Personal Essay Rough Draft

It was around 6am on February 27^th, 2008. I was half way through my two week leave from the Army before I was supposed to be medically discharged.  My wife, Kyla, was almost eight months pregnant at the time with what was soon to be our first child. I was sick as a dog and my wife just left for her appointment at Wilford Hall at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. I wasn’t sure what her appointment was for. All I knew is that she wasn’t feeling good either. After she told me bye, I went back to sleep. Noon came and I hear the house phone ringing in the living room. As much as I didn’t want to get up and go all the way to the living room and answer it, I did it anyways. Before I answered it, I looked to see who was calling and noticed that it was from Wilford Hall. Immediately I knew it had to be my wife. I answered the call and sure enough it was her. She was telling me that her blood pressure was high and the doctors were going to induce her as soon as I got to the hospital. My heart dropped onto the floor. I went from feeling sick and tired, to feeling the most nervous that I have ever felt in my entire life. She tells me to grab some blankets, movies, and a few other things to bring with me to the hospital. Before I left, I took a shower then laid out a few pee pads on the floor so our dog would have somewhere to relieve herself since I wasn’t going to be there to take her out. I finally leave the house around 1pm. Of course with all of the road construction that is constantly going on in San Antonio, the traffic was horrible. On a normal day, going from my house to Wilford Hall would usually take around 25 minutes to get there. It seemed like it was taking forever. Not only was the traffic bad, but my nerves were shot. I get to the hospital around 2pm and noticed that my wife was already in her bed and had an entire room to herself. When we see each other we both said hi. It felt awkward. I think it’s because neither of us seen this coming and it happened so fast. I lay everything that I had brought with me in the corner of the room that didn’t have anything occupying it, and I sat in the chair that was next to the bed that my wife was laying in. My wife began telling me why the doctors were inducing her early and she says that she had preeclampsia and her blood pressure was high. With neither of us knowing exactly what preeclampsia was, I waited for a nurse to come in and talk to them about it. It wasn’t long before a nurse came in and I asked her what it was. She tells me that preeclampsia is when the blood pressure is high and there is protein in the urine. I then asked her what that has to do with my wife being pregnant and why couldn’t they just give her some sort of high blood pressure medicine. Evidently it doesn’t work that way. She told me that it affects the baby and could severely harm the baby. So with that being said, I went back to the chair, sat down and turned on the television. I can’t remember what exactly I watched, but it helped to pass the time. The afternoon came around and one of the nurses that would come in and check on my wife occasionally told me that the dining facility in the basement was open and I could go down there and get food if I was hungry. I was not hungry, at all. I think I had lost my appetite from the sudden news that happened that mourning, let alone I still felt a little sick.

 The next morning came quick. I didn’t sleep a second that night. The doctors come in around 10am. They tell me and my wife that they wanted to have the baby sometime that day. They began to increase the dosage of my wife’s pain medicine and do things to that will help my wife have the baby easier. Around 11am, I go home to check on the dog and take a quick shower. I didn’t realize how tired I was until I sat in the car. I had to force myself to start the car and leave. I couldn’t remember how bad the traffic was, but it seemed like I got home in 10 minutes. When I opened the door, the first thing I noticed that the dog actually used the pee pads to relieve herself. The weird thing is, she is usually waiting at the front door to greet us when we get home. She wasn’t there this time. I look around the house and finally find her hiding underneath the bed. After a few minutes I get her to come out from underneath the bed. She was acting afraid, as if she did something bad, but I was telling her that she was a good girl. It seemed like she was confused. Shortly after, I went into the kitchen and found her treats. She wasn’t acting afraid after I gave her a couple treats. I then grabbed a few paper towels to clean up the mess the dog had made on the pads and flushed it down the toilet. That was a very bad idea. The toilet began overflowing and it didn’t want to stop. I freaked out. I grabbed as many towels out of the cabinet in the bathroom as I could. I laid them around the toilet so the towels would soak up the water. I then crawled behind the toilet and turned off the water. The overflowing finally stopped, thank God. There was a good two inches or so of water on the floor in the bathroom. I had to use almost all of our towels to soak it up. When I finally soaked up the water, I grabbed all of the towels and threw them in the washing machine and began washing them. I went back into the bathroom and began taking a shower, not even worrying about the toilet being clogged. After I got out of the shower, I grabbed a few more movies and more stuff to bring with me to the hospital. Before I left, I threw the towels in the dryer. The trip back to the hospital went by quick again, not only was the situation I just had to deal with at the house still stuck in my head, but my wife is still about to have my child.  

