Stressing Over Blessing

A thin sheen of frost lay over the windshield in the deep dark of pre-dawn. The chill of fall hung heavy in the air. Walking across the countless fallen acorns on the gravel driveway, each stop evoked a crunch that broke the quiet of morning.

My car sat cold in the driveway matching the 38 degree chill. Hopping in the driver's seat, the vinyl seats immediately chilled my back and legs. As my very pregnant wife sat down in the passenger seat, she immediately broke into shivers.

The cold was chasing away the sleepiness as I started the car. We sat for a few minutes waiting for the windshield to clear. Between her shivers we talked about how cold it was and how cloth seats would have been welcomed about then.

After the window had sufficiently cleared I looked over at my wife.

"Let's do this thing", I said.

"Well, its not like we really can stop now. Let's go have this baby," came the reply.

And so our day began...

Looking like she was about to pop and still a couple weeks away from her due date, we were on our way to have labor induced. Regular labor can be challenging and is often painful. Induced labor can be quite difficult and is usually excruciating, as my wife knew from experience.

There were few cars on the road as I drove through the darkness, arriving at the hospital early. Its buildings seemed menacing to me. Perhaps even sinister. I shook it off and continued on.

Hospitals always have that affect on me. So many years of hospitals. So many years of waiting and receiving both bad and good news. It seems like the bad so often outweighs the good.

Walking the labyrinth from outpatient entry to the maternity unit gave us time for small talk about what lay in store this day. Not wanting to allow the stress to win out, I prayed and walked on, laughing and talking about what our new baby may look like.

We were soon checked in and after donning a revealing hospital gown, my wife climbed into the first of many hospital beds today. Soon, they started the medicine that would coax her body along the path to labor. It was time to hurry up and wait.

Walking speeds labor. So we walked. And we walked.

We walked the same four corridors for hours, a mind numbing experience. I soon grew bored and found ways to entertain myself and my wife. Walking silly, pondering technology, and varying the path were some of the ways I passed the time. It served us well to distract us from what lay in store for us both.

And those hours of walking did help. With dilation now starting, it was time to break her water. This still would be an event. With excessive amniotic fluid - nearly 3 times the normal amount - breaking my wife's water came as a bit of a shock to the nurse who did not have enough towels and pads ready to handle it all.

This brought on real contractions. Labor was now officially underway.

But when the doctor came to check on my wife and pre-born baby, he had a scowl and I knew something was a little off kilter. He immediately called for an ultra-sound machine and started probing for our baby.

"She's shoulder first. You can't have a baby shoulder first. The baby can't come out."

He looked at the heart rate monitor strip charts and frowned some more.

"The baby is stressing. Her heart rate is dropping too low during contractions."

I am fully aware of the implications of what all can go wrong in this situation. So was my wife. We were both actually relieved to hear what came next.

"We need to do a class 1 C-section now."

The next 10 minutes went by in a blur as my wife was whisked away down the hall.

"Lord, I leave her in your hands. Take care of my wife and my baby."

There really was nothing else to say.

I called my wife's mother to let her know what was going on. None of us expected induction to go fast. We all expected it to last all day. But she immediately got in the car and headed up to the hospital.

I made a few other calls, but before I knew it, here she came. My baby was here. Kara was already out and looking absolutely beautiful.

Told my wife was doing fine and would be going to a short recovery room, I followed Kara to the nursery where I got to hold my daughter for the first time.

She was warm, wiggly, and captivating. Words fail to capture the feeling of a father holding his child for the first time. Its moving, touching, enriching, and emboldens you to think you are something special to hold such a gift and you feel 10 feet tall. It also can make you feel the burden of responsibility and drop you to your knees.


But its wonderful. Three times I have done it. Each as wondrous and amazing as the others.

I have six kids in all now. All living at home with me. A boy and a girl from my first marriage. Three girls from my wife's first marriage. And now a beautiful new girl from the two of us.

Married just three years ago, we have been blessed over and over. I am thankful God has been so good to us and so amazing in the work He has done in our lives.

The day has been long. I have tried to be the husband my wife needed today. I have shuttled siblings back and forth to see their sister. I have tried to contact as many people as I could think of at the time to spread the good news. Some I even called twice because I forgot.

I love my wife. I love my family. I truly hope all six of my children know that another child does not diminish my love for them. It just keeps adding more in.

That is what it is to be a daddy. A daddy loves each child immensely, and uniquely. And with each new child, he just adds in more love.

It has been a long day, but it has been a good day.

