Mommy Man (24 page)

“I have to go back,” he announced.

Susie and I pled with him not to go or at least to wait until Betty had moved on to another patient. We were terrified of what she might do to him if he showed his face again. With all the surgical equipment at hand, she would have plenty of options.

“I know exactly where I left it,” he assured us. “I’m just going to sneak in, not say a word, then duck back out again. She won’t even know I’m there.”

I took a deep breath and showed Susie my panic face. She gave me hers, too.

As Drew slid through the doorway of room 303, I waited to hear thunder or the sound of two jumbo jets colliding above us. Instead, there was silence. The door closed behind him, and nothing happened. A minute went by, then another minute. What could be taking so long? What had Evil Betty done to him? I wanted to check on him, but there was no way I was going in. Our kids needed at least one dad to make it through childbirth.

When the door finally opened, Drew began sprinting toward us, as if being chased by a bear. It was pretty much how I expected him to emerge, but then I noticed he wasn’t holding his Blackberry. “Let’s go!” he shouted.

“What?”

“It’s time!”

I wasn’t sure what he meant, until he grabbed my hand and started dragging me toward the room.

“You’re kidding!”

“No, the babies are coming,” he insisted. “C’mon! They said to hurry!”

25

Another Coming-Out Story

I
look surprisingly good in scrubs
. I was surprised, at least. I mean, who looks good in scrubs? Not most doctors. Hardly any delivery room dads. Only about half the cast of the TV show
Scrubs
. Yet somehow, on me, they worked. As I was checking myself out in the crinkly blue paper garments, I wondered if I had missed my calling. Maybe I should have been an industrial supply fashion model. Or maybe I was just dizzy with the fact that I was moments away from meeting my son and daughter.

“Let’s go, dads! Those babies are coming!” Evil Betty poked her head in and was gone in a flash while Eric, Drew, and I were still slipping what looked like tiny shower caps over our shoes.

“C’mon!” Drew said, grabbing me by the arm. There are articles of clothing you can slip on while you’re running, but footwear is not among them. I stumbled my way around the corner, trying to remember where the delivery room was.

“Who’s going to cut the umbilical cord?” Drew asked. “One each?”

I had a sudden attack of stage fright. “No,” I said. “You do both. I’m afraid I’d pass out.”

Hospital policy mandated that twins be delivered in an operating room due to the likelihood of the woman needing an emergency C-section. It was a huge space, full of blinking and beeping medical equipment. Except for Bennett and Sutton, Drew and I were probably the last of the key players to arrive.

Eric had agreed to be our official birth photographer so Drew and I could just enjoy the experience. It was a relief because Eric was sure to feel a lot more comfortable than I would pointing the camera at certain key places. Tiffany had a large sheet draped over her lower half, so Drew and I positioned ourselves discreetly behind her head, clear of the viewing area. She told us she didn’t mind what we saw in the delivery room, but I minded. As much as the expectant father in me was dying to see my kids, the kid in me was nervous about catching sight of a woman’s hoo-hoo.

All around us, people were shouting medical terms. “BMTs!” “Infarction!” “Hemostat!” They were all words that sounded familiar from TV medical shows but that still meant nothing to me. I may as well have been scanning the male faces trying to crown this staff’s McDreamy.

We’d only been in the room a few seconds when Dr. Robertson announced it was go time. “Cauterize the arterial phlebotomist!” he announced, or something like that. A ring of nurses sprung up, seemingly from nowhere, and surrounded Tiffany’s bedside. There must have been at least six of them. One on each side held one of Tiffany’s hands. Two leaned down by her face, and two bent over her feet. All at once, they started directing encouragement toward her head. “Come on, you can do this!” “You’re ready. I know you’re ready!” “This is it, this is what you’ve been waiting for!”

Then one of them started counting loudly, so everyone in the room could hear. “Three . . . two . . . one . . .”

And then, all the nurses screamed in unison, “PUSSSSSSSSHHHH!!!!!”

That’s just what Tiffany proceeded to do, as hard as I’ve ever seen anyone push. She pushed and pushed and pushed some more, and the whole time, the nurses kept repeating, “Pushpushpushpushpushpush!”

When Tiffany relaxed, they went back to their general encouragements. “Good girl!” “Good pushing!” “You’re doing great!” The entire process was kind of disturbing, less like I pictured childbirth would be, more like an exorcism.

Everyone calmed down for about twenty seconds, then the encouragement ratcheted back up. The next thing I knew, the lead nurse was counting again. “Three . . . two . . . one . . .”

“PUSSSSSSSSHHHH!!!!!”

The combined force of the shouting and the pushing practically made the room shake.

“Oh my God,” Drew said. “Are you looking?” He motioned toward the part of Tiffany’s body I was trying very hard to ignore.

“No!” I said. “I’m not looking.”

“I can see his head!”

I nodded nervously. “Great! I’ll look soon.”

“Look!” Drew demanded. “Look now! Your son is being born!”

