When I asked our oldest daughter what she’d like me to write about this week, she suggested “stories about when each of us was born”.
The birth of each child was an important event, at least for me and my wife, so I figured it’d be a matter of deciding which memories to pick.
Then I started poking around the labyrinthine interior of my mind.
Turns out I’ve got a few vivid snapshots, but not nearly as many details as I thought there’d be.
I’ve got a pretty good memory; apart from things like appointment times, anniversaries — fact is, I’ll be asking my wife for help with this post. It’s been decades since the mental machinery filed away those experiences.
Meanwhile, I’ll start talking about our oldest child’s birth, and see what happens.
Birth: The First Time
This was when we were living in Fargo, North Dakota. I was doing time in academia again, getting a teaching degree in English. That was in daylight hours.
At night, when the due date came, I was a temp worker — a “Kelly Girl” — thankfully, I didn’t mind the disconnect, and that’s another topic. More specifically, I was a computer operator on the graveyard shift at an implement company.
Happily, the offices were in a building near the hospital we’d picked. Getting coffee, I could look out the window and see the building. Then, when my shift was over, I’d go over and see how my wife and newborn were doing.
But I’m getting ahead of the story.
Besides practical matters, the folks who were giving our — birth preparation class? birthing class? — anyway, the ‘what to expect, what to do, and how to do it’ class.
Where was I? Birthing class, the folks who were giving it. Right. Anyway, these folks gave advice for how to get a quick response at the hospital’s emergency entrance after hours.
We could, one of them said, get close to the outside microphone and make gasping-breath sounds — demonstrating the technique. I’m guessing that it was a joke, but it did strike me as a good way to encourage liveliness.
My wife and I didn’t need to do that. Getting to the hospital and the maternity ward is one of the blurred spots in my memory, but I remember that the process went fairly smoothly.
Changes: Delivery Rooms and Fainting Fathers
Childbirth, even when everything goes right, isn’t “routine”. Not in the sense of being unremarkable. It’s called labor for reasons, and I’ll let it go at that.
Something that’s changed since my youth is who’s around when a child is born.
Back then, at least near cities, most women gave birth in hospitals. The father would be on hand, but at a distance: in a waiting room, out of the way and fretting.
That was changing, slowly, in the 1960s.1 By the time my wife and I had our first child, letting me into the delivery room was acceptable. Along with not having my wife doped to the gills so she’d keep quiet, and that’s another topic.
Grudgingly acceptable, that is. Convincing the doctor took effort.
Somewhere along the line, I learned why some doctors preferred keeping fathers out of the delivery room. Seems that too often, a father would faint: adding the task of sliding a body out of the way to an already-intense process.
I wasn’t one of the fainting fathers.
In a way, it might have been easier on my wife if I had been.
Focused
I’d known in general terms what to expect during my wife’s labor.
There was a breathing routine I was expected to remind her about during contractions. I’m not sure how much good that did. Not the breathing: my alleged help. She knew the routine perfectly well.
My wife also stayed focused throughout. Make that almost throughout. During transition, that’s when the cervix is dilated from eight to ten centimeters,2 she did cry. Briefly.
She was and is not prone to emotional outbursts. At all. Getting her to cry would be like getting Sherlock Holmes to giggle.
The medicos had been poking needles into her, and her veins were not cooperating. My wife says that during transition is not the time to play find-the-vein. I think she’s right.
Ideally, she could have voiced that opinion clearly and eloquently at the time. But, well, there was quite a great deal happening that demanded her full attention.
New Experiences and Evaporative Cooling
She didn’t, for example, tell me that I should stop leaning on her. Not until later, when our oldest daughter was out and we all had a little time on our hands.
I wasn’t one of those fainting fathers, this was our firstborn child. I was excited: and that’s putting it mildly.
Things had progressed to the point where the top of our child’s head was visible. I’d known that our heads change shape as we go through the birth canal. What I hadn’t known was what it would look like.
The first part of our firstborn I saw was the top of her head. Aside from the size and color, it looked like a walnut.
That’s what I told my wife, right then, excitedly: while leaning on her. Later, she let me know that this was not a good idea. Leaning on her, I mean. She’d have told me right then and there, but — mothers may multitask, but not during delivery.
Getting back to that first look at our newborn, her head promptly popped into a more conventional baby-shape as the rest of her came out.
At the time, something that was part of the hospital’s childbirth process was having me (carefully) hold our daughter, lowering her into a body-temperature basin of water.
I think she liked it. As soon as she was mostly-immersed, she turned her head — I think it was to the left.
Pursing her lips, she methodically extended that arm and drew it back, keeping her hand even with her shoulder. Turning her head the other way, she did the same with the other arm. My guess is that she was taking in the experience of being able to extend her arms.
