The Birth of a Family

My wife, Christine, and I remained childless for seven years after we were married. She never spoke, even once, about children, until we nearly completed a renovation of our first home. Out of the blue, she said,

William and Aidan

"Now that we have a house with all these rooms, we should fill them up with, you know, people."

"You mean babies?" I asked.

"Of course, what did you think?" she responded.

I was relieved that she was open to the idea of children. For a moment, I thought she was talking about homeless people.
 

Now, a routine doctors visit led to a test which came back with very bad news. A condition my wife had meant that we were not likely to conceive without help. It was one of the two times in life I saw my wife cry. Even if we were not going to have children on our own, I wanted a turn at bat. Thirty days later, much to the puzzlement of the medical experts, she was pregnant.

With a baby on the way, I started reading articles about how it's normal for some men to take a few months to love their newborns. We don't carry them so their birth is a step change for us. I remember thinking,

Aidan

"Who is this stranger coming to invade my life with my wife?"

Three weeks ahead of schedule, I was painting the oil tank when Christine went into labor. We had gone through several false labors including one trip to the hospital, all resulting in a gentle pat on the head as we were sent home. Now, I was covered in a thick mess of black, tarry paint. We had a routine appointment scheduled for the next day so I said with a certain conviction,

"I'm going to clean up, and we're all going to bed. We're gonna ignore this, and we'll deal with it in the morning."

Even though I hadn't a clue what I was talking about, it worked. The labor pains vanished. All three of us went to sleep. The next morning, just before we left for her appointment her water broke. Now, for those of you in the medical profession, mid wives, and with a stitch of common sense, you all know when the flood gates open, where do you go? To the hospital, dumb ass. We had this appointment in our heads so that's where we went. When we arrived, we were early so we sat in the waiting room. I looked to Christine and said,

"I think we can go right up there because, you know, you're in labor."

Seemed logical to Christine so she did that pregnant walk up to the counter, then stated,

"I'm in labor."

The nurse receptionist person who was wearing that odd mix of goofy medical person clothes said,

"Sure, you are, honey. Go sit down. We'll call you in a minute."

She sat back down next to me.

"What did they say?" I asked.

"They told me to sit down."

Now, I'm not a doctor, but I've watched a lot of medical shows on TV so I was pretty sure we should just go right in. I went up to the counter and said,

"My wife's in labor, and her water broke."

So they reluctantly agreed to take her in right away. The nurse person in her mismatched outfit of scrubs and flower patterns escorted us into the examination room very slowly and casually, but things changed once she examined Christine.

"Oh my God! You are in labor and your water broke. You have to get out of here!" exclaimed nurse person.

Nurse person looked directly at me and scolded, "Why didn't you take her straight to the hospital dumb ass?"

I don't think she said "dumb ass," but that's what I heard. She did have a valid question and getting more valid by the minute. I wasn't going to go over the earlier, multiple labor scares that were dismissed on the phone. Sure, it made sense now that nurse person was giving me the stink eye, but I didn't have time to discuss all that. I was collecting up my wife to drive carefully to the hospital. On the way out of the office, nurse receptionist person hit me up for a copay. In the medical business nothing is ever so urgent that we all can't stop, calm down, pull out a valid credit card and pay up. Turned out Christine had another twenty hours of labor to go. We watched the finale to Survivor, Pearl Island, Season 7, and Home Alone through it all. It was a long day and a longer night.

When Aidan finally arrived, I held him as I sat in a rocker and told him about all sorts of things we would do, the color of his room, the big tractor we had, the horses in the fields surrounding our house. Christine needed minor surgery six weeks later to correct that condition and that was that.

When Aidan was an infant, daycare wasn't for us. The idea of someone else comforting our child didn't work for my wife. I never expressed my view because she was having no part of it, and that was that too. We had picked up a lot of relevant education the seven years we were childless, and it worked out for both of us. She became a top person at a Fortune 500 company, and I had a good job in the software industry. When it came time to decide who would leave their job, the choice was obvious. My paycheck looked like a banking error compared to hers. So I left my exciting career as a software engineer for a minimum wage job, that is, nothing per hour.

If this was my life now, I was going to learn how to be the best at it. I got me a subscription to Parenting magazine. There was a wealth of information in that periodical on how to get stains out of things. There was also tips on how to get your kids to say "please" and "thank you." There was an article about "Toddler Tantrum Tactics." There were other pieces about recovering from pregnancy, what to do about postpartum syndrome, and taking the all important "me time." It didn't take me long to figure out that Parenting magazine was focused on moms. Just the moms. They didn't even hide it. Many of the articles were entitled "What Moms Do About..." or "Moms Speak Openly About..." They might as well write an article entitled, "Dads, Who Gives a Shit?"

