I didn’t feel ready.
Not when they handed my wife the hospital gown and rattled off a list of instructions. Not when they decided it was time to break her water. Not when I watched the monitors track each contraction like a slow build toward something… unknown. Enormous. Not even when the nurse came in and told us it was time.
I don’t know what I was expecting would happen next. Losing my mother at a young age, I’ve always worried about my wife when she’s anything but the picture of perfect health. I remember a shift in the anxiety I felt. I’d sat with her for 14 hours that day while nothing much happened, but then it seemed that everything happened all at once.
It was an oddly quiet moment when I knew our lives would change forever.
It was December 30, 2003, and I had just turned 25. Our first child was about to be born.
When we got to the hospital early that morning, they put us in a delivery room where we waited for over an hour before anyone remembered we were there. The delivery ward was busy, the weather outside less than accommodating to people in active labor, and there we were.
My wife — at least on the outside — seemed perfectly calm. Braver than me, by far.
The day passed in fits and starts. We made several laps around the delivery ward, hoping labor would progress well on its own. Then, we were back in the room, my wife hooked up to all the monitors. Trying to guess what each blip on the screen meant. Progress was slow and the baby was stubborn. Nobody said C-section, but in the back of my mind I always knew that was a possibility.
Right about 8:00 p.m., it was time to start pushing. A few pushes, and we saw his head, but it took another 45 minutes of pushing to get him here. He came out, a little worse for wear, a little stubborn, and loud — car alarm loud.
Eight pounds, nine ounces. A full head of dark hair. Head a bit squished from too much time waiting to come out. Strong lungs. Our boy was here.
I can’t articulate what I felt the first time I held him. My wife used to describe the rapid expansion of love for someone as making her heart hurt — sometimes that kind of growth can be almost painful.
It felt like something had burst inside me, and not just emotion. It was responsibility, awe, terror, love, anxiety, unknowing. All tangled together.
He was here, and I didn’t feel ready.
Our son wouldn’t stop screaming long enough to latch on properly. My wife was in pain and exhausted. We hadn’t slept in more than 24 hours. At one point, I asked the nurse to take him back to the nursery because I couldn’t keep going.
I couldn’t keep going. My wife had been in labor all day and I was the one too exhausted to listen to the crying.
Honestly, I felt ashamed. That was more than 21 years ago and there’s still a twinge of guilt there.
I marveled at our son — such a tiny, perfect, wailing human that had just come into the world. I loved him and my wife more than I could ever put into words.
But I thought I had to be more put together. Be more resilient. Know how to be a dad right away. I couldn’t accept that showing up broken is still showing up.
It was after midnight when I got back to our apartment. I tried to sleep, but couldn’t. I had terrible nightmares. I felt sick. I experienced my first panic attack as I sat in our bed for three hours trying to calm down as sweat poured down my face and my heart raced. I called my parents a few hours later and my bonus mom walked me through what I was feeling.
It took hours before I could make myself drive back to the hospital.
I walked into that hospital room. My wife, in spite of having her own rough night, looked radiant to me. Our little boy was asleep next to her in the oversized plastic tray that was his first bassinet.
I held him again. This time for hours. I didn’t have any answers. I didn’t feel in control of anything, but somehow I knew everything was going to be okay. More than okay. In those moments, holding my first child, I felt like whatever happened, everything was right in the universe.
It was such a dramatic shift from the feelings I’d had the night before.
There was an echo of recognition that to figure out this whole parent thing, all I had to do was keep showing up.
Over time, I’ve realized that readiness is rarely — maybe never — a feeling. It’s a decision.
That day was the first of so many where I moved forward even though I didn’t feel ready. First day home with the baby. First sleepless week. First presentation to people more experienced than I. First resignation letter submitted without a backup plan. Four more children and a miscarriage. Cancer. Surgery.
Even today, I don’t feel ready for so much of what I’m doing. I’m trying to build a better, more intentional life. Trying to be a better partner to my amazing wife, a better father, a better version of myself.
But I never feel like I’ve arrived.
There’s always more to learn. More to face. More to carry.
And maybe that’s the whole point.
There’s always going to be something else, and I just had to stop waiting.
Waiting to feel qualified. Or certain. Waiting for the chaos to calm. Or for the fear to go away.
Some of the most meaningful things in my life began on the other side of that uncertainty. Where fear didn’t disappear, but I moved anyway.
Not because I had everything figured out. But because there’s life waiting to be lived on the other side of anxiety and discomfort.
And I want to be in it.
No comments:
Post a Comment