He's Here!

Meet Isaac James, 8 pounds, 1 ounce, 21 & 1/2 inches long, and flirting with nurses already.

The moments leading up to his birth were some of the worst in my life. After laboring really hard for more than 12 hours at the hospital, and another 12 before that at home, Mary's labor conked out. Officially, it's called "Ineffective labor" and it's when you stop dilating, and your cervix even begins to thicken back up. Because the labor was so intense, Isaac's heart rate was at pretty dangerous levels for most of the afternoon. When his heart rate dipped to 70 (normal is about 140 for babies), and stayed there for a couple of minutes, all of a sudden, nurses were yanking plugs out of the wall, and before I knew it we were racing down the hall way to do an emergency c section. A nurse threw blue scrubs at me and told me to put them on as fast as I could, but then to wait outside of the operating room before the c-section began.

Minutes later, I saw him come out, covered in meconium and not looking good. I raced with the nurses to another room where they cleaned him up and began sucking fluid out of his nose, mouth, and throat. I kept asking if he was going to be O.K., and I kept getting answers like, "Well, that's what we're working on." He was kind of greyish. I have never felt as sick as I felt in that moment.

Luckily, babies are very resilient, and now, 48 hours after he was born, he's doing really well. His numbers are all normal, he's eating well, and the danger has passed. I can't even begin to explain the terror and fear that gripped me on Tuesday. It was the worst experience of my life.

Now the sap begins. Holding him, and even holding his gaze for a few seconds at a time, my heart is full of something that I didn't even know was there. It actually hurts. He looks like me. It's mostly in his mouth, but he looks like me. I don't really know what has "changed" in me except to say that everything seems to have shifted to make room -- a lot of room -- for my son. And I realized that I'll never know another minute where I'm not thinking about him, at least on some level. I don't mean to over spiritualize this, but I also realize that my only option is to be the very best dad that I know how to be, learning from other dads along the way, but I need to hand his spirit and even his well being over to God, knowing that God will father and mother him in ways that I cannot.

More to come.