And so I looked. I can’t say it was the most flattering view of either Tiffany or Bennett, but for the split second I was willing to take a glimpse, I witnessed the miracle of life.

The nurses were now chanting at fever pitch. “This is it!” “One more big push!” “You’re doing so well!”

“Three . . . two . . . one . . .”

Then I heard someone crying. It could have been any of us, really.

The next thing I heard was the clicking of Eric’s camera shutter, and I realized that just a few feet in front of my face was a tiny person. Dr. Robertson held him up like a fisherman displaying a prized trout, and for all I could tell, this may actually have been a fish. He was so covered in clumps of chalky goo that it was hard to tell what species, genus, class, or phylum he might belong to. He was humanoid, at best. A curled up lump of dough, mushy and underbaked. One thing was for sure, though. This repulsive little mole rat was the most beautiful sight I’d ever seen. This was my son, Bennett.

For that one moment, there was no one on Earth younger than he was. Everything he saw, heard, and felt in that instant was brand new to him. Light, air, cold, confusion. Things most of us barely noticed jolted his tiny brain in a tsunami of stimuli. It was hard to conceive of something so new as this little boy. He had never been hurt or hugged, never seen day turn into night, never felt the soft touch of cotton against his skin, never seen a kangaroo or tasted a Fruity Pebble, never fallen asleep to the sound of crickets or woken up to a dog licking his face. Just for now, he belonged to that .001 percent of living creatures who couldn’t recognize Mickey Mouse or Mario. Or me, for that matter. But he would know me before them, and despite what he might say while slamming his door as a teenager, he would love me more. I would be there for millions of my son’s little discoveries, things that would shape him into a person all his own. For now, the sum total of his breaths could be counted on one of his tiny, balled-up little hands, but already, my entire world had changed. Bennett had become a person, and I had become a parent.

No one told me what I should do next. Drew and I were the least relevant people in the room—medically, at least. We were spectators, and as such, we were free to focus on whatever we chose.

A couple of people did a couple of hospital-type things to Bennett, then they left him in the warmer to fend for himself, messy and naked. He sputtered and stretched, probably trying to feel the uterine walls or the touch of his sister, all the things that had confined and comforted him for the last nine months. For the first time, he had his own space—more of it than he could handle. I’m not sure if a two-minute-old human is capable of real happiness, but I imagined that’s what he was feeling.

I wanted him to know I was there, that this gargantuan life change he’d just gone through wasn’t an abandonment. But the doctors had coated his eyes with a thick gel that probably served some important function while also temporarily blinding him. Was I allowed to touch him? No one told me I couldn’t. I’d already scrubbed off at least three layers of hand skin before I entered the OR. Besides, Bennett was the one covered in gross stuff, not me. Anyway, he was my kid. If I were a horse or a mongoose, I’d have given him a full tongue bath by now and snarfed down his placenta. I decided to go for it. I stroked the back of his hand gently with my index finger. He made the slightest twitch in response, but he didn’t pull away.

I felt like I should say something profound and memorable, a “One small step for man . . .” kind of thing. Surely, this was the closest I would ever come to landing on the moon. If ever a moment in my life called for erudition, it was this one. These would be the first words my son would hear me say.

“Hi Bennett,” I whispered, finally. “We’re your dads.”

It was then that I noticed a tied-off umbilical cord, protruding from his midsection. In the rush of activity, I had completely missed the big moment.

“Did you cut his cord?” I asked Drew.

He shook his head. “I didn’t even see them do it.”

The unprecedented cocktail of emotions swirling inside me suddenly received a twist of anger. Maybe it was just a matter of expediency that Dr. Robertson decided to cut the cord himself. There was no time for parent involvement, not with twins. He had another baby to deliver. Snip, on to the next one. That was probably all it was. Or maybe he’d never accepted us as dads.

He didn’t even ask us if we wanted to cut the cord.

I decided to say something—to make a scene, there in the delivery room, if need be. “Excuse me, Doctor, but we’d like to cut the cord next time.” Yes, that’s what I’d say. I rehearsed the line in my head as I slowly turned around.

I couldn’t even see Tiffany. There were so many doctors and nurses surrounding her. While I’d been busy bonding with Bennett, the mood around me had shifted drastically. The number of people in the room had tripled. The door burst open, and a nurse wheeled a new machine into place with great urgency.

Drew clutched my hand. I searched his face for an explanation. He was always so much better than I was at deciphering situations. His face was starkly white. He stood stone-still, petrified, the only movement in his entire body coming from the frantic quivering of his lower lip. I’d never seen him so frightened before.

“We need to go now!” Dr. Robertson announced.

People began shouting jargon at each other. “Triage!” “Avulsion!” “I need fifty ccs of coagulated antigens, stat!”

Amid all of that, the pushing had begun. “Three . . . two . . . one . . . PUSSSSSSSSHHHH!!!!!”

Then I heard one thing very clearly, from a nurse who was staring at a monitor. “We’ve lost the baby’s heartbeat!” she declared.

26

Heart-Stopping

“T
hree . . . 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 b
e just fine.