few weeks ago during my usual scrolling, I came across some photos from three years ago of me putting my son’s crib together. As a soon-to-be first-time father at the time, I was beyond excited about his arrival. Through these pics, I tried my best to document the process from the time we found out we were pregnant up until birth.

I should be jumping for joy, right?

Looking at the pics of the half-built crib, I did the math in my head to calculate when I was working on it in relation to how far along my wife was at the time. It hit me that in terms of preparation, we haven’t really done nearly as much at this stage of her pregnancy compared to what had been done during our first. The crib hasn’t been built. The nursery hasn’t been painted. The baby shower hasn’t been planned. In many ways, I’m walking around as if a baby is not coming for many months.

This has been bothering me for some time. I should be jumping for joy about this second baby, right? After all, I’m about to be a girl dad. I even told my wife I felt like I wasn’t holding her belly as much as I did the first time around. She’d definitely noticed. The excitement is there, but it’s not where I feel it should be. And where it should be, I’m not exactly sure.

As I admittedly struggle with this, I’m doing my best to give myself some grace. I’m understanding that things don’t exactly have to be like they were with my son. Just as life was different then, life is different now, and that matters. I wasn’t a parent three years ago. As we prepare for our daughter’s arrival, I still have to parent my son as he works his way through his own development. My wife isn’t the same as she was yesterday and that matters as well. 

We don’t often talk about the psychological challenges that fathers go through during pregnancy, but they are very real. The feeling of uncertainty, the irritability, the stress of wondering will everything get done — and will it be paid for. The excitement of being a new dad has been replaced by the indifference of becoming a father of two. And that’s OK. I’ve been reassured by other parents that they’ve experienced similar feelings in their respective journeys.

I have plans to start painting the nursey soon. Once that’s done, I’ll get the crib together. Only this time, I go at my own pace, and not feel bad if I don’t meet some mythical deadline.

And I’ll be sure to take pictures of it all.

Second baby photo: © Rido / Adobe Stock.

EDITOR’S NOTE: City Dads Group is working with longtime partner Dove Men+Care to create “how to” videos for the grooming products company’s “Dads Care” campaign. We will be featuring the videos and scripts our members appear in. This one features Marlon Gutierrez of our Orlando Dads Group talking about how to support your pregnant partner.

My wife is nine months pregnant and she’s due at any time now with our second baby. It’s been a very stressful time to say the least. There’s a lot of things that have happened (like COVID-19, my suffering a dislocated shoulder and more) that we could have never planned for. While there’s nothing we dads can do to take away all the stress and anxiety that comes with this very difficult time, there are some things that we can do to provide better support for our pregnant partner or spouse.

Get educated on pregnancy (and more)

It’s important for you to not only get educated on what pregnancy is all about but also on the labor, the delivery and also what happens postpartum. It may seem overwhelming to find a lot of this information, but thankfully there’s a lot of resources that you can tap into. There’s books written by other dads for you to get a clear picture of what’s going on. There’s also some courses you can take, with or without your partner, online or in person.  We found doing ones together really helped prepare us and put us in the right mindset for everything coming our way. It helped us feel like we had a little bit more control about the whole situation.

Prepare your home for baby

Put some time into a creative outlet like building the nursery and gather baby supplies so everything is ready when your child arrives. Order things early just in case there’s a shipping delay so your not scrambling at the last minute. Create a nursery environment that’s going to feel very safe and nurturing. After we created ours, we found it to be a place we could both go to break away from all the stress. Make it a place you can go to disconnect from the news of the world and just think about your baby and the hopes and aspirations you have for him or her.

Give physical support to your pregnant partner

Ask your partner if there’s anything you can take off her plate: if there’s a big decision that needs to be made or things around the house to get done so there is one less thing she needs to worry about. With the pregnancy, there comes a lot of hormonal imbalances and other things that create stress. Your being present and helpful are great ways to help with those things.

Offer emotional support, too

You have to be a friend. Make sure you’re open and you’re flexible to hearing anything your partner may say without having to react to it. Right now your partner just needs a support person they can talk to about whatever fears and apprehensions she may have.

Take care of yourself

If you’re gonna be the person that your partner needs and the dad you want to be, you have to make sure that you’re taking care of yourself. With everything going on in your home and the world, there’s a lot of stress and anxiety you are feeling. There’s a lot of things that you probably don’t share with your partner because you don’t want to add on to her stress. One thing I have found really helps me is to connect with other dads. Whether it is through an online group or in person, it has worked really well.

