Chapter 4
Then the Lord ordered the fish to spit Jonah up on the beach, and it did.
Jonah, Chapter 2 Verse 10, Good News Bible
Things had finally come to some point of action with the decision to begin inducing labor. Nevertheless, what followed was more long hours of mostly nothing happening. They started in the early evening of Wednesday, the third day in the hospital. With the addition of more procedures and examinations on top of the vitals checks and sensor adjustments real sleep became impossible and the evening stretched into a long, trackless night. By morning the idea of another day didn't seem very relevant; it was all just this endless, anxious experience, and waiting, and waiting. No cell phones allowed in the hospital: I plied the Jennifer’s phone outside to keep family and friends informed.
Internally I had a dogged premonition that inducement wouldn't work and Jennifer would end up having to have a Caesarian section. The doctors kept checking up; no change, no change. Mommy's body is not interested in releasing its tenant ten weeks early. I had an unarticulated feeling that everything leading up to this had been a series of things going increasingly wrong which was probably contributing to my pessimism. This impression was false: objectively, our situation was at its worst at the very beginning, and subsequent events were all in service of correcting it. By now I had this information but I hadn't had time to process it. I was still viewing the past few days through the lens of ignorance. After everything that had gone wrong an uncomplicated birth seemed like an impossibility.
Of course, complicated or not, I knew that the birth was just the start of this trial: we’d been told to expect a lengthy stay, perhaps as much as three months, for Jonah in the intensive care unit. But my imagination (and anxiety) were stretched to the limit dealing with the imminence of birth: I didn’t have anything left to speculate about the rough start to parenthood that would follow.
The day dragged on. No food allowed for Jennifer, clear liquids only. I can't imagine what it was like for her, confined to bed, subject to endless medical invasions and inspections.
A little progress, the doctors said, and continued their tinkering.
Then it began to happen: slowly, uncertainly, at first. Jennifer felt contractions: first maybe, then definitely. Nurses and interns hmmed over the output of various monitors and centimeters of dilation. The contractions started to bring serious pain: a harried and deeply competent woman wheeled a cart in, turned off three buzzing pagers, and calmly inserted a needle into Jennifer’s spine. Judy the nurse started coaching Jennifer on breathing through the contractions. Her exhalations were strong low tones in her singer’s voice. They put her on oxygen, not for her but the baby.
They took off the external baby heart monitor for the last time and replaced it with a probe that was actually seated on the top of Jonah’s head (Head! Great shivering heavens there’s a Head in there!). The noisy whooshy whop-whop-whop that had bumped along under everything for days was replaced by a less organic, but comfortingly regular, beeping computer pulse. Baby’s heart was strong and steady. And somewhere along the line I relinquished my worst case scenarios and accepted hope: it looked like this might actually work. But only when the doctor broke Jennifer's water did it finally hit me: it's happening, now.
The night before I'd seen a group from a birthing class (the one we'd been scheduled to start the next week) filing through the lobby: lots of very pregnant women, their partners carrying pillows. They made me a little sad: I'd been daydreaming about that last phase of the pregnancy for six months. My knowledge of the process of birth consisted mainly of clichés from televised drama: I was looking forward to rectifying this deficient education. And all the other half-planned tasks for the last third of the pregnancy. Getting the baby room ready (at the moment unpainted and stacked with gifts and recent acquisitions in no particular order and with nothing like a complete inventory of what we needed), finishing some books to prepare me to be the perfect father, packing a suitcase to keep by the door. I had another moment of this sadness as the birth started: the “water” is not something that is supposed to be broken, it is supposed to break, on its own, and then you know it’s showtime. I know doctors do it all the time even in ordinary births, but there it was. The bubble of that imagined by-the-book (or at least by the teledrama screenplay) birth and all that was supposed to immediately follow was well and truly popped. But these thoughts just drifted by. Everything was in this moment now.
And then everything was happening. Another intern had arrived and was in position at the foot of the bed. They were calling for the delivery team from the NICU. The doctor, a young woman invited me to come take a look at the top of my son’s head. Sure enough, it was the top of a head (A head!) - with a good bit of hair no less. I touched my son’s head, ever so gently, with two fingers. Now I was convinced. I went back to sit beside Jennifer, but I have to admit that in addition to my “comforting presence” role I was also shifting around for a good vantage point: I still had all my anxiousness and concern but this was interesting.