I read a piece about my post pregnancy body, how it has changed, and how my spouse should accept me the way I am. I looked in the mirror. Looked the same to me. I wasn't into warm baths with candles and chamomile tea to steady my nerves either. My "me time" usually involved some ongoing house renovation replete with multiple trips to the hardware store. Apart from getting a stain out of the carpet, I didn't find the magazine all that useful.

I discovered that most of what you need to know about keeping a child warm, fed and secure is already prewired. It was actually pretty easy and a lot of fun. Much easier and way more rewarding than nodding off in some status meeting listening to Ted explain why he's six weeks behind an eight week project that he's been "working his ass off" on. Or sitting in a cube farm near the men's room and mentally noting that half your male colleagues don't use the sink after you hear the toilet flush. When my little boy was sleeping, I spent my time thinking. Taking care of a baby is a lot like being on sabbatical. You have no deadlines, no pending presentations, no projects to complete. It was very freeing. Leaving work offered the opportunity to freely think like I did when I was a kid. I still had some demands on my time, but holding that boy, making him laugh, feeding him, pushing him on a swing, even changing his diaper, never seemed like work to me.

And so I freed my head which started me thinking about recursion, a computer science concept in algorithms. I would do my heavy thinking while mowing the lawn. This led to a paper and a presentation at a prestigious software conference. My wife flew out to meet me in California after a well received presentation. As the saying goes "absence makes the heart grow fonder." Now, at the time we were in our 40's, and it didn't look like anymore children were likely. You can plan your life, but you can't plan your family. Sometimes, it just works out the way it does. Many women lose babies, and when you're an older parent, you just don't have time to try again. I'm fond of saying that I'm glad my wife and I listened to the doctors when they said we couldn't have anymore children. No more worrying about birth control. But life breaks free. Life expands to new territories. Painfully, maybe even dangerously. Life finds a way. There it is.

On that trip to California after a successful presentation in which I published the concepts surrounding my now world famous algorithm, Christine, against all the odds, biology and the cosmos, became pregnant once more. I guess when you think about it, your body doesn't know how many times it's been around the sun. So many people were simultaneously dumbfounded and happy for us. They all figured we went to a fertility specialist due to our forty something age. One friend said,

"We know how much hard earned money you invested in this, the sacrifices. We're so happy for you."

She actually used that term, "sacrifices." Christine was patient zero at her OBGYN. She was the first patient they had seen when they opened their office twenty five years ago when they were all fresh out of medical school. When she called to tell them she was pregnant, the nurse receptionist person put her on hold, then went to find her doctor. He took over the call,

"Are you sure?" her doctor asked.

"I'm sure of it," Christine announced.

Incredulous, her doctor yelled into the office, "Hey Ted! You'll never guess who's pregnant?"

"Margret Thatcher," Ted summoned.

"No, Christine Languedoc!" he exclaimed.

No pregnancy since Jesus elicited so much joy from so many people than our small, random miracle that was on his way. I used to ask Christine what she was going to do with all that frankincense and myrrh? She warned me not to tempt fate, but I knew we were already past that. Christine became the poster mom for women trying to have babies in their 40's.

I said to a friend once that kids are great because they ensure you won't be alone when you're old.

"There's no guarantee they'll come back," he schooled.

In our case, they wouldn't have left yet.

This time around, I was very concerned that I couldn't love a second child as much as the first. It just didn't seem possible. I wondered,


William

"Who was this stranger coming to invade my life with my wife and son?"

My friend, Bill, and his wife, Julia, have two girls, Caitlin and Allison. When I discussed my concern with Bill, he told me,

"Julia and I can't imagine life without Ally. You'll find you have an infinite capacity to love."

Bill was right. The moment William was born, I was in love again. It was like William was always with us. He was just waiting for his time to come.

William and I are renovation buddies. He's always up for a trip to the hardware store, and he's quick to help with any home repair project. He's also intrinsically funny and enjoys a good belly laugh. Once, I was exiting the bathroom, William asked,

"Did you go poopies, Daddy?"

"Yes," I answered. To which, William exclaimed,

"Way to go, Daddy! Good job."

Recently, I was reading William a bedtime story when he announced,

"I have to go to the bathroom," then he asked, "Can you pause that?"

We both laughed heartily. A lot of kids William's age are very stoic. They're quiet, shy, on the other side of a shell. I often think stoicism is an inability to make someone laugh. There's none of that in my house.

I think of the circuitous route that led us to where we are now. A long courtship, a marriage, education, a first born, a job, time to think, a white paper, a conference, another child, wise friends, laughter. They seem all disconnected, but they're not. They're blazes on the trail, marking even the path least taken. I believe now, more than ever that these events are all connected. Some more obviously than others. I'm not sure of all that much, but I am of this. Life is not meant to be abided.

It's to be journeyed.

Editor's Note: Originally posted on October 18, 2016.