Support your pregnant partner photo: © Rido / Adobe Stock.

Blissful. That’s pretty much how it felt to hold my baby son in my arms after such a stressful 37 weeks of a pandemic pregnancy.

He is here, healthy and strong, and my wife, Stef, is doing well after having a beautiful labor experience in the comfort of our own home. His birth was a sigh of relief from so much anguish and worry that kept me from exhaling for so long.

We went through so many challenges during this pandemic pregnancy. First, we thought our baby wasn’t going to make it full-term. What started as weird pregnancy symptoms eventually became a medical concern for pre-term labor. Coupled with my wife’s lupus, we thought perhaps he wasn’t going to be able to make it.

We started the second trimester with my wife on medical-ordered bed rest. It was a moment in my life where I was really struggling to be OK amidst everything going on. I needed to be there not only for my wife, our unborn child, and our preschooler daughter, but also for myself and my responsibilities. Many times I questioned the timing of everything.

We went through other sad moments during this time, like the death of two people close to our family. And the struggles of mental health, as I was learning to cope with generalized anxiety and seeking therapy for what I had noticed become unhealthy behaviors in my thinking and increasing patterns of worrying. Then amidst a move to a new house and a job change for me, we got hit with the pandemic.

A pandemic pregnancy. Reports from China showed that COVID-19 affected pregnant women by causing pre-term labor, something Stef was already at-risk for. Then when the virus was ravaging through New York, we were so uncomfortable with the stories of mothers having to labor alone – or worse; having to be separated from their children because they were born with the virus.

Stress, anxiety, a dislocated shoulder

We had just bought a house and I had started a new job that now didn’t seem guaranteed. Our rental properties had tenants who were getting laid off and couldn’t pay rent. We chose to have an extensive self-quarantine. No grocery trips. No visitations. We had midwives come to check up on the baby instead of going to a clinic for appointments. And in the span of 13 weeks of self-quarantine, we had to learn how to be OK in a home that we couldn’t finish furnishing and with a preschooler that has always enjoyed socializing and being anywhere BUT home now having to do online classes at age 3. I became obsessed with the virus, at one point worrying if I was to catch it from just being outside in our yard.

But alas. 37 weeks. That’s the magic number they give for a pregnancy to be considered full-term and for it to be legally OK in Florida to have a baby at home. Then, the day after we get the all-clear, I dislocated my shoulder during an at-home workout. I had such a fear of the hospital that we first tried to pop it back using YouTube videos to teach me how. I ended up having to go to the ER, where I thought I would for sure I’f be bringing back the infection and possibly miss out on my son’s birth.

But something happened in that ER. I was there alone. Not only did it ease my fear of exposure to the virus, but it also reminded me that there was a world outside our home. That soon it was my job to raise a little boy in a way he deserved.

I thought of conversations I had with my wife regarding the mental impact this must be having on our daughter – and that soon she was about to go through a major change in her life as she became one of two kids. I don’t know what it was, but it clicked for me that I just needed to enjoy whatever was in front of me, regardless of a situation I couldn’t control. Being this affected hadn’t allowed me to enjoy the moment. My wife had hit 37 weeks. Both she and the baby were healthy. My daughter was happy and an incredible being. And that in itself should have been enough. I got my shoulder popped back in, with good wishes from the amazing medical staff who together had given me more social interaction than I had in months.

From then on, my outlook changed on everything. We left our house for the first time. We decided to go to a plant nursery and see what it was like to go to a place with other patrons. We became OK with walking on a golf course in our neighborhood. We recorded our first TikTok video, which was a great deal of fun and got us enjoying the beauty that was my wife being pregnant. Each day was the last we could be as a family of three, and we were milking it.

Pandemic pregnancy to beautiful birth

Just five days after my shoulder injury, our little boy made his debut to the world in a crazy short two-hour labor. The labor was beautiful. Stef woke up to strong contractions around 1:30 on the morning of May 24. I called the labor team of two midwives, our doula, and a doula-photographer who were going to be making their way over from all parts of Orlando.

At 3:32 a.m., I had the opportunity to catch him as he made his way to the world. The oxytocin that must’ve formed after seeing my wife lovingly breathe our baby out could have been why my shoulder and arm seem to work fine and all I could feel at that moment was the silence of the world as I laid eyes with my son.