Today I just became richer. Not richer in money. Richer in my family. And of the two, I count family of higher value any day.

And now to share a little sample of my new daughter's first day: follow me to the pictures of Kara!

It has been months since I last posted in my blog. Why the delay? Why the absence from sage and sound pronouncements and potent musings on the state of life, living, and all?


I don't know.


I think mostly because there is simply too much going on and I could never sit down and sift through life and pull out something that stood out above the others enough to warrant its own entry. Perhaps its the ennui of winter dragging out into slow spring. Or maybe I really am that ADD.

So many things have happened and so much has changed. Too much to really cover in a few pages and I would not want to bore others to the point of self-mutilation. So maybe a spring recap is in order and then perhaps I will be on track going forward.

The first thing I have to say is that being an old dad ain't so bad after all. When I first learned that I was going to be a father yet again at 42, I was "concerned" to say the least. After the shock, I added up all the kids including the one coming and my legs buckled under the weight of six kids counted on my fingers.

And yet, here I am with what has to be one of the most wonderful little girls any dad could ever hope for. Having four other girls I have to be careful with comparisons because I have learned over time that females (young and old) can get their feelings hurt pretty easy. But I also know that even her sisters would have to say that our little bundle of joy is the "most awesomest baby ever". They said so. That proves it.

So life with a 5 month old is not much different than life with a teenager with the obvious exception of the diapers. And I think my experiences and even my age have qualified me to better appreciate the joys of a new baby. The first time around I was a complete amateur. But this is my third baby and sixth child, I have been able to apply some mellow to my attitude this time around far easier than before.

I mean really, its not the end of the world for a baby to smear food on their head, or a pacifier to drop to the floor. Wipe the head down, brush the pacifier across your jeans a couple of times and press on. And for any that would say "oh my, you let your baby have a pacifier that has dared touch the dirty floor" to that I would say "yeah, and I remember seeing my pre-toddler son eat a dead spider before I could stop him." Really, babies are not as fragile as you think. Mine survived. That has to count for something.

So I have the most awesomest baby that smiles most of the time. What else could stir me so?

I have the most awesomest wife. She is the most awesomest mother. I have five other kids that are sometimes the most awesomest and sometimes the worstest - well, not really but they are kids. Those things stir me too.

I also have to say that there have been some down times this winter as well. My wife's father passed away unexpectedly. And now her mother has moved to Florida, a few states away. It also seems like it is the time in my life for those adults I remember from childhood to pass on also. There have been so many. I think back and its saddening to think of all those people that I once knew in various capacities growing up that are now gone.

But let us not dwell there. I also remember all the fun times that involved those people. I remember their kindness, their smiles, their laughs, and their presence in my life. It made my life better and from my perspective their lives were not in vain. They brought much into this world with all they did, even when they did not know they were doing anything special because sometimes, it was only special to me.

I have been blessed with the ability to recall memories in exquisite detail - with the exception of calculus, no memories there - and I can easily think back and picture those now gone. I see them from my youth and later. I can see their mannerisms and their peculiarities. Sometimes I recall events and I see them smiling, laughing, helping, caring, and just doing what they always did.

I guess the other big item that stirs me now is stress.

Anyone feeling stress from the economy? Well I am. I am stressed over my job, stressed over my work situation and the insane work distance arrangement I have. And I am stressed as a husband and dad just trying to keep it all going.

Its a good thing God is there with me because really, no man can do this on his own. Anyone is a fool to think otherwise.

And in the midst of all this what happens? Hernia surgery. Not the regular kind. Oh no. I have to have umbilical hernia surgery, something normally corrected in childhood. I remember seeing my first two kids both have this surgery and they were bouncing off the walls in about 2-3 days. For me, two weeks later I was still feeling it.

Oh well. I at least gave my family something to laugh at when they came into the living room where I camped out and would ask me questions just to hear my vicodin-induced answers. I did catch on when the 11 year old asked if she could take the tractor out for a drive. After initially nodding and muttering "sure" I quickly come to with a "what? no!".

So there it is. I reduced five months of living to just a few pages.

Oh, one thing to add. Just in the last week or so the baby has started the "da-da-da-da" phase. And when I look down at her smiling - and sometimes not smiling - face, and she says "da-da", stress is forgotten, bad memories fade, and she melts my heart. Yes, this old crusted bonehead has turned into a soft mush over the years. So I pick her up and hold her close. All is good.


Copyright 2008, Kevin Farley (a.k.a. sixdrift, a.k.a. neuronstatic)