The NICU team came in, curtained off a little area for themselves, and got up to their preparations behind it. A man came around the curtain and announced “it looks like we’re going to have a baby pretty soon.”
He was right.
Whatever had gone before, and whatever was coming after, Jonah’s birth happened just like the pictures in my mind. It was a miracle, and I feel no qualms about using the word. No matter that it is happening everywhere, all the time. If anything this fact increases my sense of awe: the miracle of Jonah’s birth, a recollection so clear and singular and personal, yet standing alongside, no less or more important, that common history at the heart of every human being that ever was, all of human history, and our future.
It isn’t really much to relate: he came out. This blew my mind. Everything I knew, the images I’d seen, it didn’t matter. This was a human being, this was my child, my son, and he was coming out of Jennifer’s body and into the world. It took hardly any time. One, two, three and he was there in the doctor’s hands. So tiny, so still, barely moving. Immediately the NICU team moved in and rushed him behind the curtain (I assume to prevent new parents from having to witness them sticking a tube down their tiny new baby’s throat: Jonah couldn’t breathe on his own. I waited by Jennifer’s side, told her how great she had been, felt relief. It was the beginning, not the end, of everything. But we’d made it that far. Jonah was in the world. It was 9:53 the night of Thursday, September 30. I’d had no idea it was so late.
They brought me around the curtain as they finished those first necessary but essential procedures. He had the tube in his throat and someone was working one of those breathing bags. He moved very little. Beyond this he was pretty well wrapped up but his little face looked perfect nonetheless. They had cut the umbilical cord at delivery (I hadn’t even thought about this tradition) but invited me to snip off most of the section still attached (this was then sent off for tests). It seemed a little silly but I did that, mostly intrigued by what a convoluted, rubbery, intestinal thing it was. Then we went with him to see Jennifer. We spent a few minutes holding him, and looking at him together, and then they took him away to the NICU to keep him alive.
Epilog
Jennifer was exhausted, still confined to bed. I went to see Jonah in the NICU for the first time. The intensive care unit was on the same floor as Jennifer’s room, past oversized double doors. I signed in and washed my hands with antiseptic for three minutes for the first of many, many times, then found my way to his isolette, a big clear plastic box with ports on either side to reach hands into and a hinged lid. There were half a dozen of these in just this single room, dozens more in others, mostly occupied. Some glow with special lights, some are darkened with quilts. A tiny little baby in each one. A quiet, bearded man was tending Jonah’s station.
The breathing tube was now taped in place and hooked to a machine instead of a bag. IVs were taped to his tiny wrist. Little adhesive sensors were stuck to his tummy and chest, and a teeny little blood pressure cuff circled his ankle. He was under a powerful bank of lights, treatment for an excess of a chemical called bilirubin in his bloodstream (a common issue for premature babies, and the same basic condition responsible for jaundice). To protect his eyes little circles of velcro had been stuck to the sides of his head, and a white visor was attached to these. Tim, the nurse at his station, turned off these lights and removed the visor so I could see his face.
Jonah, still no more: his tiny, stick-thin arms and legs jerk and wave fiercely. Around the tube forcing air into his lungs he is emitting soft but harsh little cries,”ah!” He sounds a little hoarse, like he’d been at it a while. He is clearly pissed off. I certainly can’t blame him. Jonah is whipcord thin, no fat at all, no time to put it on in the womb. He weighs a little under three and a half pounds. He would be an easy double handful if I dared to pick him up, which I don’t quite, then. For a long time I look at him instead, his tiny head no bigger than a biggish orange, with its perfect little face (what I can see around the tape, eyes shut tight against all the light shining in so soon) little feet hardly bigger than the tip of my thumb. I am filled with wonder and sharp anxiety and a thousand questions about what comes next I’m not remotely up to trying to answer. But Jonah’s simple presence and obvious, if outraged, vitality provides a balance new worries and fears. And just like in some story, as I tentatively run a few fingers along his warm, delicate skin, softer than anything I’ve ever felt, I am filled with a sudden and overwhelming expanse of love. Like my total supply of love has just been radically expanded, some modular addition slotted in alongside all the no lesser loves that had nevertheless been developed over much greater periods of time. I’ve never felt anything like it, and though I feel like I’m left without recourse except to resort to clichés to describe it, still, that was how it was.
in the belly of the fish: Jonah’s story part one ends here.
this is what is up with this.
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