I had not enjoyed this pregnancy the same way as I did our first. I didn’t bond with my baby in utero as I did with my daughter. I was worried most of the time, in fear of missing out on the moment of being able to ever hold him. And here he was, all 6.4 lbs of human in my hands. It was one of those moments where everything stops and the meaning of life gets just so simple. The world stops spinning amidst things happening right in front of you, but instead of the past flashing before your eyes, it’s little glimpses of all your dreams of the future, bundled in a physical manifestation of love.

None of the worries I had seemed to matter. Not the quarantine, not the effects of labor, or the stresses of the pregnancy. It was bliss. A moment of perfection where everything just seems to be right.

And now here we are – still in a chaotic, non-ideal planet for so many reasons, but in a state of happiness with our boy. We’re getting ready to reintegrate into society once more. And while we don’t know how that looks like yet, we are enjoying this little bundle of joy, seeing my daughter take on her role of big sister, and experiencing everything that comes forth as I become a dad once more to another living being. Another little miracle. One with the potential to leave his own mark on the world.

A version of this pandemic pregnancy story first appeared on Being Papa. All photos contributed by Marlon Gutierrez.

We were walking home from church one Sunday. My eight-month pregnant wife started telling me about some woman at her company who had a C-section and told the doctor to tie her tubes while he was at it.

I was only half-listening, half-watching our 4-year-old daughter play hopscotch with the cracks on the sidewalk. Suddenly, I heard, “Well, one of us should get something like that done.”

Then she gave me a “you’re up, buddy” pat on the back.

That’s how I learned I was getting a vasectomy.

To be fair, there wasn’t a whole lot to discuss. Like most New Yorkers, the joy of finding out we were having another child soon gave way to “Um, where are we going to put this thing? And how are we going to pay for everything it needs?” (Answer: Make it up as we go).

We already had a mutual understanding that two kids would be all we could handle. Still, some mental hurdles had to be cleared. There’s a difference between “I prefer not to” and “biologically impossible.” A vas difference. (Dad humor badge unlocked!) When people in white coats start throwing around terms like “unwanted fertility” and “sterilization consent,” the idea of using condoms no longer seems like such a hassle.

The more I thought about it, though, the more it made sense. We’re in our 40s. Even if we had more money than we knew what to do with and more space than we’d ever need, the fact was that at some point the risks of something going wrong are too much of a gamble. Down syndrome, birth defects, miscarriage – you name it, the odds of it happening get exponentially higher for a pregnant woman in her 40s.

Besides, pregnancy No. 2 wasn’t as smooth as No. 1. My wife’s abdominal wall separated, which is as pleasant as it sounds. A few weeks later, we discovered by accident that the baby had a heart condition which required an emergency C-section. Our son would spend his first 10 days in the NICU. (He’s fine.) Another pregnancy would bring even greater risks, and frankly, she had done enough. The time had come to take one for the team. A team, I might add, that wouldn’t exist without her. When I think about it, my only regret is that she and I didn’t meet earlier in life. But I guess that’s better than never meeting at all.

Your vasectomy may vary from mine

If you’re curious, the vasectomy process is pretty straight forward unless you go to Dr. Nick from The Simpsons or something. My urologist did have a weird habit of explaining crucial details while he was handling my scrotum the way the rest of us would test an avocado to see if it was ripe or needed another day (“Sorry, Doc, I’m going to need you to go over that again. My focus was … elsewhere”).

Due to having an undescended testicle removed, I only have one in operation (potent as it may be), and it rides high, so I had to go to the OR to have the surgery. In most cases, however, you can have a vasectomy done in a urologist’s office. The most uncomfortable thing was the “cold wash” they give you on the operating table.  They’re not kidding around with that. It felt like it was zero degrees Kelvin. My manhood was trying to shrivel up and hide like a cat sensing a thunderstorm.

But then … it was over. They were wheeling me to the recovery room and that was that.

The bounce back was OK, too – just follow medical advice. I was up and walking around inside of 45 minutes. Icing and Tylenol take care of most discomfort. Just avoid lifting/strenuous activity for two weeks — say, during March Madness if you time it right — and you’re set.

