As I screech into my driveway, I’m running the flip-flop of what’s going on through my mind for the fifteen hundredth time in the last twenty minutes. As I’m vowing for the last time that this is going to get personal if this is a joke, our neighbor came out on the porch with my son in her arms and says she just got back from dropping my wife at the emergency door of our hospital four blocks away. I must have had that deer-in-the-headlights look as my mouth was saying words that had nothing to do with what my mind was processing. How could this all change and happen so fast? The bewildered look on Steph’s face (yep, her name was Stephanie. LMAO) said “what the hell is wrong with you? She’s the one having the baby!” as I jerked open the car door one more time.

It seemed to take longer to get to the hospital and park the car and get to the right desk than the whole morning had been until now. This was really happening. It wasn’t the “I think something’s happening” when she had woke me from a nap we had taken the Saturday evening after we both ate a steak dinner before our first son. There hadn’t been any two hours of timing contractions this time. By the time I was lead to the “father’s waiting room”, I starting to wonder if everything is alright. The room was empty except for the five chairs, the cigarette machine, and the small table in the center. There wasn’t even a two year old National Geographic in the room. The fathers waiting room wasn’t even on the same floor as the maternity ward. I already knew the elevator was right outside the door from last time, but I also knew that fathers had to be kept FAR away from mothers in labor. I guess they knew fathers would drive them nuts with questions if there was somebody to ask.

Was she going to have another two and a half hours of labor again? Was everything OK? The doctor seemed to think things were right just yesterday. How could all this happen so fast? Was something going on I didn’t know about? Was the preverbal cord wrapped around my baby’s neck? That was the most common birth complication. We thought being so close to the hospital and the doctor’s office was a great thing. He was in a building just down the street. My fist visit to this room was on New Years eve, just over a year ago. I thought then was maybe the nurses would try to hold her back that time to have the first New Years baby in the city and get their pictures in the paper or something, but not this time. He had been over a week overdue. This time he wasn’t even due for another nine days. I had to find SOMEBODY to find out what had gone wrong just as a nurse came in and told me to “go upstairs and turn to the right. Your baby in the window down the hall on the left.” WOW! …… Zip zing! I hadn’t been there a half hour and my son is born. There was no fooling around this Aril first! It seemed like the elevator was being pulled up to the next floor by a chipmunk running in a wheel. I knew here had to be stairs that would be faster, but it would take time to find them and I would lose time there. Besides I was already trapped in the slow-motion elevator.

This was fantastic! Everything had gone so fast. Everything was OK……………. Wasn’t it? Was my wife OK? How could there be a baby so fast from a woman who didn’t have a thing to say about it except “I want this to be over” just a few hours ago. Of course everything was OK with the baby. They wouldn’t send me to see my baby in the window if something had really gone wrong. My wife! Wouldn’t they tell me something different besides “go see your baby” if something was wrong? I took some BIG steps down the hall to the picture window. It was a room with rows of work carts with deep parts pans full of pink and blue blankets and babies. They had one cart up to the front window with a little red, naked girl baby in it. My eyes started to sweep around for my son. This had all happened so fast, I guess they hadn’t gotten him over here yet. An explosion happened in my head so fast that a bunch of unrelated facts flashed past in a jumbled order before my head started to move with my eyes. I focused on the pink tag on the cart that said
“Fanatic
Girl”.

***GONG***

I looked back down at the wrinkled, red, baby girl that was my .....DAUGHTER. The word “stun” suddenly was a completely new word to me. The only thing I am sure of is that the frozen man standing there WAS frozen for a LONG time, as a whole new window of life opened. As the flood of NEW concepts washed over me they never include the vision of what a magnificent person this beautiful women would become or the fantastic mother that the world was getting.

The puzzle? That was deciding on something immediately that had never been discussed. We had to find a name for our GIRL.

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