II

An Excerpt from We, Adults: “A Pterodactyl is Hatched”

Elliot and I didn’t read books about how to raise a child. We figured there was no point. The books were for stupid people or people who needed to feel some sense of control over their growing bellies and wife’s hormonal slamming of doors. We understood the need for love. For calm. For colors in the nursery. For story time spanning an hour a night. For snuggling and for organic baby food after at least six months of breastfeeding. We knew the shortcomings of our own parents, and we’d do better because our lives hadn’t been shaped by years spent trying not to be killed in mountainous jungles, and Elliot and I were equals, something the women in our parents’ generation only made a show of pageantry toward achieving.

I pictured parenthood as something that would suit me well, my son a new cashmere scarf, the perfect accessory. I had an open work schedule (wrote for two hours in the morning and taught two workshops over the course of the week). I pictured myself pushing a stroller through Denver with the leaves changing and a slight nip to the air, the promise of snow with no actual threat. I’d stop by the coffee shop and smile at baristas as they studied my offspring, but really they’d be studying me, the hip dad, the man about whom they muttered, Why can’t he be mine? when they slipped into bed after another disastrous date. And maybe I’d go to a DU sporting event. It would be my first in seven years at the school, but I’d go, something outside, maybe lacrosse. My son would be a little older then, able to eat puffy cereal without my help, and he’d sit in my lap, more interested in the clapping and cold bleachers than the boys running on the field. The whole thing would be a pastoral rite of passage (for whom, I wasn’t sure). I was ready for that change. I was ready for the next phase of my life.

Elliot would take a semester off but then would resume her thesis work on Thomas Middleton. I’d have to be a tiny bit flexible, but there was something romantic about the notion of juggling and sacrificing myself for the betterment of our family. I found the whole thing appealing in a something-to-complain-about-with-the-fraternity-members-of-fatherhood sort of way. We’d make it work. We’d persevere. We’d trudge. And we’d hold hands in autumn clothing as we did so.

***

Labor came with a snake-like blood clot floating in our toilet. Elliot had evidently been doing some reading because she said this was her mucus plug. We called the doctor. He told us otherwise, to let him know if there was any more bleeding. Then there was back pain. Then there were contractions (I think they’re Braxton Hicks; who the fuck is Braxton Hicks?). A warm bath and tea and it will pass by the morning and then cries and the stopwatch application on my phone reading ten minutes apart and oh my fucking god it hurts and isn’t your water supposed to break and contractions five minutes apart and we need to go and I’m scared and it’s okay, baby, it’s all going to be okay.

Things were better after the epidural.

We watched Hoarders: Buried Alive from the small hanging TV as we waited for her cervix to dilate. I ate a Snickers. I fetched ice chips. A TV antenna-like instrument was used to break Elliot’s water. Only it wasn’t water, but blood, lots of it, the white crinkling bed sheets greedy in their absorption.

And then things weren’t better.

The doctor looked like a Meet the Parents De Niro. He told me to put on some relaxing music. I had no idea what this would be—my music collection was mostly depressing male-led vocals. I put on an album I’d listened to once before. It was soft and gentle, if not a touch inspirational. The doctor kept saying capiche. There was no way a baby was going to fit through the tiny hairless opening I stared down at.

Push.

Beeping heart monitors.

Blood covering the doctor’s blue gloves.

Push, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

I watched the doctor. He kept glancing between Elliot’s vagina and the monitor along the wall and then he said something about getting the vacuum and he started to work faster, him not even mentioning the generous cut he was giving the base of her vagina, more blood, more plummeting heart rates, the doctor yelling that they needed to get the baby out now, my stupid acoustic song the exact musical choice for a bad Lifetime movie montage about stillborn babies and the ensuing deterioration of a marriage.

A nurse guided me to a chair.

Everything was the wha-wha echoes of nitrous oxide.

I thought about a dead son and about taking down the zoo alphabet in the nursery while Elliot cried herself to sleep and about months filled with conversation about what Jacob would’ve been like, and then Jacob reverting to a pronoun, he, and then nothing, silence, no mention, it never happened.

I realized I needed to get my shit together and be there for Elliot. She cried. Snot bubbled at her nose while she pushed. Blood. Beeping. A hair-covered head. A white-goop covered body. Little tiny feet. All of them unmoving.

And then there was a cry.

It was the most beautiful fucking sound in the world. Prehistoric. A pterodactyl.

Jacob was placed on Elliot’s chest. He screamed with his eyes open. I knew he couldn’t actually see me, but it seemed that way, him all cold and shivering and beautiful staring at his father.

***

It took all of one night at home with our baby to realize my views of parenthood were so fucking far from realistic.

Enter colic.

Enter postpartum depression.

Enter exhaustion so utter and complete NoDoz didn’t begin to scratch the surface of it.

And cue that melodramatic music, because nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, compared to his giggle at three months when I shook my head in front of his face as I made farting sounds.

We started reading books about how to be decent parents. We started complaining about our perpetual tiredness. We broke our own rules and put him in our bed so we didn’t have to deal with the crying. And when eight o’clock (on a good night) rolled around, and he was out, so were we, not even bothering to turn on our bedside lamps to read, us barely able to mutter a mechanical I love you.

I suppose it was here when we actually became parents.