As I was getting ready to leave the nurse casually said, “Oh, you might have some blood in your ejaculate for a few days.” Forget an angry deity, that’s a great way to stop boys from masturbating. Alas, it wasn’t something that came to pass for me.

My wife picked me up from the hospital and we took a cab home. As fate would have it, it was Valentine’s Day. Some guys get chocolates for their ladies, I made sure she would never get pregnant again. Needless to say, we were staying in that night. Being the cook of the house, we were also ordering in. As the four of us sat down for dinner, I took stock of the woman I married, and the two children we had created. In the middle of the kitchen table sat a vase. The roses I had gotten her were in full bloom.

So was our family.

To My Unborn Son,

We haven’t met and yet I’ve held you as close as I can. Even though our eyes haven’t locked, you have me wrapped around your little finger. You might have heard my voice already but have no clue who it is.

I am someone who will play a rather significant role in your life.

I am your dad.

That’s right. That guy with brown eyes, strong arms and a loving heart. That guy who looks like he knows what to do when it comes to parenting but yet it is obvious he really has no clue. I’m the guy who enjoys watching baseball and reading a good book. I’m also that guy who will get down and play a board game with you, teach you how to play, and how to become the man I can only hope to be.

I am that dad who will be staying up late at night, wondering how we are going to make it to the next paycheck. I did that quite a bit during the nine months you were with your mother. I sat down in the basement under a single lamp, head in my hands, wondering how this will all work out and worried about when the next set of bills would come.

But then, I look at a sonogram picture taken of you only a few weeks ago. A picture of that told us you were going to be a little boy and that makes all that worry worth it.

I’m that dad who worries so much because I care so deeply about the family you are about to enter. I’m that dad who wants to provide for you so you can live a life I never lived. I’m that dad who wants to give you the experiences I couldn’t have growing up in a small town in western Kansas.

Yes, I’m that dad.

I’m that dad who will do anything to make sure you are safe. I’m that dad who will make sure you come into a loving home and are cared for the moment you enter into this world.

Yes. I am that dad.

To be honest son, I have no clue how to parent two children. I barely knew how to parent one. I may go back and read some of those early posts I wrote when it was just your brother and you will see I had NO CLUE. I would even argue that I still don’t get this whole parenting thing. But you know what? I’m going to try my best. I can’t promise I will get it right all the time, but I’ll do my best. That’s all you can really ask for right?

Yes … I am that dad who will at least try.

I’ve loved you from the moment we knew you were coming our way. Sometimes, it won’t be easy to love you because you will antagonize your brother or you will stay out after curfew with the neighbor girl (who will be your age by the way and I’ve already talked to her dad and he guesses he will let you date her). While it won’t always be easy, I will still love you.

I will love you from the moment I hold you in my arms at the hospital to the moment I take my last breath. I know it is difficult to realize that I won’t always be there for you and your brother, but it is something that I am grappling with myself right now. I won’t always be there for the two of you and your mother. And you know what? That keeps me up at night more so than the bills that have to go unpaid for one more month.

I won’t always be there to tell you right from wrong. I won’t always be there to stand in your doorway watching you play with Legos in your room. I won’t always be there to give you that fatherly advice that you need. I won’t always be there to tell you it is going to be OK when your girlfriend breaks up with you and that someday you are going to find someone as great as your mother. I hope I can make it that long.

I don’t really want to stay up at night wondering if we will be able to make it to the next paycheck because we needed to take you to the doctor for an unexpected visit. I want to be that dad who has it all put together. I want our family to be the one who looks like it has it all. I want to be that dad who will always love you … no … matter… what.

Son, the next however many years are going to be interesting, fun, hysterical, difficult, and happy … yes, probably all at the same time. My hope is that you can bear with me as I try to be the parent you want me to be.

I love you, my unborn son,
Dad

A version of “Open Letter to My Unborn Son” first appeared on The Rookie Dad. Unborn son photo: Brandon Billinger

Sounds had become muted. Screaming. My vision was flooded. Screaming. I could only try, and fail, to stem an unbidden river flowing down my face. Screaming.

+  +  +

I was about to learn what fear really was.

“Get her in surgery! Now, now!”

I thought I knew what it was to be scared. I have been in fights, car accidents, and have been told by doctors that I would die. But I was never scared before. Not really.

“Sir! You have to stay here, sir!”

