Waiting all over, it's time to go - now
"Jason," my wife said. "Wake up."
An eye cracked open, the darkness split only by a light from the bathroom and the red glow of our digital alarm clock.
Three-fifteen. Three-fifteen a.m.? Over-the-road truckers trying to skirt weigh stations were still asleep at 3:15 a.m. What the ...?
"My water broke," she said, standing in a pregnant silhouette between my sleepy head and the john.
"Was it in one of the good glasses?" I asked.
I couldn't see her frown, but I'm sure it was there.
Babies in the womb know things other people don't. Like how to breathe water, exactly where it's most uncomfortable to elbow mom in the bladder, and what time of day their dads are least prepared to drive to the hospital.
"I don't have any gas in my car," I told my wife as I tried to pull a clean pair of underwear over my head. "I don't have any cash, and I can't feel my toes."
"That's because you put your socks on over your shoes."
And why not? The baby was coming almost two weeks early. If I wanted to put my socks on over my ...
The baby?
Why, I wondered as I tried to remember how to tie my shoes, didn't I recognize the one sure sign of childbirth? Right before mom goes into labor, she becomes SuperSpotlessMom, fighting for clean toilets, dust-free fan blades and gleaming countertops everywhere.
For the past few days, my wife had done enough cleaning, list-making and packing to make birds resent the word "nest."
Oh, and she'd eaten a lot of cookies.
"Why do you want me to put the bags in the car now?" I'd asked a week before this moment, not knowing that now I wouldn't have remembered to load the bags if I had to step over them to get out the front door. Expectant dads rule No. 27: Shut up. You're an idiot.
Driving to the hospital at 3-something a.m., with your wife in the passenger seat leaking fluid like an old Dodge, it's tough to find anything good on the radio.
Uh, scratch that.
Speeding to the hospital at 3-something a.m., with your wife in the passenger seat leaking fluid like an old Dodge, you really don't have to worry about cops. It doesn't matter what's on the radio.
People may break their arm only to wait hours for treatment, or they may stay on a donor list long enough to come down with something worse, but hospitals treat expectant parents like they tip well.
My wife and I were in a delivery room before I'd forgotten where I'd parked the car.
Things have changed since I was born. Today, fathers are expected to be in the room during delivery. They're expected to help out, even though nothing gets knocked off the bill. And they're expected to hear all the four-letter words their wives are calling them instead of doing things the old-fashioned way, like being somewhere else and getting drunk.
In the delivery room, an amazing amount of people helped finish something it only took two people to start. Crowded around us were a doctor, enough nurses to play basketball between contractions, and some guy in a Motley Crüe T-shirt. I think he won tickets off the radio.
It was like a party, except there was no cake and my wife was in mind-numbing agony. She grabbed and pulled things with every contraction. My hand, my shirt and a wad of my hair that wasn't connected that well in the first place.
By 9:33 a.m., it was over, and we had a baby boy. He peed all over the nurse.
What a great kid.
