Diego Reyes Fuchs, 8 Years Old Today

Eight years ago today, without really knowing what to expect in the slightest, J and I became parents for the first time.

J spent the day “nesting,” putting final touches on what had been our office and would now be the baby’s room. She was up on a step-ladder, stenciling friendly dinosaurs along the top of the wall when I came home a little earlier than usual from work, due to the exciting/terrifying news that she was officially In Labor.

“Contractions are getting closer together,” she said from her perch on the ladder.

She had been timing them all day, and now, in the late afternoon on a Friday, we made our way, with my mother-in-law on board, to the Elizabeth Seton Childbearing Center on West 14^th Street in Manhattan, ironically just across the street from the creepy apartment where I lived a sad, lonely existence ten years earlier, during my first failed attempt at marriage.

After dropping my wife and her mother off at the birth center, I found a place to park the car overnight, just in case. When I came back, J looked crestfallen.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” I asked, holding back nightmare scenarios regarding fetal health and viability.

“It’s fine. The baby’s fine,” she said.

“What is it?” I asked again.

“I’m only one centimeter dilated,” she said. “They’re checking to see whether or not they can admit me.”

“What? But you’re in labor.”

I backed off, realizing I was arguing with the wrong person. Just as I was looking for someone to fight this out with, a midwife came through a door and said, “Okay, Jeanette, come right this way.”

They ran a few more tests, explaining that even though the contractions were coming closer and closer together, the cervix was nowhere near ready at its current dilation. They had sent women home in this situation. I muttered something about rush hour traffic, but the midwife cut me off, saying, “It’s fine. You can stay.”

So we “settled in” to what was a lovely little room. The Seton Center had gone to great lengths to create an atmosphere for their patients that felt far removed from what one thinks of when one thinks of a conventional hospital birth. There was a double bed, rather than the usual single. In addition, there were quilts and matching floral window treatments and a hot tub, to help the mother relax, and for the option of a water birth.

A couple of hours in to worsening labor pains, J began to express an interest in receiving some assistance with the pain in the form of an epidural. Obviously, this kind of place is set up for natural child birth, and the only way we’d be able to get an epidural would be by admitting J to the hospital two blocks south. The midwife explained all this to us in her hippie dippy way, and J chose to ride out the pains for a couple more hours.

Finally, at 10:17 pm on Friday, May 16, 2003, Diego Reyes Fuchs came swimming into a murky, warm tub in New York City. I got to cut the cord, my emotions pouring forth at the realization of what J and I had accomplished together.

As always, my mother-in-law was a great support and calming presence. J’s brother and sister were wonderful visitors that night, as well.

J and I spent the night bonding with Diego, lying in that lovely room, talking to lactation specialists about “latching on” and pumping, and trying as best we could to comprehend just how much our lives had just been changed for ever.