26
“Three . . . two . . . one . . . PUSSSSSSSSHHHH!!!!!”
Never before had I wished so strongly that I had spent seven years of my life in medical school. It would have been worth it just to know what was going on in that moment. All I could tell for sure was that something was seriously wrong with our daughter. Once she was mine to hold, I would be able to protect her, to whisper softly in her ear to calm her, to kiss her boo-boos and make her pain go away. For now, I could do nothing but stand at Tiffany’s beside and join the chorus of cheerleaders.
“You’re doing great!” “We’re almost there!” “Attagirl!”
I didn’t know what I was saying. I was so nervous.
It was then I felt a nudge. More people were squeezing in to chant, as if the problem were merely one of volume. Six people caterwauling, and the baby’s still inside. Let’s try ten. My poor daughter. They really expected her to move closer to the sound of these screaming strangers? I sure wouldn’t.
At some point, an unwelcome guest had snuck into a prime location. She appeared instantly, as if by witchcraft. It was Evil Betty, and she’d squeezed her way through the throng right next to Tiffany’s head. She had that look on her face again, like it was time to lay some smack down. She bent down, whispering angrily in Tiffany’s ear.
How dare she interrupt at this moment! A voice in my head told me to lunge for her, to tackle her to the ground, there in front of everyone, rather than let her upset my surrogate yet again. It’s a story I could tell the kids someday. Daddy made a scene in the delivery room. I’d been mild-mannered all my life, but when the need arose, I transformed into a hero and saved the day.
Instead, I did what I always do and glowered quietly at her. I doubt she noticed.
“Three . . . two . . . one . . . PUSSSSSSSSHHHH!!!!!”
On that third push, Sutton emerged—or so I could only assume. A team of doctors surrounded her like a rugby scrum and shuttled her off to the new piece of equipment that had just been wheeled in. I barely caught a glimpse of her, maybe a toe or a shoulder. She went by so fast I couldn’t tell which it was.
Again, I didn’t see who cut her umbilical cord. It was snipped off and dumped into a biohazard bin before I even noticed. There was no time for ceremony. Our daughter lay under a heat lamp, three deep in medics. Was she even in there? Was she even alive?
The room fell eerily silent, and I realized what was missing: the sound of a baby crying. Sutton had yet to take a breath. Drew and I stood near Bennett, just a few feet away, utterly helpless. Our son twisted and gyrated, feeling around for his sister. This was the farthest he’d ever been away from her. He was probably wondering why he could no longer feel her touch—and if he ever would again.
It all happened in a matter of seconds, seconds that felt like lifetimes—and they were. Two lifetimes, albeit brief ones, yet to take any kind of shape. So far, this tension was all our kids knew.
Then, finally, we heard her. “Eeeaaaaah! Eeeaaaaah! Eeeaaaaah!” It was impossibly high-pitched, like a pterodactyl screech or a dog whistle set off by a teakettle. Loud and urgent. It was the sound of our daughter crying, the most wonderful thing I’d ever heard. A wave of relief washed over the room. Doctors practically high-fived each other.
Drew couldn’t hold back anymore. Tears cascaded down his cheeks, and he whimpered like a puppy. His knees gave out, and he fell into my arms. Our children were less than ten minutes old, and we’d already endured one of those heart-stopping moments of anxiety that other parents had warned us about. They were supposed to happen on a jungle gym at the playground years from now, not in the hospital the moment they were born.
As the huddle surrounding Sutton dissipated, I could see her at last. She was tiny, even smaller than Bennett. She was curled up, as if still unaware that she’d been freed from the confines of the womb. She had a tiny cap of dark, matted-down hair. She seemed far too beautiful to have come from my genes.
“Congratulations, guys,” Dr. Robertson said as he strode past us. He removed his surgical gloves and headed for the door, a sure sign that the uncertainty had passed.
“Is she all right?” I asked, just to be sure.
He nodded. “She just decided to give us a scare on the way out.”
We bent over Sutton, and she stared up at us with her big eyes wide open. Unlike her brother, she was in no hurry to explore. She was studying us, these two dudes hovering over her and blubbering like children. Like I did with Bennett, I stroked the back of her hand gently with a single finger.
“Don’t you ever do that again!” I said.
Introducing Bennett and Sutton to Aunt Susie was like watching them be born all over again. Drew and I each took a baby and wheeled them in their warmers back to the room where we’d spent most of the day playing cards. Tiffany and Eric were already there, telling the story of the delivery. Mrs. Tappon, the only other one among us who’d ever given birth, was aghast. Three pushes and out came the first baby. Three more pushes and out came the second. Except for the spine-chilling uncertainty of Sutton’s birth, it was an exceptionally smooth endeavor.
As soon as Susie saw us, her face scrunched up, like someone who dared to stare directly at a solar eclipse and was blasted by more light than a human being could handle. The compression of every muscle at once served to wring out a Niagara of tears. Her eyes weren’t sure where to look—one baby, the other baby, one daddy, the other daddy. She spoke only with hugs and gasps. I’d watched her cry so much over the last couple of years, it was nice to see her finally shed some tears of joy.