Then I lifted her out of the water. She experienced evaporative cooling.3 And screamed. She still does not like that experience.
A Couple Details
I think my wife’s first close look at our first daughter was when they ‘plopped her on her belly’ and dried her off. We were both very happy about our little one, and I’ll leave it at that.
Except for another detail.
We have had, in several senses of the term, colorful babies.
When she first came out, our oldest daughter was orange. That’s not usual. The reason her head looked like a tangerine has a scary name — infantile jaundice — but it’s treatable, temporary, and not a huge problem.4
Years later, when our son was born, he was purple; until his lungs made up a temporary oxygen deficit. Again, not a huge problem.
And like I said, colorful.
Baptism of Desire, Uncertainty, and Hope
All told, my wife and I have had six children. We’ve gotten to know four of them: the ones who survived.
Those four were baptized, the other two weren’t. The reason was, basically, that you can’t baptize a corpse.
About that —
Baptism matters, a lot. It makes entering the kingdom of God an option. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1214-1274)
One of our children died in what this culture calls a miscarriage, the other experienced a stillbirth: and we nearly lost my wife in the process.
I am profoundly glad that my wife lived, I still grieve for Joy and Elizabeth, and — although I realize it’s impossible — I wish they could have been baptized.
The experiences did, however, result in my learning about what the church has been saying for the last 15 or so centuries about baptism and infants.
So far, we know that baptism is vitally important; that some infants, through no fault of their own, aren’t or can’t be baptized: and we don’t know how that affects their salvation.
Maybe it’d be easier to do an opinion poll and see what most folks want to be true, but the Church doesn’t work that way.
Instead, I can remember that something like a “Baptism of desire” has been discussed: and hope that I’m right about God being good, just, and merciful. I’m pretty sure about that, I’m counting on “merciful”, and that’s yet another topic. Topics.
Here’s a sample of what I found:
“…the Church does not know of any other means which would certainly give little children access to eternal life. However, the Church has also traditionally recognized some substitutions for Baptism of water (which is the sacramental incorporation into the mystery of Christ dead and risen), namely, Baptism of blood (incorporation into Christ by witness of martyrdom for Christ) and Baptism of desire (incorporation into Christ by the desire or longing for sacramental Baptism). During the 20th century, some theologians, developing certain more ancient theological theses, proposed to recognize for little children either some kind of Baptism of blood (by taking into consideration the suffering and death of these infants), or some kind of Baptism of desire (by invoking an ‘unconscious desire’ for Baptism in these infants oriented toward justification, or the desire of the Church). The proposals invoking some kind of Baptism of desire or Baptism of blood, however, involved certain difficulties….”
(“The hope of salvation for infants who die without being baptised” , International Theological Commission (2007)[emphasis mine])
I’ve talked about some of this, and how I see changing attitudes about infants, before:
- “Couney’s Baby Incubators vs. the Progressive Era” (February 8, 2021)
- “The Baptism of Jesus, and My Kids” (January 11, 2020)
- “Sin, Awareness, Repentance” (December 4, 2016)
- “Authority, Superstition, Progress” (October 30, 2016)
- “Miscarriage, Stillbirth, and Hope” (October 9, 2016)
1 Some changes have been for the better:
- This Father’s Day, Remembering A Time When Dads Weren’t Welcome In Delivery Rooms”
Deena Prichep, NPR (June 18, 2017)
2 Took a little effort, but I found a brief description of transition in labor:
- Overview of Labor
Children’s Health, Stanford Medicine
- Wikipedia
- Newborn head molding
MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia, National Library of Medicine, NIH (review date November 6, 2023) - “How Much Do Babies’ Skulls Get Squished During Birth? A Whole Lot, 3D Images Reveal”
Mindy Weisberger, Live Science (May 15, 2019)
4 Baptism of desire (hope is an option):
- “The hope of salvation for infants who die without being baptised”
International Theological Commission (2007)
Your description of yourself as an excited father during your first child’s birth especially strikes me well, Mister Gill! As a man who somehow feels a calling to having his own family despite his heavy insecurities about his domestic capabilities, knowing about someone like you means a lot to me!
As for Baptism for infants who die without it, it can seem silly to wonder about, and I think I should keep the topic in mind as a random question to ask my priest godfather, but I am reminded about how the concrete is valued alongside the abstract in the Sacraments in Roman Catholicism. As His life to death on earth especially showed, God works through both, no?
God works through both, yes!! 🙂
And – thank you for what you said in the first paragraph. Very much. For what it’s worth – as a father I was learning “on the job”, and my wife helped a lot. So did knowing what the Church has been saying.