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“Okay,” she said, and then the nurses were racing the bed down the hallway, saying uplifting words of encouragement, and telling Nat everything would be fine. I went into some strange survival mode and focused on getting to the operating room where the young doctor would perform a C-section on Nat to deliver our baby.
When I walked in, I was guided to sit where Nat’s face was turned toward me. A curtain was draped over her chest while the doctor went to work. No one was fucking around, and I appreciated that the life of my Natalia and baby daughter was being taken so seriously.
“You look so beautiful,” I said, seeing her eyes glistening under the bright lights of the room. I wiped away the tears streaming from the corners of her eyes. “So beautiful.”
“I don’t know, you two, but I think you’re both going to have competition with this little one,” I heard the doctor say before he raised our daughter over the curtain for us to meet her.
Her hair was full and curly, her eyes a deep blue, and her lips pouted sweetly before she let out her first scream. I choked, feeling tears in my eyes, and covered my mouth while I unexpectedly realized that I wasn’t choking, I was crying.
My God, she was the most beautiful thing I’d ever laid eyes on.
“She’s so beautiful,” Nat choked out, laughing and crying simultaneously. “She looks so much like me.”
“We’re going to go get her vitals,” the nurse said as the doctor handed her our daughter. “Dad, you may come with us or stay with mom.”
“I love you,” I told Nat. “There is no better gift.”
“Go be with her, Spence,” she said, smiling. “Don’t leave her side.”
“Okay,” I answered, then kissed her forehead and walked over to where the nurses were cleaning our daughter.
“Hey, sweetie,” I said when she started screaming at the top of her healthy lungs. “It’s your daddy.”
Just like the books and the shows we watched had said, our baby would find our voices comforting if they heard them while in the womb. I could see that now as my face grew lighter, watching her eyes search the room for where my voice came from.
“A miracle,” I said, awestricken.
“You can hold her hand, Dad,” the nurse advised me.
I reached into the warming area where they were cleaning her and reached my pinky in, watching in amazement as my daughter clasped her tiny fingers around it. The miracle of this was overwhelming me. I felt like I was floating, feeling so peaceful and in love with her.
I’d heard many stories of parents bonding with their children, but I never knew what that was all about until now. I was experiencing emotions I didn’t know existed.
Everything was rushing past in a whirlwind, and Natalia still had not had the luxury of holding our daughter. Then, after the nurses wrapped her up, she smiled at me, “Would you like to bring her to Momma?”
“I’d love to,” I said, taking my daughter in my arms and letting the love wash over me.
There were no words to describe the feeling I was experiencing. I wanted these first moments to be spent with just me and Natalia. I knew we’d have the chaos of the operating room and then returning to the postpartum room, but all I wanted was to watch my wife hold her baby for the first time.
Nat’s eyes widened when she took her, and with the assistance of me holding our daughter, Nat and the baby were able to stare at each other and meet for the first time.
“Hey, apple cheeks,” Nat said, obviously feeling great with the drugs in her system and acknowledging how chubby our daughter’s perfect cheeks were. “You’re so beautiful.”
Everything went smoothly from the moment the doctor made the call to perform a Caesarean section to safely deliver our daughter until now. Dr. Aster explained that she’d gone into distress during the contractions because the umbilical cord was wrapped around her neck, so the emergency C-section saved her life. For that, I’d be eternally grateful.
“I want to name her Angel,” Nat said, my eyes shifting from where I stood, staring at our little miracle while Nat rested on the bed.
“Angel?” I questioned. “Are we hippies now?”
She arched an eyebrow at me and grinned, “I said Angel, not Stardust-Moonbeam. Although, I like the sound of that too. Don’t tempt me.”
“Nat,” I tried to reason with her a little, “I understand that it was likely Angels that saved her and all that. But don’t you think that is like something you name your pet? What about something normal like Jennifer or Allison or whatever?”
“Jennif—Hey, this isn’t the eighties, pal,” she said, looking at me like I’d lost my mind. “We’re not naming our baby Jennifer, Tammy, Linda, or any other name that makes our infant an instant forty-year-old.”
“No, I just mean that they’re regular, human names,” I said, trying my hardest not to laugh so as not to startle the baby.
“I love the name Angel,” she ordered.
