The Name
“We’re going to have a girl, today” I said groggily as I woke up that morning, “and we still don’t have a name picked out. Have any new ideas?” No answer.
I’m not the kind to jump out of bed in the morning and just start the day. There is a ritual. Slowly I sit up and prop myself up with one arm. Today, my wife Joy is already dressed and has the suitcase on the bed. “Come on, Tim. This is one day we can’t be late,” she said to me all too seriously. Joy is the organized one – always prepared, always ready, always keeping me on track. But things hadn’t gone exactly as she planned with this baby. Joy was two weeks overdue, and the doctor decided we couldn’t wait any longer, so today would be the day and the doctors would induce labor.
Still groggy and not fully awake, I stubbornly stick to my ritual and saunter over to the shower. As I let the steam and hot water wash over me, my mind slowly starts to engage and I couldn’t help but to think to myself: A girl. What do we name a girl? There are so many cool boy names. There’s Alan, Joey, Bo, Nick, Tony – Eh, Tony!! How you doin’?I chuckle to myself and then realize I had gotten off track, again. I must somehow focus on girl’s names. Despite my desperate searching for a name, nothing comes to me. My friend and a father of three told me the birth of a child is a miracle, and when it happens, I will find out exactly what he means. Right now, just finding the right name seems as if it will take a miracle.
The Hospital
“We’re here for a 7:30am appointment. The name is Dotson.” announces my wife as we walk up to the hospital’s front desk. I wondered why we were here so early. Well, it sure beats having your child at 3:00am!
As we were led down the hallway to our room, I noticed things did not look the way I have always pictured a hospital. Fortunately, I’ve had a fairly healthy life so I hadn’t needed to be in a hospital for many years. The most vivid memories of a hospital were of my aunt who was dying of cancer 20 years before. The hospitals then seemed devoid of all color, as if the life had gone out it. The walls were white, the ceilings were white, the floors were white, and the doctors and nurses were dressed in white. Then there was the smell. That smell was the same as when a teacher pulled a dead worm from a jar in class once. I cannot forget that smell. The machines that were charged with keeping my aunt alive by breathing for her were monstrous and imposing, with its giant metal appendages and plastic tubes that seemed to run endlessly in every direction. I felt surrounded by a lack of life. To a child of six, it was quite intimidating. There was nothing good, or even the slightest bit hopeful about it, and there would be no miracle for my aunt. A few weeks later, the kind smiling women who always had a cookie for me was gone, as lifeless as the room that held her in those final hours.
But now, things were very different here. There was warmth. The door to our room was a beautiful walnut stain. We walked inside to see a room that resembled a nicer hotel, and I may have been fooled into thinking so, had it not been for the absence of carpet. The walls had a warm dark red lower area with a flowered chair rail, and a tan color that finished off the upper half. The bed was made with a nice comforter on top, and there was a very comfy recliner next to the bed, along with a few chairs. There was a nice sized color TV in the room too. I asked Joy, “Is this really where we will have the baby?”
The doctor came in and explained the process. “Go ahead and get into your gown and hop into bed. The nurse will set you up with an I.V. of the labor inducing drug, Pitocin, and that should get things started. We’ll check in with you every 30 minutes and monitor for any progress.” We spent the next 7 hours talking, reading, talking, watching TV, reading, but still no baby. We started wondering if something was wrong. As a diversion, we talked once again about the name. Joy mentioned that she really liked the name Cara but my cousin just had a baby and had named her Cara so it just didn’t feel right to me. We read from a book of different girl’s names with their meanings, but nothing was really coming. As the afternoon wore on with nothing happening and I started to wonder what was taking so long. I was about to find out.
The Arrival
“Tim,” my wife said with urgency, “my water just broke!” We called the nurse in and in an instant, a number of nurses and our doctor entered the room like a well rehearsed dance team whose choreography transformed our hotel room into a hospital room. There suddenly appeared railings that popped out of the side of the bed. From the ceiling, what once was a nice looking light fixture dropped down on a hinged arm to become a light that the doctor could direct to see exactly what he was doing. The nice wooden cabinets at the far side of the bed became a tray that wheeled out next to the doctor, to give him all the tools he may need for delivery. Joy labored for two hours, but our daughter still had a mind of her own and decided to stay where it was nice and warm.
