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by Curtis Roberts

The day started like any other. My wife and I woke up early, ate breakfast, and started off to our January 26th scheduled doctor’s appointment. We arrived at nine o’clock sharp, sitting in Doctor Thompson’s office, which has a rather nice waiting room, filled with various types of fish tanks, both fresh and salt water, allowing the waiting experience to be rather pleasant.

I remember these events like it was just yesterday, for this day was the day our daughter was to be born. To the day, nine months have been completed. We were both restless, with anxiety filling our hearts, as we awaited the birth of our first-born child. Our wait wasn’t long: soon we heard the nurse directing us to a small room, where she instructed my wife to remove her clothes and put on some small over-coat type garment that didn’t come close to covering any of the vital body parts.

As Doctor Thompson walked in, he greeted us with his normal pleasant smile and said, “Well, Mr. and Mrs. Roberts, this is your day,” which only led both my wife and me to become increasingly at edge. Doctor Thompson started examining my wife and he told us she is dilated to 7cm, but needs to be at 10cm to induce labor. He told us calmly to drive ourselves to the hospital which just happens to be right across the street.

We checked into Northridge Hospital. By this time it was about 11am. My wife and I were escorted to some strange room, not quite a hospital resting room or sleeping room, more like a pre-operating room. That’s a good description of this room that was filled with various machines that were beeping for one reason or another. Soon I found my way over to the machine that was spitting out this paper like an adding machine does or a cash register does and yet somehow the little lines on the paper meant something to me and my wife.

With her labor pains increasing, I found myself still playing with the ticker tape machine with these up and down roller coaster like lines that somehow reflected whatever was happening on this tape was also happening to my wife. I stood there like a seasoned doctor, reading the lines and soon discovered that I could predict my wife’s next labor pain. I’d turn my head towards her direction and say, “Hold on, sweetheart, here comes another labor pain.”

Of course I wasn’t feeling the pain like she was, which allowed me to find some joy in knowing I learned how to use this new-found toy.

After about an hour in this room, we were moved into what I’d call a normal hospital room, one like we all have been in for recovery purposes or visiting a sick person. I asked the nurse why we were in this room. She told me, “We are waiting for your wife to become fully dilated.” I was told it would be hours before our daughter would be born. My wife and I agreed that I should go back home and check up on our cat who just the day before had surgery.

Racing home, I fed the cat, made sure she was okay, washed my face, grabbed a quick bite to eat and rushed back to the hospital. If you have ever had one of those breath taking moments, or an event in life that makes you stop in your tracks in shock, this was the moment for me. I reached the room where my wife was and saw that she was now covered by a curtain and a team of doctors. Our doctor said to my wife, “Go ahead and tell your husband!” If ever time stopped for me, this was it, it was like she could not get the words out fast enough. Within the split second of time between our doctor saying go ahead and tell your husband, and my wife actually saying it, my mind literally raced with thoughts that our unborn daughter, my wife, or both, were in some kind of medical emergency. The words came like a fog, or like a maze of dominoes which fell so slowly. She said, “The birth cord is wrapped around our daughter in such a way that when she pushes from the labor pains, our daughter is actually being cut off from her life-giving support.”

Her little heart would race to over 150 beats a minute during each labor pain which was now forcing the doctor to take her by Caesarian.

Within minutes the doctors raced down the hall toward the operating room with my wife on a gurney. I asked the nurse if I could use the phone; she told me to use the phone in the room that I was in. I picked it up and there was no dial tone, so I yelled for the nurse again and told her it’s not working. She assured me that it did work and to try again, so again I tried to use the phone only to find it not working. I raced down the hall frantically searching for a phone to use, yelling at the nurse that the phone is not working. That’s when she walked me back to the room, showing me that all I needed to do was to dial nine and then the dial tone would come on.

Calling my wife’s mom to explain the situation and asking her to come to the hospital to help us during this difficult time—I think it was more for me, since my wife seemed to be in good hands. I was the one panicking. The nurse tried to calm me down, giving me water and assuring me that everything was just fine. She told me that since we had not heard the word “stat” over the hospital microphone that everything was going well. The word “stat” was a code word for the hospital staff to come running because something is terribly wrong.

Doctor Thompson’s final word to me as he was pushing my wife’s gurney down the hall was, “it will take about 30 minutes.” I wish he had not told me that, for his 30 minutes is more like an hour, which led me once again to panic and yell for the nurse. She told me again that everything was fine, that they had already taken my daughter to the recovery room and were preparing my wife for me to come see her.

The nurse encouraged me to go see our daughter while I waited for my wife, but I refused, choosing to wait so that both my wife and I could see our daughter, Kristiona Louise Roberts, born January 26th, 1989, together. Soon the three of us were together, looking into each other’s love-filled eyes.