Comparison Essay

Just like the rest of us, both of my kids were born. I know it sounds stupid but when you think about it that’s the first thing we all do in life. The pregnancies and births can be very different from mother to mother and even more so from child to child as my wife and I found out. My wife was eighteen when our first child was born and twenty-four with the second. Also both children were born in separate hospitals, one was born sick and the other was beyond healthy. It’s strange that two boys from the same parents can come into the world so differently and start life completely opposite.

When the day finally came that my oldest son, Seth, came into the world, I didn’t have a clue what was going on. We lived in Bangor at the time and my wife had been receiving all of her pre-natal care through EMMC. We lived across town over near the airport but fortunately most of our appointments took place at the Healthcare Mall right on Union Street just a minute or two away. The night before he was born my wife had complained of back pain but didn’t think it was anything more than the joys of being pregnant. She tossed and turned all that night still not thinking anything was wrong. I got up in the morning and started getting ready for work. I asked her if I could do anything for her and got the same old joys of pregnancy routine. While I was killing time playing video games before I had to leave her mother comes screaming into the driveway, practically tears the door off the hinges getting in, and starts yelling, “WHERE IS SHE!?!” over and over. I had no idea what was going on until my wife comes waddling down the hall carrying her bag for the hospital. As I soon found out she was in labor and thought her water had broken, she had called her mother at work about it and had never said anything to me! Off to the hospital we went and after about thirty minutes I was a new dad. Now with our second son, Ryan, things were a little different. We lived out in Garland, a small town due south from Dover-Foxcroft. This time around all the pre-natal care had been done at Mayo hospital in Dover. It was a much more relaxed setting than EMMC with the exception of my wife’s crazy, scare tactic using doctor. Her doctor was concerned that the baby might be small and that there might not be enough fluid for him. She had my poor wife hooked up for non-stress tests at least once a week for about two to three hours per session. Finally during one of these appointments her doctor decided to induce labor. So began what would turn out to be a fifteen hour long labor all the while still hooked up to the stress/contraction monitor. The sound of the baby’s heartbeat thumping away in the background, it took days to stop hearing it after all was said and done.

The moment of truth was very different between the boys as well. My mother in law literally grabbed us and threw us in her car and tore off across town toward EMMC. I was no stranger to crazy driving but that lady scared the shit right out of me. Speeding through downtown Bangor, running red lights, and darting in and out of traffic I remember thinking as I held on for dear life, “What good is racing to the hospital if we’re all dead before we get there?” I kept my mouth shut though; I didn’t want to distract her while she was ‘In the Zone’. We sped up to the front doors and the car came to grinding halt, she jumps out and sprints to the doors yelling something like, “Lady having baby, need wheel chair!!” The funny thing was how calm everyone else seemed, myself and my wife included. When we finally made it to the delivery room there must have been fifteen people all crammed in practically shoulder to shoulder. Nurses and Practitioners all yelling at each other, other people yelling down the hall, it all faded into a mumbled static to me. I just stood there, dazed by what was happening and getting my hand squeezed in my wife’s vice like grip. As the words “PUSH” started coming through the static and my knuckles started popping under the pressure. In no time at all it stopped, there he was new to the world around him but the nurses quickly whisked him away, something was wrong. Fast forward six years and my wife is in labor again at Mayo this time. We had been in a delivery room for the last twelve hours waiting for things to ‘get moving’. Nothing to eat for my wife except green jell-o and ginger ale, she was not happy. When her water broke things got hard, three intense hours of pushing finally paid off with a loud cry. In the room this time were two nurses and a doctor, very relaxed for the situation. I got to cut the cord this time also, things were so frantic the first time that I hadn’t been able to. After Ryan was cleaned up, weighed and measured, and swaddled up in a blanket we got to hold him for a while and get to know each other. As I mentioned before that was not the case with Seth.

Back to 2001, Seth had just been hurried away by the delivery staff of EMMC. I had no idea what was going on and they were not saying anything. I was told to go home and get some things for my wife and that everything would be fine. She needed to get some much needed rest and I was told Seth was having some tests done, so off I went. When I returned with a duffle bag full of stuff a few hours later the nurses had news that was not what I had hoped to hear. It seemed Seth’s heart was not pumping the blood away fast enough and was causing congestive heart failure. A doctor that was from the Boston children’s hospital was on hand and ordered an MRI. The images shown were startling, a tennis ball sized ball of blood vessels with one massive artery dumping blood straight into his heart. This ball was where the left lobe of his liver should have been and it was killing him. A few doctors were tossing ideas back and forth on what to do and we had been told to pack bags to go to Boston. A full blown out operation to remove it was out of the question, he would never survive it. A stent to reduce the flow or treating it with steroids hoping to shrink it were the only options available. Steroids are what the doctors decided would work best and for the next eight weeks we lived out of the hospital. For the first few weeks we couldn’t even touch him, he was locked inside an incubator. As the time past he got better and better until we were released sixty-two days after his birth. That was the hardest and most stressful time I ever experienced. With Ryan we were home in less than twenty-four hours after his birth, just in time for Christmas. Five o’ clock PM on Christmas Eve to be exact, and I never went to sleep that night. I was busy preparing things for Christmas morning, helping my wife and caring for a newborn all at the same time. We had to go back to the hospital that afternoon for a blood drawing that needed to be done twenty-four hours after birth by state law. Everything with Ryan was picture perfect; he was in the top ninety percentile for all newborns. He was so big he didn’t even fit into any newborn clothes and barely fit into the newborn diapers. Very different from the first time around.

Now we are having boy number three, that’s probably why this has been on my mind lately. In just a matter of weeks we will be going through it again and hopefully it will be just like last time. I wouldn’t wish what we went through with Seth on anyone. Today Seth is an awesome kid though, does great at everything he does, especially at being a good big brother to Ryan. They love each other very much and despite their age differences spend hours a day playing with each other. The new baby and Ryan are only going to be a year apart so Seth will have his hands full, just like his mother and I.