The pregnancy had gone well so we expected the birth of our child to go smoothly. Robin ran marathons and triathlons. She was always running, biking, swimming, or climbing the Empire State Building every morning. She was in great shape, and it allowed her to carry the pregnancy well.

“Here’s a chair, sir. Sir, here’s a chair.”

We did everything right. We saw the doctor. We took birth classes. Robin would read aloud how the baby had developed every week, and recorded her progress with pictures. I wrote silly blogs about the classes.

“Just sit down, sir.”

The due date came and went but the baby was comfortably ensconced. About a week later, it was decided labor would be induced. We spent the night in the hospital, waiting for the labor process to run its course.

And then something went wrong.

Roxanne, our nurse, was standing by Robin with her hands on my wife’s belly when I returned with some ice. She turned to me and in an overly calm voice said, “Sweetie, I need you to go to the desk and get the residents.”

Years ago, delirious and woozy, I was brought to the Emergency Room by a friend who, as it turned out, was correct in his concern for me. What followed next was two solid months in the hospital.

I’d had no real idea how serious my condition was, but I was rushed in immediately by the triage nurse and the examination room filled up with doctors, all speaking in the same overly calm voice Roxanne had just used. I knew there was something seriously wrong then. Even through the thick delirium in my brain.

So when our delivery room began filling up with hospital staff early that morning I began to feel my first twinge of fear. Real fear.

“Not liking the readings.”

The stereotypes say you get a chill down your spine. Cold sweats. Numbness. Invisible icy fingers. Many allegories equate fear with frigid temperatures.

“Can someone page the doctor?”

The nice doctor who had been assigned to us came sprinting into the room right then, out of breath. She shouldered her way through the half dozen people surrounding my wife.

“Let me see, let me see!”

Fear feels like there is a bubble in the middle of your head that was not there before. It expands immediately, and it pushes all of your thoughts and emotions out of its way. It becomes difficult to think, and impossible to experience any other emotion.

“The baby’s heartbeat is down.”

It is as if you have a balloon in your head. Not light-headedness exactly, as I could imagine pressure pushing out from the inside of my skull. My body had gone numb insofar as I was no longer considering it at all.

“We need to go for a C-section right now.”

I began to lumber up from my seat but by the time I was standing, they had rushed Robin out of the room. I plodded after them to see them disappear through double doors and that’s when a nurse stopped me.

The balloon in my head was screaming. Incoherently. Unrelentingly. It was taking maximum effort to not lose it completely. Screaming in my head. Screaming. Screaming.

As the nurse led me to a chair I could see a group of young med students. In mid-tour, they had witnessed the whole thing. They were new at this and none of them had the practiced calm of the veterans. Some flushed red, some drained pale. All reflected how I felt.

Sounds had become muted. Screaming. My vision was flooded. Screaming. I could only try, and fail, to stem an unbidden river flowing down my face. Screaming.

A nurse had come out of the Operating Room and was telling me to follow her. She had scrubs for me. Before I could change into them, another nurse had appeared.

“Mr. MacDonald, the baby is out, everything is fine.”

This is where I felt the chill. The balloon in my head popped, and like a sudden rush of air, the screaming shot down through my body, dusting me with snow. I had to concentrate on keeping steady.

I wanted to ask if she was sure; if Robin was OK; can I see them; what happened; how does our son look? But my mouth wouldn’t work. Instead I made a vague twirling with my finger next to my head. She smiled and said the baby would be right out.

And then he was in front of me. Liam. Emotion flooded back into the shell that was my body. Another river. But no screaming, so that was OK.

The students were still standing there. All of them were beaming. I walked with Liam past them to their congratulations. Some of them were crying with me.

Robin is fine. When our doctor came to tell me the good news, we embraced long and hard. I made a point to find Roxanne later to thank her. Without her sharp eye, maybe I don’t have a son now, maybe not even a wife.

The whole incident from start to birth, took about five minutes. It turned out to not be that big a deal, actually. We were in the hospital in case anything went wrong, and the staff there reacted quickly and knew just what to do.

While it was natural to feel fear, it didn’t help the situation, and made the whole thing seem a lot worse than it was. And those feelings of fear were melted away by the love for our son. That was far stronger.

This morning, as I left for work, Robin was holding Liam gently. Our fat cat, Mickey, preened in the sunbeam that flooded them with gold.

It is a snapshot in my mind I will treasure forever.