The doctor had a calming voice and a gentle smile and had been talking to Joy most of the time. To my surprise, he began to speak directly to me. “I’d like to move Joy to another room. There is more appropriate equipment there, just in case.” As he said this, his smile was gone. He was still calm, but a sense of urgency suddenly hit me right between the eyes. I couldn’t help thinking, “Just in case of what?” I noticed now that the bed that once made me think of a nice hotel had wheels, and we began to head down the hallway to the other room. This room had much more equipment in it. While it still had color, it felt much cooler from the tones of light blue and white. The softness was gone too, replaced with stainless steel and a flood of bright lights that filled the entire room. The doctor appeared in scrubs, and I finally put two and two together.
“So what do we have to do, Doctor?” I asked.
“I still have hope for a natural child birth, but the longer we wait, the higher the chance we will have to go ahead and operate,” he said as if there was nothing to worry about. My trebling stomach didn’t agree and certainly he could see the look of tremendous concern in my eyes. Then the doctor stated to the room, “Why don’t we call John in here?”
John was a nurse who had assisted on many such occasions. Like a relief pitcher who waits calmly in the bullpen until the game is on the line, he steps up to the mound and uses his unique skill when the game is on the line. John, an older man slight of build, walked in and smiled at Joy with a huge grin. Everyone’s spirit in the room seemed to lift as he exchanged greetings with the staff at hand. There was no more seriousness, but a refreshing happiness as John began to talk to Joy in a way that made me feel like she was talking to her grandpa. After talking for a while, he told her he was going to help her a bit and that she shouldn’t need to do all that pushing by herself. When the next contraction came, he pushed carefully but firmly on the top of her belly. After a few of these contractions, and with John’s help, our unwilling daughter finally decided there was no use fighting it, and a natural delivery was finally completed.
Fatherhood Begins
“Time of birth: 7:47 pm,” said the doctor. I smiled, thinking how I will never forget that time, the same as a 747 aircraft. He took our baby over to weigh her, and I watched as this beautiful tiny girl, all red, pink and white, looked at me and cried softly, shivering as her skin felt the cool air for the first time in her life. My thoughts turned to that friend who said that birth is a miracle. Now that I saw this beautiful being, so delicate and tiny, squinting in the light looking directly at me for answers of why she had to leave that warm, quiet place and enter this bright, loud, cold world. I now knew exactly what he meant. The nurse bundled her up and surprised me by placing her directly into my arms. I carried her over and laid her gently onto her mother’s chest, and so it began. I was now a dad. I had to learn how to be a dad, and my daughter had to learn, well, everything.
With all the excitement complete, the activities wind down and we all spend the night in our recovery room as a brand new family, but we still hadn’t decided on the name. It was very late now and we all quietly fell asleep. The next day, I woke up early and ran home to quickly shower. My morning ritual had changed, as it would from this day forward.
Epilogue: The Name, Part II
On the way back, I noticed I had a song in my head. A sly grin began to form as I realized the song buzzing in my brain was “I’m your baby tonight” by Whitney Houston. “That’s it!!” I yell out loud to my steering wheel. I zoom back up to our room with excitement in my heart – hoping for one more miracle. “What do you think of Whitney?” I asked hopefully. “And her middle name can be Joy, because she’s beautiful, just like her mother.” A few hours later, we signed the birth certificate and it was complete. Our lives would be forever changed, transformed by the miracle of birth.
When I think back on that day, I don’t remember John leaving the operating room. As the delivery was being completed, everyone had their job to do. His work was done and he left quietly. There were no accolades for him that would have been heard by that relief pitcher. No cheers or standing ovations. There was only a silent prayer of thanks, the first prayer of a new father, to the Father of all, a prayer of thanks that He still sends His angels to perform miracles on this earth, or in this case, the operating room.