Earlier this year, I wrote of the transcendent experience of seeing a total solar eclipse in person and stated that "nothing, nothing, can prepare you for what it's like... until you actually do it yourself." I'm very blessed that 2024 has now brought a second experience about which I could say the same thing: witnessing the birth of one's first child.
On my first date with Erin, sitting across from her at a table at Cloak and Dagger cocktail bar, I did not wait all that long in our conversation before saying, "So, I saw on your [dating app] profile that you do want to have kids." Pretty forward, yes, but why not? When you're dating in your late 30s and looking for a life partner and you have an absolute deal breaker, it's logical to be clear about that from the start.
Oddly enough, it turned out that each of us had just recently broken up with previous partners over the issue of us really wanting to have kids and our exes not being able to commit to the idea!
And now here we were, 27 months later, counting down the days until the birth of our first child. Life comes at you fast.
Erin had expressed hope that our baby would be a "high achieving baby" by being among the roughly 5% who are born on their due dates. This did not end up happening. It was an odd mental space in which we found ourselves in the days leading up to and then following the due date. The most amazing and life-changing event would be happening to us, and we knew it would be happening soon, but we had no idea exactly when it would be happening. One of those days, though, it would just happen - and then bam, life forever altered.
A couple days after the due date, early in the afternoon on a to that point lazy weekend day, I was waking from a nap when Erin walked into the bedroom and said, "I think my water just broke."
Water (or amniotic fluid, to be more precise) breaking, as some people undoubtedly know and others probably don't, doesn't usually happen in the dramatic way it does in movies. And so it was for Erin. It was a slow leak of fluid and she didn't know for sure whether it was her water breaking, she just suspected it was. Usually it's an event that happens in the early stages of labor, but sometimes it happens before the onset of labor. Erin had not yet gone into labor. She had already made plans to hang out with a friend that day, following the theory that if she had plans, she would go into labor in order to throw off those plans. And so she decided, why not go on with the plans?
The three of us went for a nice walk at Shaker Lakes. Erin hoped the physical activity would help bring on labor, but to no avail. The three of us went out for dinner at the Fairmount, a fitting choice as it was where Erin and I had celebrated her positive pregnancy test in November (I somehow didn't think of the significance when I suggested it!). Then Erin and I went home. She figured she'd probably go into labor during the night.
Still, it didn't happen.
And so the next morning, after we'd eaten a pancake breakfast I cooked, we headed to the hospital. Erin had hoped to go into labor when her body and the baby decided it was time, not to be induced. But with PROM (premature rupture of membranes, i.e., early water breaking) there's an increased risk of infection if you wait too long for labor. Still a small risk, but even a small risk is worth avoiding if it's a risk of something really bad.
It was a surreal feeling, driving to the hospital. This was really happening. We were going to the hospital a married couple, Erin and Jeff. We'd be leaving the hospital Erin, Jeff, and a baby, a family of three.
The first few hours at the hospital were uneventful. Erin wanted to give it a little more time to see if she'd go into labor naturally, and was permitted to do this, but still, it didn't happen. Reluctantly, late in the afternoon she agreed to start intravenous Pitocin (a synthetic version of the hormone oxytocin) to induce labor. And then it was on!
Besides not being induced, another even stronger desire Erin had had about her labor was that she would do it unmedicated, not with an epidural. It's often said that contractions induced by Pitocin are especially strong, which could make it difficult to stick to this unmedicated birth plan. At first, though, the contractions didn't seem like that big a deal. Erin described the feeling as being like her period. She began to think, maybe this wouldn't be so bad.
She would later look back on those thoughts and think how naive she'd been.
In the early hours of labor we were basically just hanging out and watching the Olympics on TV. It was around 10 pm that things began to pick up in intensity. It no longer felt to Erin like being on her period. The contractions gradually started to get stronger... and stronger and stronger.
I look back on it with a sense of awe. Things were happening in Erin's body that she'd never felt before and that I, as a man, probably can't even begin to imagine. I don't know what it's like to feel what she was feeling, but it was very clear that very intensely painful sensations were periodically coursing through her. I could only watch and try to offer support as best I could. A birth doula Erin had hired was also present to offer support and (as it turned out) much needed guidance.
One role I had was to provide the soundtrack for Erin's labor. Around 11:30, when things seemed to really be happening, I decided it was time for some tunes so I muted the TV and pulled up the music on my laptop. Erin had previously said that she thought she would like a mix of classic rock plus the Spotify playlist "I Think I'm Hitting a Wall: A Running Playlist by the National" (a selection of running-appropriate songs by one of our favorite indie rock bands, its title a reference to a lyric of theirs). I hadn't put together a playlist in advance so I opened Spotify and put on the National playlist.
That playlist contains 20 songs. Over the course of the 76 minute runtime, labor got more and more intense. Shortly after midnight, Erin remembered that she wanted to log her labor as a Strava activity, and started the recording on her watch. Another reminder of why I love her. She ended up burning a lot of calories in that activity!
I did my best to offer Erin any help I could, following her and the doula's suggestions, as she rode the heightening waves of the contractions. In between contractions, I was putting together a playlist to play when the National playlist ended. Based on the contents of that playlist, it seemed Erin was looking for driving, energetic rock music.
I'll never forget Erin's reaction upon hearing the opening notes of the first song of my hastily assembled playlist, "Black Dog" by Led Zeppelin: a sudden glare in my direction, and the single word "NO!"
