TANG BOY

August 24, 1998

Our daughter, Taylor Robyn, was born at Oakville Memorial Hospital at 10:16am.

It was our first baby so we really didn’t know what to expect.

It was early in the morning, or possibly even the middle of the night.

We were counting contractions until they were about 4 minutes apart and then we left for the hospital – bags packed and ready to go.

We got to the hospital at about 5am and were assigned our birthing room.

It started out pretty calm. Me in the bed. Rob in the the comfy chair beside me. We were just chatting and could breathe through the contractions at this point.

We called my parents to come because they wanted to be there to welcome “Baby Gender Unknown” into the world. They had to come from out of town so they needed a heads up.

As the hours passed into morning, the contractions started hurting a lot more.

We walked, or should I say waddled, through the halls.

Rob rubbed my lower back.

I turned down the birthing pool. Let’s face it. I don’t like being seen in a bathing suit on a normal day – forget about giving birth with an audience in a pool! That may traumatize me for life! Would I ever be able to go in a pool again?

We finally went back to our room and the nurse measured – 10 cm dilated. Time to start.

They called in my doctor as well as the nurses that would help with the birth and it was show time.

Rob was given a blue gown.

We were told that my parents were in the waiting room.

The birth started the way most births do, I assume (having only been present for two). Push – breathe – push – pinch Rob – breathe etc.

Rob was standing by my shoulder helping me to remain calm and breathe like we were taught. At one point, the nurse said to him,” You have to come here (here being between my birthing thighs!!) and look. It’s amazing!”

We had already discussed the fact that Rob wanted to be there but he did not want to actually SEE the birth of his first child.

Rob politely declined and stayed up by my shoulder.

The rather insistent nurse asked him a couple more times to come and look, despite his repeating that he didn’t want to. At this point, I was in full labour and very uncomfortable and the nurse was starting to get on my nerves.

I turned to Rob and quietly said, “Just go look. Then she will stop.”

He looked at me and gradually made his way down to the “other side of the sheet” to look what was going on between my legs. If nothing else, this might change the way he felt about “down there” for the rest of our lives.

He looked at the crowning headful of dark hair, belonging to his new daughter.

I am sure that love and pride played a role but, for a few minutes, they most definitely took a back seat.

Rob turned as white as the sheet on the bed, backed up to lean on the wall and slowly slid down to a seated position. It was quite unexpected for this well built, congenial, 6’4″ hockey player to end up on the floor just his daughter was about to arrive.

One of the nurses ran to steady him. Another quickly left the room, clearly with a destination in mind. The doctor turned her attention away from the woman giving birth (ME!!!!) to check on the big sweaty lump on the floor. The nurse came back in with a glass of juice because, apparently wussiness and blood sugar are closely related and he needed some sugar. She passed him the glass of TANG and sat with him while he drank his TANG. Eventually the colour flooded his cheeks again. I am pretty sure that the nurse calmly rubbing his back helped almost as much as the cold glass of juice. Never mind that I had a human being coming out of my body!

As he was having a quiet drink on the floor, a nurse went out to the waiting room to call my mom in since someone had to be there to hold my legs up as the doctor continued to wait for the baby. My mom insisted that she only wanted to be there so see the baby after it was born – not during. But since Rob was otherwise engaged, my mom was actively in the room when Taylor came on the scene.

Rob did make it back to the scene of the crime, just in time to be handed his 8 lb 6 oz baby daughter. He did not, however, have any desire to cut the umbilical cord. This time the nurse did not press him to do something he didn’t want to do so my dad came in to cut it for him.

Taylor’s birth had, quite unexpectedly, become a family affair.

My parents spent the day and on the way home, my mom stopped at the mall to have two t-shirts made for Super Dad ….

He wore those shirts for a lot of years and every time he did, we had to share the TANG BOY story once again.

Lessons learned? If someone adamantly tells you that they don’t want to do something, they probably really don’t!