I am Kyle's self-indulgence

Finally things have slowed down enough for me to write a little bit here. On Friday last week we went to Erika's scheduled check-up. The doctor was a little concerned that she still hadn't gone into labor despite being dilated four centimeters for nearly two weeks, so we just went straight to the hospital and induced labor. Erika had regular contractions throughout the evening and night, but the baby had still not moved down enough to be delivered, so around 7:00 in the morning we agreed to a C-Section.

After the baby was born and we were back in a private hospital room and all of our friends and family had left, we decided to take a rest. It was afternoon by this time: we had both been up all night and were physically and emotionally exhausted. When I lay down to go to sleep, though, my mind was swimming with the intense experiences of the day. Unable to rest, I got up, borrowed a pen and paper from the nurses' station, and began to write about the experience.

I was going to go back through this and revise it before showing it to anyone, but in the several days since then my emotions have levelled out a little and I've become slightly accustomed to the presence of our new baby. I'm afraid that trying to rewrite my experiences now will lose some of the intensity and freshness of the moment immediately after. So here is what I wrote on the afternoon of Daniel's birth, more or less unchanged.

The birth was every bit as emotional as I expected. I was already a mess after sitting up with Erika all night during the labor, and a little dismayed at how we had gradually gone against everything in our plan for a natural labor: starting with the induction, continuing with the epidural, and finally ending with the C-Section.

I sat nervously, trying to keep my composure as they prepared Erika for her surgery. I sat holding her hand, trying to ignore whatever cutting was happening on the other side of the sheet, when Dr. Smith said, "Do you want to stand up and see your baby?" I looked over the sheet and saw my son (MY SON!) emerge head-first from Erika's stomach and take his first breath. Cliched as it is, "miraculous" is the only word to describe the sight. It felt like I was only half there, like I was seeing it through someone else's eyes. At the same time, it was the most real experience I've ever had. My joy erupted in uncontrollable crying. I didn't even attempt any words, for fear of ruining such a pure moment. Masked doctors all around me offered congratulations, which I barely acknowledged through my sobs.