Welp, so much for my playlist. Zeppelin was apparently not the vibe Erin now wanted. I remember at this point the doula asking Erin, who was breathing through a painful contraction, what she wanted: music or no music (music), what kind of music (calmer music), lyrics or no lyrics (lyrics), and I scrambled to bring up something that would better fit the mood. I struggled at first but eventually made some selections that worked well, and in fact, both Erin and the doula complimented my soundtrack after all was said and done.
It was about 1 am when Erin violently vetoed my Zeppelin song choice. She was having quite a rough time then, and it got worse for the next hour. On more than one occasion, during contractions, she exclaimed, "I can't do this! I need an epidural!"
She had made it clear beforehand that she did not want an epidural. I would not have judged her at all for deciding to get one, but I also knew that if she made it through without going that route, she would feel very proud of herself afterwards, whereas if she got an epidural, she might end up wishing she hadn't.
There's something about pushing one's body to its absolute physical limits. It's valuable to know how that feels. Erin said something to this effect afterwards, and from witnessing what she went through, I very much believe that she did this during labor. I'll never know what it feels like to give birth, of course, but pushing my body to its limits is something I did many, many times during my distance running career, so I very much appreciate and relate to that sentiment. Thinking about it made me realize that there are probably a lot of people who go their entire lives without knowing the feeling of truly pushing their body to its limits, which I find interesting to ponder.
Anyway, I didn't say anything to Erin about whether she should or should not in fact get an epidural, but was planning, if she continued to say she wanted an epidural, to ask her between contractions whether that was just what she felt in the moment during the height of the contraction, or if it was what she really wanted deep down. There was never a need for this conversation, though, because the doula made a suggestion that changed the whole course of Erin's labor in a way that seemed miraculous: perhaps Erin should try getting in the shower.
The exact way that events unfolded is already hazy, but another moment that stands out, from after Erin started mentioning an epidural but before she got in the shower, was that a new intern MD checked Erin's cervix, and said that he wasn't totally sure, but he thought she was very close to fully dilated. This raised Erin's hopes that the immense pain she was experiencing might not have to continue too much longer. The newbie doctor had to have a resident check his work, though.
The resident reported that Erin was in fact barely more dilated than she'd been when was admitted to the hospital.
This, needless to say, was very discouraging to Erin, who was suffering through pain like nothing she'd ever felt and now seemed to be making little progress for all her struggles!
At this point she was given the option to go with the epidural, but decided instead to try the shower. She did this at about 2 am. I and the doula took turns spraying hot water on Erin's back as she did her best to position her body and use her breathing to get through the contractions.
It took some time, but eventually this really started to work. The contractions were clearly still extraordinarily intense, but now somehow manageable to Erin. She seemed to settle into this state that was simultaneously primal and zen. It's hard to describe, perhaps because I've never seen anything like it. I just know it was amazing and having witnessed it makes me admire my wife even more than I already did.
I also know that I'll never again be able to listen to Bon Iver's 2011 album Bon Iver, Bon Iver without being transported back to that scene of Erin in the shower stall in the dimly lit delivery room. Somehow the vibes of that album, one of a few I picked after abandoning the playlist I made, were perfect for a meditative labor experience in the middle of the night (I also can't imagine the same scene playing out in the light of day; perhaps it could have but in my mind's eye the vibes would be all wrong).
Erin spent about two hours in that shower, a span of time that somehow felt simultaneously shorter and longer. And eventually she began to feel that something was happening. The pushing stage, once it officially began, was incredibly short. Erin was back in bed, her cervix was checked again and she was now fully dilated, an IV was hastily put in her arm (hilariously, Erin very calmly said "Do you like cats?" to the nurse putting in the IV, who was wearing a cat necklace), an urgent call was sent out for the delivery team to get into the room, I took a seat next to Erin and grabbed her hand, a bunch of people rushed in (I was vaguely aware of all the people since my attention was all on Erin), and then the head was emerging and Erin pushed a couple more times and suddenly, our baby was being placed on her chest!
At first, it didn't even seem real. For a moment the baby didn't quite register as a human being in my mind. But rapidly it started to sink in. This was our baby. Our baby was here.
The doula took some pictures during and immediately after the birth. They're really nice pictures for Erin and me to have but not pictures we'd share with a wide audience. One really funny thing about the pictures is the facial expression I'm wearing in quite a few of them. Here's a cropped pic:
Based on the pictures, my face was apparently frozen like this for some period of time. I don't know if my face had ever before produced that exact expression. I was almost in shock but simultaneously overjoyed.
We had chosen not to learn the sex in advance. We both had a modest preference for a girl but would have been thrilled with a healthy baby either way. It turned out we did have a girl. This was convenient, since we'd still failed to agree on a boy name!
Time of birth was 4:43 am. Clearly, now the most significant minute of my life. I'd heard it said before that becoming a parent profoundly changes a person like few other things do. And it really does. You've lived your whole life, for me 41 years, and there are so many interests you have, passions you pursue, people whose lives impact yours, and then in this one moment there is this new person who enters the world where before there was only (from my point of view, at least; it's somewhat different for the mother who's carried the baby inside her) a vague concept of a person-to-be, and in that moment this new person becomes the center of your world, surpassing in importance everything that was important before.
Another profound change I've noticed is that I'm thinking about the future much more than I ever previously did. Thinking, with excitement and curiosity and awe, about all the things our child might do in the coming years.
Erin and I instantly fell in love with our daughter (I'll forever cherish the memory of seeing our precious little girl, minutes after birth, open her eyes for the first time), and fell more in love with each other in the process. We've gone on quite a few big adventures together in the relatively short time we've known each other. It's so corny but also so true to say: this will be our biggest adventure yet.
