Journey to Same-Sex Parenthood. Eric Rosswood

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ was an exhausting twenty-four hours, but we made sure that we were better prepared for the next call. Now Matthew and I were ready to leave at any given moment.

      Monday, August 19, 2013, started just like any other day. It was business as usual and we were still anxiously awaiting the arrival of Baby T-Rex. Only ten days had passed since our false-alarm trip across the state of Tennessee. Travel plans were being finalized and time away from work had been scheduled. Only twenty-three days until the due date. Then everything completely changed with four text messages:

       Dilated 6

       We are on our way to labor and delivery

       We are having baby tonight

       Wahoo

      Reading those four messages created feelings of anxiety, excitement and stress. The baby was coming tonight? Seriously? My first phone call was to Matthew while he was still at work. When he answered, I could only muster up a three-word phrase: “Leave work now!”

      The next hour included packing clothes, stacking up bags and crates in the car, checking on available flights to Texas, calling our parents and waiting for Matthew to make the thirty-minute drive home from work. We had already experienced our practice drill, so we were prepared to leave as quickly as possible. All in all, it took ninety minutes from the phone call to when we pulled out of the driveway. As the garage door was closing, I thought to myself, The next time it opens, we’ll have our daughter with us and be a family of three.

      Matthew and I had barely driven fifty miles before we were hit with the reality of just how long it was going to take to get to Texas. The GPS indicated that we still had seventeen hours to go. In the past, we had talked about listening to an audiobook together, so what better time to try one than now? A quick stop at a bookstore in Knoxville, Tennessee, and I was already over the idea. I hadn’t even heard of half the books available. One of the few titles we recognized was The Help, so forty-nine dollars later and we were back on the road. By Disc 1, Track 3, I was already lost and had no idea what was happening in the story. We had seen the movie while it was still playing in theaters and yet I couldn’t even keep up with someone reading the story to me. This was going to be a long trip.

      The miles seemed to pass slowly and the chapters of the book even slower. We both regularly checked our phones for updates from the labor and delivery floor at the hospital. The current plan was to induce Mercy at 8:00 A.M. the next morning. Our GPS indicated that if we continued to drive through the night, we would arrive at 9:15 A.M. Everything appeared to be happening in our favor. Then we received a text message saying that the medical staff had broken Mercy’s water. What? We had just driven through Nashville, Tennessee, and still had hundreds of miles to go.

      Less than two hours later, as we were speeding toward the Tennessee state line, we received two more text messages:

       Hopefully she won’t have to push for long

       Liz says she is done

      The baby was here? We were dads! Matthew and I needed a moment to process this, so we took the next available exit off I-40 in Jackson, Tennessee, to fill the car up with gasoline and grab a quick bite to eat.

      As I was sitting down with my food, my phone vibrated with another text message. This time it was a small image. It had to be a picture of our daughter. I held off looking at the picture until Matthew seated himself next to me in the booth. We clicked the image and it grew bigger. There she was! The very first picture of our daughter. Reminiscing about that moment still gets me a little choked up: two guys, same side of the booth, looking at a phone and getting very emotional at a fast food restaurant in Jackson, Tennessee. It was definitely a head turner.

      After discarding the half-eaten fast food, we hopped back in the car and continued to process everything that was happening. Matthew drove around to the back of the building and that’s when the tears began to flow. Our world had just changed forever. It was very tough to let that reality sink in. There was definitely some sadness about missing her birth, but we were still happy and very excited. It was hard to believe the baby was finally here. We really wanted to be at the hospital with Mercy and Dylan, but were elated that both mother and baby were doing fine.

      Before pulling back onto the interstate, we got all of the information that any parent should be able to rattle off to a random stranger. Harper Wade Darnell was born August 19, 2013, at 8:24 P.M. She weighed 5 pounds, 9.6 ounces and was 18.5 inches long. Harper was given my last name. Her middle name is the last name of one of Matthew’s great grandmothers.

      Exhaustion had set in. It was well past midnight by the time we crossed into Arkansas. My excitement—or lack thereof—for The Help had not changed. I found myself constantly checking the CD info display. Disc 5, Track 13. Sigh…We were barely able to keep our eyes open, so we chose to stop for a brief nap and a refreshing shower.

      Our alarm went off at 6:00 A.M. the next morning and it was time to start the day. Excitement and nerves were overpowering: We were anxious to meet our new baby girl. We had five hundred miles left to go and I immediately wondered if Matthew had forgotten about The Help. No such luck! Disc 6.

      Arkadelphia, Texarkana, Dallas…Abilene! Eight hours later, we could see the hospital. We had finally arrived. I have to admit we were very worried about what we would encounter during the hospital stay. Matthew and I had heard about the unpredictable hospital adventures of other families adopting a newborn. Some had great experiences, but some had horrible ones. A same-sex couple adopting in Texas did not sound too positive. As the elevator doors slowly opened with the sound of metal rubbing against metal, we had no idea what to expect. The hospital episode had started.

      Walking down the hall to Mercy’s room, we were greeted by many of the nursing staff. They were eager to give us the armbands that allowed unrestricted access to our baby and tried to contain their excitement while asking about our drive. I refrained from mentioning The Help. One of the nurses finally apologized and stated that we probably wanted to meet the little girl. We did! As we quickly continued on toward Mercy’s room, Dylan’s mom appeared in the hallway. Her smile immediately put us at ease.

      We walked into the room and saw Mercy sitting on the bed holding the smallest human being I had ever seen—sweet little Harper. We quickly hugged Mercy and everyone else in the room before we laid our eyes on the new baby for the first time. It is hard to describe the emotion of that moment.

      As the next several hours passed, we had the chance to feed, diaper, cuddle and kiss our little girl. Mercy had been cleared for discharge that afternoon, but Harper had to stay through the night so the medical team could monitor her body temperature. The hospital gave Matthew and I our own room so we could spend our first night together with Harper as a new family. Mercy was ready to be discharged, but she requested some time alone with the baby first. With all the constant visitors, she hadn’t gotten any mother-daughter time with Harper. Everything had been moving in a positive direction until the nursing shift changed. In fewer than ten minutes, it all quickly turned to chaos.

      The night-shift nurse entered the room and insisted she needed Harper’s car seat that instant. A few minutes later, the baby was wheeled out of the hospital room for a two-hour car seat test. It didn’t take long for our protective instincts to kick in. Matthew chased the nurse down the hall to explain the circumstances. We pleaded with her, asking to delay the car seat check until later that night, so Mercy could spend some time with Harper before leaving. No luck. Emotions had reached the breaking point. The lack of sleep accompanied by the magnitude of the adoption plan was not the best combination. In the end, Mercy was discharged without having what she really needed: alone time with her baby.

      In light of what happened with the СКАЧАТЬ