Just a few feet away, Tiffany waited patiently for her turn. This was how she wanted it—Drew and I introducing our kids to her, as if she were just another visitor who came to congratulate us rather than one who was lying in a hospital bed, dilated and physically spent.
“I want to talk to that Bennett!” she said. We laid our swaddled son down on her chest, and she wagged her finger at him. “So you’re the one who’s been giving me all that trouble! You’d better never kick your sister like you’ve been kicking me.”
As always, I marveled at the way she was able to tell these two babies apart when they were still inside her womb. She always knew who was jabbing her in the ribs and who was lying upside down, and she had developed feelings toward them based on their time together. I admired and envied her for the unique bond she’d already formed with my kids, and knowing she’d stay part of our lives made me feel closer to them.
“Sutton, this is Aunt Tiffany,” Drew said, as he laid our little girl across Tiffany’s forearm. Tiffany was the first one to hold both infants at once, which seemed fitting.
If I had been worried about maintaining boundaries before, I wasn’t anymore. Seeing the three of them together seemed so natural, so familiar, yet not at all maternal. Their relationship was different, unique to the three of them and beautiful in its own way.
When the babies started crying, Tiffany had no trouble handing them off to Drew and me. “Here you go, guys!” she said. “Good luck!”
We couldn’t stop talking about what had occurred in the operating room, though we mostly focused on what a pro Tiffany had been.
“I need to thank that nurse,” Tiffany said. “She made all the difference.”
“Which nurse?” Drew asked. We jogged our memories as to who had been in the room. There were so many.
“The one who kicked you guys out of here,” she replied.
“Betty?!”
Drew shook his head, astounded. “I almost punched her when I saw her talking to you. She was so mean.”
“She was so mean,” Tiffany agreed. “It was just what I needed.”
“What did she say to you?”
“Well, she leaned down into my ear.” Tiffany sat up a bit to do her impression of Evil Betty. She was really getting into it. “She sounded like a drill sergeant, and she said, ‘Girl, they’re getting ready to cut you!’“
“No she didn’t!”
“Yeah. She said, ‘This baby needs to come out of you right now, or they’re going to cut you open and take it out. I don’t want them to cut you, so the next push better be the hardest push ever!’ I didn’t want a C-section, so I pushed so hard, and Sutton popped right out!”
I realized I’d judged Betty all wrong. She wasn’t power-mad or homophobic. She was a nurse whose job was to take care of women. When she met Tiffany, she saw a woman at the mercy of far too many men—me, Drew, her doctor. We didn’t have a stake in what happened to her or her body, and because of that, she would never fully trust us. Betty had been present at countless births. She’d probably seen doctors perform C-sections just for the sake of expediency. None of us men knew what it was like to be the one in the stirrups, the one left with a permanent scar on her belly, so Betty wanted to make sure the pregnant lady was taken care of and that emergency surgery remained a last resort.
Once we’d heard Tiffany’s side of the story, we tracked Betty down to thank her. It was clear she didn’t receive a lot of gratitude, because her gruff demeanor melted instantly. She even hugged us. Just a few minutes earlier, we would have thought her incapable of affection.
“They come in to move you yet?” she asked.
“Not yet.”
She shook her head. “I know her room’s ready. What are they waiting for?”
She shot off down the hall, as much to check on the room as to cut the lovefest short. She had a soft side, but her tolerance for sentiment was clearly low.
Whatever she did definitely goosed things along. A few minutes later, a nurse arrived to transfer Tiffany to the recovery wing. Eric grabbed one side of her bed, and the nurse grabbed the other. As they wheeled her toward the hallway, I wondered how she must be feeling.
“You can come back and see them anytime you want,” I assured her.
She smiled. “Honestly,” she said, “I’m so glad not to have two babies to take care of tonight. Have fun!” With that, she was gone.
We had no idea what would happen next. Would Drew and I be kicked out? Would the babies be ripped from our arms and taken to a nursery to spend the night? Maybe the staff would forget we were in here and we’d just be able to stay until the shifts changed again.
That would have been a great plan, if only the kids had played along.
“These babies are hungry,” Mrs. Tappon said, as their wailing built in intensity. Twenty minutes had gone by, and no one had checked on us. Maybe we would be able to stay all night, but only if we starved our children.
I had to step up, to do the fatherly thing. I flung open the door of room 303 and strode confidently to the nurses’ station.
“Um, can we get some, like, formula or something?”
It didn’t come out with quite the authority I’d hoped, but it did the trick.
“We’ll send someone in to show you how to feed them.”
“Great. Thanks.”
“As soon as your room is ready.”
“Our room?”
“You wanted your own room, right?”
“Yes! Yes! Thank you!”
It took a few minutes before they moved us down the hall, but in the meantime, they set us up with our wristbands—one for Drew and one for me. Each one had the word “Father” printed on it and came with full visitation privileges.
After all my fear, we were treated like parents, both of us, with as much respect as any other couple that came through these halls to experience the most important day of their lives. Ultimately, I don’t think it was the bagels or our story that won people over. I think most people are just basically good at heart, and when presented with an unfamiliar situation, even if it may be slightly outside their comfort zone, they’ll tend to react in the most humane way possible. This was the world I’d chosen to raise children in, and in that moment, I had no regrets and no fears. Sutton, Bennett, and their two dads were going to be just fine.