Entry #4 – My Firstborn Son

Diaries of a Father

It’s November 25th, 8:30 a.m. I’m sitting outside the OR – my wife is behind those doors, undergoing her C-section. I’m waiting to be called in to experience the moment of embrace of the arrival of my firstborn son.

However, in this moment, I’m not feeling what my conscience is telling me I should be feeling. I’m not nervous – I’m not worried. We’ve come so far to get here, and the time is finally now. What I do feel is an overwhelming calm. In uncertain situations, I naturally lead with positivity and optimism. Ruminating on things you can’t control is as useful as chewing bubblegum to solve an algebra equation – it’s just an exhausting misuse of one’s mental fortitude.

8:40 a.m.

Our midwife pops her head out of the OR doors.

“Okay, Mike – you can come in now.”

I walk through the door and see my wife on the table, surrounded by the OR nurses and the operating doctor. They’re all women – and for this reason, it comforts me even more. There’s something grounding about having a room full of competent women, focused medical professionals helping my wife. My first love was a nurse – my mother – so I’ve always had a deep respect for women in medicine and the nurture only their presence can provide to complete strangers. They inherently have my trust.

I take my seat behind the curtain, my wife’s face right in front of me. Our gazes stay locked, separated from whatever is happening below. Everything is moving so quickly. I’ve been in the room for less than ten minutes when I hear the doctor speak:

“Daddy, are you ready to meet your son?”

I was brought into this room not only to support her, but so I could also hold my son while she was incapacitated. I was supposed to take him onto my bare chest for skin-to-skin contact the moment he was delivered – to warm him, connect with him, ground him. But things didn’t unfold the way we planned.

When they tried to remove our breeched baby, the room shifted. The doctor announced that his umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck five times – something she described as almost unheard of. He was delivered in silence. No one said anything. My wife and I looked at each other, waiting for what felt like an eternity for someone to speak… for our baby boy to cry.

We would later learn the truth of that silence.

He came into the world completely still – no movement, no tone, no colour.

He wasn’t breathing.

His first attempt to breathe didn’t come until almost 50 seconds into his life.

His first strong cry – the one that shattered the silence – came at 1 minute and 15 seconds.

In that moment, we didn’t know any of this. Our eye contact became its own language – a consoling

exchange, bracing for whatever came next.

And then we heard it.

That first undeniable cry.

Our eyes instantly filled with tears – the same emotion hitting us at the exact same second, perfectly synchronized.

8:48 a.m.

Our boy arrived.

But the journey didn’t end there.

It was only the beginning – the start of days and nights in the hospital we never could have anticipated.

Once he found his breath, it was determined he had TTN – Transient Tachypnea of the Newborn – fast and shallow breathing. He was put on oxygen right away. TTN can be common with C-section babies; from not going through the birth canal, they miss the opportunity to have the fluids squeezed out of their lungs. Not knowing this at the time, glancing over at my baby boy for the first time – I can’t tell you how scary the image can seem. Yet even in my conscience, I had no worry. I still found grave comfort in the amazing team of women that stood before him.

They removed him from the OR and took him to the NICU – the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Shortly after, they asked me if I wanted to follow him to the unit. Instinctively, I wanted to say yes, but in the moment, I looked down at my wife’s face and felt her worried mind stirring. I felt it my duty to be there with her so she wasn’t alone with her uncertain thoughts.

Her procedure went well, with no further complications. She was stitched back up, and we headed back to the recovery room. Having an empty womb with no baby in your arms can be nothing short of anguish on a mother’s nurturing mind – the feeling of betrayal of not being able to be there and hold her defenceless baby, the baby she was already so attached to, and for the first time in nine months she was apart from. My heart wallowed in empathy for her.

She was wheeled back to the recovery room, and I was given the opportunity to go see our son. He lay inside an incubator – oxygen mask, dextrose IV, sensors all over his tiny body. A sight no parent is ever prepared for. Even then, I trusted he was safe.

A few hours later, the recovery nurses – showing a level of compassion that still sits heavy in my heart – insisted with the NICU staff that my wife be wheeled in on her stretcher so she could meet her son properly. Stretchers weren’t typically allowed in the unit. But they saw a mother being kept from her newborn and recognized the pain it caused her. Their benevolence in that moment left us feeling unencumbered.

His breathing stabilized that evening.

He would, however, remain in the NICU for monitoring.

And that became the rhythm of our next few days. The mornings brought anticipated optimism, but by afternoon we were humbled.

The hours blurred together – monitors beeping, nurses checking, doctors explaining, alarms chiming, and us drifting between our room and the NICU in a cycle that felt both endless and unreal. We weren’t going home. Not yet.

Then came concerns about his heart rate – sometimes dipping down to 88 bpm in deep rest. A newborn’s resting heart rate typically sits between 120 and 160 bpm, and even in deep rest it ranges from 90 to 110 bpm. So this needed to be taken seriously.

Tests were ordered: a plethora of blood work, an ECG, an echocardiogram… and then came the waiting.

More waiting.

Nights without him in our arms.

Days that felt suspended in time.

There’s a strange feeling that comes with not taking your child home when you expected to. He didn’t feel like ours during those first few days – more like a small, fragile being we were borrowing from the hospital. A life we had created, but couldn’t yet fully claim.

But then Friday came, and with it, the final results:

His heart is perfect.

He’s healthy.

He’s coming home.

Those days tested us in ways we never could’ve anticipated. My wife – so strong, so prepared, so used to being meticulously in control – was now forced to surrender it all: her instincts, her certainty, her power. I could feel the weight of her emotions sitting in her chest, and I knew my role was to hold steady when she couldn’t. To be her anchor.

It wasn’t difficult to step into that role – not because I was unaffected, but because my optimistic nature had already shaped a quiet understanding that nothing ever goes exactly to plan. Lower expectations often give rise to higher optimism for me; things could always be worse.

Through all my failures in life, I’ve always tried to find the positives. Every failure has a lesson, and if there’s never adversity, then there’s nothing to learn. Life doesn’t happen to you. Life happens for you.

And sometimes you don’t understand the meaning until hindsight reveals it.

If our son had not been breech, requiring a necessary C-section…

If we had attempted a vaginal birth…

With the cord wrapped around his neck five times…

He might not be here.

The universe didn’t fail us – it protected us.

All the blood work, every test, every monitor, every night spent tossing and turning was part of ensuring that our son came into this world safely.

Perspective is everything.

It’s the quiet architecture of strength – something many struggle to lean into, choosing anguish and negativity instead. But perspective shapes the way a man shows up when it matters most.

There are moments when you don’t get to panic, crumble, or fall apart – not because you don’t feel those things, but because someone you love needs your steadiness more than you need your release.

My moment came later.

After packing up our things – after several trips back and forth to the truck – I walked across the parking lot alone with the last load before returning to bring my wife and son home.

And somewhere in the middle of that parking lot, I finally broke down by myself.

Not from weakness – but from everything it took to stay strong, and from the overwhelming joy that he was healthy, safe, and finally in my hands to protect.

Shortly after, when we placed our boy in the back seat and closed the door, we broke down together, holding each other in our arms. It was the realization that the three of us had already lived the first hard chapter of our story – and you my son – were less than four days old.

– Written by Michael Brion