When I got to the hospital, I dropped off the things I brought with me in the room my wife was in. I checked on my wife to make sure she was doing okay, but she was sleeping. I noticed a Long John Silver’s on my way to the hospital that wasn’t too far away. I went back to my car and went there to get something to eat. I get there in a couple minutes, only to find out that they went out of business. So I go to Taco Bell next door. I went through the drive thru because I felt like I would fall asleep if I went inside to eat. I get my food and go back to the hospital. My wife is awake and the doctors were in the room doing something to her. I didn’t know what they were doing to her, but she was screaming so I knew it couldn’t have felt good. I asked one of the doctors if she was having the baby and they said no, not yet. With me being tired and hungry, I sat down in the chair next to my wife and the doctors and began eating my food. After I got done eating my food, I fell asleep. I was out cold. I wake up late in the afternoon and the doctors and my wife were laughing at me. I had no idea why they were laughing at me so I asked them what was going on. They tell me, I have been awake then entire time and when my wife was screaming the loudest, I was out cold. Evidently they tried to wake me up when they broke my wife’s water, but I wouldn’t move. Either that was a big plus one for me, or I missed something important. Either way, I was glad that I finally got some sleep.

Midnight came around and still no baby. Technically it was February 29^th, also known as “Leap Day”. The doctors said they want to have the baby soon and my wife is going to have to have a caesarean section also known as a c-section. My wife was heavily doped up at the time so she didn’t care. She did laugh at the fact that our first child might be born a day that only comes once every four years. The funny thing is that her original due date was supposed to be on April 1^st, “April Fool’s Day”. The doctors gave my wife an epidural and gave it a couple hours to set in and help relieve some of the pain my wife was in and the pain she was about to be in. It was still early in the morning and the doctors started to wheel my wife’s bed to a room that was prepared for the c-section. I was told by one of the doctors to wait in this other room and while I was there to put on this medical suit, hat, shoes and gloves. I was still nervous and tired at the time but that’s when reality kicked in. I am about to become a dad. I sat down in the chair that was in the room, waiting for them to call my name so I could join my wife while she has our baby. Just a few minutes pass, well it seemed like a few minutes and the doctors call my name. I thought to myself, I have heard so many stories how the dad pass out when they see their child for the first time, don’t be that guy. The doctors told me to follow them down the hallway; they were wearing the same goofy suits from head to toe like I was. When I went into the room where my wife was, the doctors told me not to touch anything, like I was radioactive or something. I see my wife, she had a couple blankets covering her with a flimsy plastic wall separating her bottom half and her top half. The doctors tell me to go around by her head and stay there. Of course I did what they told me to because God forbid if I do anything else. They finally asked me if I was ready. I took a deep breath and said “let’s do it”. They started doing their thing. I knew they started because my wife started to squeeze my hand really hard. It went from my wife squeezing my hand to my wife digging her nails into my hand and screaming. With me being curious, I looked over the plastic to see what the doctors were doing, which wasn’t a great idea. I saw my wife’s organs lying on her stomach. That really didn’t bother me since I’ve seen worse while I was in Iraq. Only a couple minutes come by and I hear some commotion coming from the other side of the wall. I look over and the doctors are running around with the baby. They laid the baby on a table on the other side of them. I had no idea what they were doing. A few seconds later I hear the baby crying and they bring it over to me. They tell me “it’s a girl!” then they asked me to cut the umbilical cord and they showed me where to cut it. This must be the part where the new dads pass out because I surely felt like I was about to. But instead a few tears of joy came out and the doctors congratulated me. I thought to myself that this was the happiest day in my life and nothing would ever beat it.