I’d say it’s rather appropriate how differently my two tykes came into the world. It only further verifies how very different they are from each other through their early formative years so far.
My son, Finn, albeit over three weeks early, still took his sweet time coming out. Initially given a birthdate of early August in 2017, he decided he wanted to join the party early and Nicole’s water broke a night we just happened to be down in London, staying at my in-laws for a doctor’s appointment the next day. My wife calmly woke me up around 1 a.m. to tell me we needed to go to the hospital, and I groggily got our things together and got us to the hospital.
Despite his apparent early need to exit the womb, my son evidently changed his mind and began dragging his heels; it would be around 16 hours before he made his highly-anticipated debut. I’ll always remember the night before, walking with Nicole through a London Metro location picking out snacks around four in the morning. It seemed both a perfectly natural but ridiculous thing to be doing at the time. We had a lot of time to think about what was coming and how our lives were about to change forever.
If my son’s birth could be considered a slow-burning fuse, then I’d have to describe Piper’s as a bomb that failed to initially detonate, but then accidentally went off in your face when you had almost forgotten about it. My daughter was only one day past her estimated birthdate, but her sudden arrival still came as a shock. To no one more than my wife, most definitely.
Two years ago this past Monday, I had only returned to Listowel with Finn from London after staying down for a couple days with the in-laws yet again. Nicole had been staying with her parents for the better part of a month in anticipation of the arrival of our second, who began to show signs of never wanting to leave the apparent cozy luxury of the uterus. My son wanted a change of scenery and I needed to get some work done before the weekend, so home we came.
On Oct. 11, 2019, I dropped Finn at my mom’s in the morning, casually telling her that on the off-chance Nicole went into labour, I’d dip back out to Fordwich to pick him up. Given how things panned out the first time around in terms of a lengthy labour, I expected we would have ample time to get back down to London and get situated at the hospital, after getting Finn situated at my in-laws’. Spoiler alert: Those things didn’t happen.
Sure enough, I got the call just after noon. Nicole hadn’t been feeling great and she was thinking of going to the hospital. I encouraged her to do so, after which I departed for Fordwich and then on to London.
I began to grow worried when I hadn’t received much in the way of updates well into the journey. Scattered texts from my mother-in-law loosely told me that the baby was coming and soon – I was barely onto Adelaide north of the city when I was informed I had a new daughter. I nearly crashed my car. Relief, joy and guilt all intertwined into one. I tried to keep my composure the rest of the drive while Finn obliviously sat in the backseat, repeatedly playing the same “Old MacDonald” song on a toy for about 70 minutes straight.
It turned out that Nicole barely made it to the hospital after getting off the phone with me, and it looked possible that she would deliver right in her mom’s CRV had lunchtime traffic been any worse. After staying in the womb for the full term plus a day, Piper decided to stomp on the gas and made her hurried exit in just over an hour. Definitely nowhere near enough time for an epidural. My wife is a legend.
I suppose I will always feel guilty for missing Piper’s birth, but I like to think that I’ve made up for it in the meantime. My daughter and I are very close; we’re similar in a lot of ways in terms of attitude and interests. She seemed genuinely disinterested that it was her second birthday on Monday, and didn’t want the extra attention it garnered. I can certainly relate, and would also much prefer to have my birthday pass without any sort of recognition.
Like father, like daughter.
Thanks for reading and I’ll see you back here in a fortnight.
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This is a bi-weekly opinion column; for question or comment contact Dan McNee at dmcnee@midwesternnewspapers.com.
