There I was, on November 8th, 2014, in hospital scrubs, sitting in the hallway, waiting for the nurse to call me into the delivery room to sit besides my wife and welcome our first baby. We had decided to call her Agapé which means "God's unconditional love." I had heard so many fathers speak of the first time they were in the delivery room. Some cried and their wife had to comfort them. Some felt sick while others fainted. But mostly, new dads talked about how they experienced love at first sight! They fell in love with their newborn child as soon they laid eyes on them. A feeling of "fatherhood" washed over them, like a software update with a new set of apps like maturity, reliability, fatherly love and a sense of protectiveness.
As you can imagine, I was excited and a bit nervous about getting my own software update. How would I react when that little person appeared in my life. How would I react when I would hold her for the first time? Would I cry, faint, puke? Or would I experience that immediate and out of this world love that I had heard about? A new person was going to come into our lives and I was prepared for whatever emotion came my way. I was going to embrace this moment and try to remember the laughter, the cries, all those messy feelings.
I prayed. Finished. Then the nurse called me in. She lead me into the delivery room where Arsine was laying down on an operating table with a large curtain separating us from the doctors. I sat next to her and caressed her face, telling her everything would be alright. Although she was under anesthesia, I could tell she was extremely uncomfortable. Later, she would describe the strange feeling of being drugged up but still being awake and feeling someone cutting her open and all of her organs behind taken out of her. Finally, a pressure, hands, and the weight of the baby being lifted out of her.
Everything was in slow motion and in extreme closeup. Arsine squeezed her eyes shut pressing out teardrops that streamed down her cheeks. She was relieved. I was relieved. She then let out a cry through her clenched jaw and the sound of a newborn crying pierced through the world.
This was it. She was here. This was the moment I had been waiting for. A nurse gestured toward me, "Come on dad." I stood up and walked around the curtain to see another nurse holding our baby. Crying, frail, surprisingly hairy. "Well, ok then" I thought. The doctor and nurses exclaimed "Beautiful baby, congratulations!" I automatically thanked them.
I stepped closer. I searched deep for what I was feeling. Was I about to faint, puke, cry? None of the above. In fact, I felt nothing at all. No surprise, no love washing over me, nothing at all. The moment seemed very run of the mill.
The nurse then called me to cut Agape's umbilical chord, "would you like to do the honors?" "Sure," I responded. A part of me wished they had done it themselves, not because I was disgusted, but I thought they would do a better job. At the moment, I did feel something. It was either a sense of surprise that the umbilical chord would be so thick and resilient or resignation that they would hand me dull scissors at such a special moment.
"Would you like to hold her, dad?" They asked with big smiles, gleaning my face for excitement and joy. They placed Agape in my arms and besides my amazement at the mechanics of new life entering the world, I didn't feel any fatherly software updates.
I took Agape and sat close to my wife who was so tired. I placed Agape next to her and she cried.
"I love you so much, little girl! Welcome to our family! I love you!" She said. Good for her! I was married to a human who could feel actual emotions, not like myself.
As the nurse moved us to our room, I surveyed myself to see if my feelings would shift, change, appear. I found myself experiencing that excitement through the reactions of my family members until that night, when I experienced something very unique and yes life changing.
Arsine had finally been able to fall asleep when the baby starting crying. Did this mean I would have to hold her? The thought did cross my mind to call a nurse to help but the response time had lagged and I didn't want to risk Arsine waking up again so I bit the bullet and picked up Agape.
I held her in my arms and started singing to her:
This is the day,
This is the day that the Lord has made,
We will rejoice,
we will rejoice and be glad in it.
And be glad in it.
She slowly calmed down and began to stare at me. It's the way that she looked at me in that moment that I will never forget. It's as if time stopped and she said to me "I have come into this world on your account. I don't know anyone. And I have nothing to my name. I have come to this world on your account."
I felt this overwhelming sense of responsibility to be a good host for her life. To never take for granted the role I have been given by God to be a good host for her in this life. To shower her with kisses and hugs and make sure she always feels loved. Loved completely and unconditionally, just like her name, at all times and circumstances. To guide her and protect her and allow her to experience life just as it is, challenging, surprising, difficult, fun and always extraordinary.
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