It seems appropriate in this Christmas season to share a nativity story. This one is personal. Our youngest daughter, Catherine, was to have given birth in a birthing center in San Francisco late last month. That was the plan. My wife, Hoa, and I flew to California to be on hand in time for the birth of our fourth grandchild, Catherine’s first child. This, again, was according to plan.
Mother Nature cooperated, as hoped and planned. In fact, Catherine went into labor on her “due” date, late on the evening of Nov. 23. Labor lasted more than 30 hours. All of us tried, as best we could, to be supportive. Needless to say, it was a wonderful and exhausting time for Catherine and the rest of us.
As labor grew more intense telephone calls were made to the birthing center and to the midwife who was to deliver the infant. That was the plan. The midwife, however, insisted the time had not yet come. It was after all, she explained, Catherine’s first. “Not yet. Call back later,” the woman with much birthing experience advised.
Oops. When the women surrounding Catherine began to prepare her for a short car ride to the center, Catherine’s sister, Christine, by then part of the drama that was unfolding at great speed on Catherine’s living room floor, declared matter-of-factly that no one was going anywhere. Plan A was out the window and plan B was being improvised. Baby had decided its time had come. Fortunately Christine, a University of California San Francisco Medical Center pediatric neurologist (not an obstetrician), is, if anything, totally competent. Immediately she called 911 “for backup.”
As a team of paramedics trotted up the steps to the second floor flat minutes later, Catherine and Christine were in full sync and an infant boy was being born. Christine received Catherine’s child, and placed the newborn, covered with towels, on Catherine’s chest. A late arriving midwife soon attended to the exhausted new mother, still on the living room floor, but now peering down for the first time at her new son. Zach, the pleased father, was kneeling at their side.
The bond between my daughters, already strong, had just grown stronger. Two sets of proud — and vastly relieved — grandparents were on hand as tiny Thomas Judah Eugene, held in a cloth, was weighed at 7 pounds, 14 ounces. The family gathered the next day to celebrate Thanksgiving. And, yes, mother, and baby are doing fine, thank you.
Fox is NCR Editor and the proud father of three and proud grandfather of four.
