The Birth of Josh’s Child

Josh’s series about the pregnancy and birth of his and his wife’s first child

• The Birth of Our Child – Introduction - Susan Sontag once wrote “strictly speaking, one learns nothing from a photograph.”  This is the picture taken just a few hours after the birth of our child, deceptive in its immediacy and seeming transparency.  I want to tell the story of this picture (before and after) – for me anyhow, there’s a lot more to … Continue reading The Birth of Our Child – Introduction →
• Our First Midwife Visit - Our first appointment was in a tiny room on the third floor of an annex to the Illinois Masonic hospital, just a few steps away from the northernmost exit of the Brown Line’s Wellington stop (since this is where Sam was born, everytime we go by there on the train I get a shiver and … Continue reading Our First Midwife Visit →
• The Hospital Tour - “CHILDBIRTH IS NOT AN ILLNESS BUT A NORMAL HUMAN PROCESS.” This was the simple sentence I heard for the first time during a presentation at Illinois Masonic when Brooke and I went for a tour a few weeks later.  A attractive mid-thirties woman with an ambiguous European accent and short blonde hair led the tour.  These … Continue reading The Hospital Tour →
• Anxiety and the Gender Politics of the Unborn – or – Why We Didn’t Find Out - One of the big choices we faced was whether or not to find out whether the baby appeared to have male or female sex characteristics during our 20-week ultrasound.   This, of course, is not the way people usually frame this question.  The ordinary question is more like “are you going to find out what it … Continue reading Anxiety and the Gender Politics of the Unborn – or – Why We Didn’t Find Out →
• Birth Classes in Chicago by El in the Winter - At a midwife appointment, one of the midwives suggested that we sign up to take birth classes, and proposed a couple of options: something called “hypnobirthing” (I’m still suspicious – but many people we care about and trust found it very helpful, so perhaps I shouldn’t be) and also the Bradley Method.  At the time neither of those … Continue reading Birth Classes in Chicago by El in the Winter →
• The Last Trimester Minus About 3 Weeks - To round out the prenatal part of this story, Brooke’s sister and her husband threw us a lovely baby shower.  Since Brooke has many friends in the clergy, this led to us using a large space, gratis, in the church of one of her best friends.  That church being Episcopalian, the space we used reminded me … Continue reading The Last Trimester Minus About 3 Weeks →
• An Early Arrival - “Baby, I think my water just broke.”  Brooke spoke the words like they were foreign, like words she had learned in a textbook, like a phrase that didn’t really fit.  My first (three-quarters asleep) reaction was to distrust her. “What?  Are you …”  I wanted to say “sure?” but I was in such a fog that … Continue reading An Early Arrival →
• Emergency Room and OB Triage - “Are you feeling the urge to push?” “No.” At the time, this dialogue felt urgent – in few more hours of nothing much happening, this would feel almost comical that he had asked us. The scared-looking Physicians’ Assistant immediately produced a wheelchair from behind the desk and made Brooke sit in it.  This was funny too, because we … Continue reading Emergency Room and OB Triage →
• Labor and Delivery - When we were packing our bag for the hospital, we had a serious debate that is pretty funny in retrospect: we had read somewhere that we should bring a book in case things got really slow, so we probably spent several days, on and off, trying to figure out whether we should bring Pride and … Continue reading Labor and Delivery →
• The Apneic Event - At about 6:30am, or, as the doctors were soon to put it, “at about one hour of life…”, Sam seemed awake enough that Noelle thought it would be a good time for him to try breastfeeding.  Brooke held him up to her left breast.  He started sucking, and Noelle showed Brooke how to break the … Continue reading The Apneic Event →
• Sam’s Stay in the NICU – or – The Medical Industrial Complex Strikes Back - And so we come back around to where we started.  This picture shows Brooke and me, neither of us having slept for more than 24 hours, Sam having been born and then having apparently stopped breathing and then resuscitated by the medical staff, and then hooked up to the tiniest IV you’ve ever seen, through … Continue reading Sam’s Stay in the NICU – or – The Medical Industrial Complex Strikes Back →
• Home and Back Again - When we walked in our front door, I looked around at our apartment.  I’ve always had a strange and confusing feeling when walking into a home I’ve been away from for a time.  I remember a family vacation when I was no older than 9 (because we lived in “our old house” – i.e. 222 … Continue reading Home and Back Again →
• Our Unexpected Introduction to Infant Cardiology - We were now totally unexpectedly sitting at another admission desk while we were being checked into another hospital – this time Rush, on Chicago’s near west side, much closer to our house.  There was a big, open atrium, leather chairs, granite countertops all around.  We were shown into a room in the Children’s Hospital section of … Continue reading Our Unexpected Introduction to Infant Cardiology →
• Final Thoughts on The Birth of Our Child - We finally came home that Easter Sunday, around 4pm.  We strolled Sam back to the pink line and rode downtown, switching to the red line and riding down to Roosevelt to get lunch at Eleven City Diner.  The waiter asked us “how old?” “5 days.” “5 days?” “Uh huh.” It’s still amusing to me that … Continue reading Final Thoughts on The Birth of Our Child →