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“I think something is happening,” my wife says.
She says this to wake me. At 1:30 in the morning.
The lights go on. Fan, off.
I don’t know what’s happening. Something. That’s what she said. Something is happening. Could be anything, I think. Leaky roof. UFO on our front lawn. Goblin invasion. Everything and anything.
“I think my water broke,” she says.
Oh. Oh.
She asserts that she has not peed herself. Which is always good news in any situation. I do this spot-check periodically in my day-to-day. “Did I pee myself? Mmm. Nope. Score!”
We call the doctor. They say to keep an eye on it. We keep an eye on it. The water, it keeps on coming.
Along with it: the mucus plug. Which has another name: “the bloody show.”
We have no idea how apropos that will be.
* * *
The wife, she puts on makeup before we go. I pack some bags, get stuff together: camera, chargers, reading material. Just in case, we think. We know this is not real. This is not really the something that’s happening. It’s two weeks early. And besides, conventional wisdom says: new moms have kids late. Everybody’s told us that. She just saw the Obi-Gyn Kenobi the day before and, in his words, “There’s no way this baby is coming early.” Except he must have — oh, just for a goof — put a small thermal detonator against her internal membranes, a detonator that went pop around midnight, because why else would her water have broken?
Thermal detonator, shmermal shmetonator. Baby’s not coming today.
We go to the hospital at 5:00 AM knowing full well that they’re going to send us home.
* * *
They do not send us home.
In fact, they inform us quite frankly: we’re having this baby sometime in the next 24 hours.
*blink, blink*
We’re in a little room. So small that the nurse is entering our information into a laptop, but her chair is a medical waste bin. Doctors and residents come in and out. The one doctor says, she’s not that dilated. And she’s not even having contractions. They say, “we’re going to get you started on pitocin.” We say, hold up. We’ve heard about that. If we need it, we want it, but we’re not sure we need it yet. We don’t want to get on the drug train, not so fast. The wife, well, shit, she’s gone nine months without a sip of wine or a single goddamn Tylenol. She’s not ready to start guzzling drugs at the finish line.
They say we shouldn’t wait. “Infection,” they say. We say, “Yeah, but we have 24 hours to deliver before that’s a huge concern.” We want to wait. And we’d like to get her up, walk around, use a birthing ball. “No,” they say. “The doctor doesn’t want you doing that.”
Then they leave us. Emergency C-Section down the hall. The room is quiet but for the sound of our child’s heartbeat out of the monitor, rising and falling, and with every rise (and with every fall), I worry: is that too fast? Too slow? Where is everybody? Am I ready to be a father? Did I pee myself?
* * *
The contractions hit. They are small and lazy, like warm bay waters lapping up on a pebbled shore.
* * *
By the time we are again attended to, it’s a shift change. Like clouds parting and a priapic ray of sun thrusting through. The new doctor says we can get up, move around, see if we can’t move this baby-bullet into the cylinder naturally. No problem waiting on the pitocin.
We do laps. Wife bounces on the birthing ball (which is not, contrary to its name, a robotic sphere that vacuums the baby out of your hoo-ha, like you might find in Star Wars). She does squat thrusts and lunges.
Doc comes in. “Doctor Black.” Sounds menacing, like some CIA operative, but she’s bubbly, warm, young, petite. She does another cervical check, which means she basically goes elbow-deep and flicks my wife’s tonsils with her thumb. Still only 1cm dialated. Contractions are still tame, like mild salsa.
Wife is weathering them nicely.
“Want the Pit?” she asks. A nickname for pitocin. Not a nice nickname.
“Two more hours?” we ask.
Two more hours.
* * *
Two more hours.
Another “oops, I lost my wristwatch in your lung cavity” cervical check.
A big ol’ change of zip, nada, zilch, pbbbt, *poop noise.*
Still 1 cm dilated.
It’s time to enter the Pit.
* * *
Pitocin. Synthetic hormone. Takes the volume knob on contractions, cranks the knob, then breaks the knob off and stabs the mother-to-be in the eyes with it.
It’s still quiet for a little while. Not much to do. We watch episodes of The Dog Whisperer. I tweet. Some people chastise me for tweeting, as if I should be doing something else. Early labor is dull as watching the IV drip. I rub feet, I get ice chips, but it’s not like every minute is a circus. Not yet.
But then the real contractions hit. The waves just got bigger. These are Oahu pipes. Surfer’s paradise.
Crashing hard against the rocks.
* * *
The wife says, “No epidurals.”
She tells everybody this. I say okay. I say it’s also okay if she wants to change her mind on that, but for now, it’s understood that my job is to help her cleave to her vision. Her birth plan.
With each contraction, she goes to her Zen place. Breathes in, breathes out. Nose, mouth, nose, mouth.
She bobs with the tides.
* * *
It’s only a few hours later that the Doc comes in, uses the wife’s cervix as a wristwatch, and informs us (to her surprise): it’s working. The wife is now at 5cm. And something is “effaced.” Dignity? Peace and quiet? Certainty? I dunno. Whatever it is, it’s gone. Or going away fast.
What’s not going away are these contractions. Now the waves are tall. Pier-breakers. Dock-collapsers. Each hitting like a fist. With each, the wife grabs the rails of the bed, holds on like she’s on a ride.
But not a happy ride. This, like a log flume through fire and bees.
I rub the small of her back with a blue plastic dolphin back massager. Not a sexual device — it’s actually shaped like a dolphin. An unyielding dolphin whose fins turn muscle to dough.
The Dog Whisperer episodes continue as the pain amps up.
* * *
Every time the nurse comes in, when nobody’s looking, she gives a little switch by the pitocin IV a flick. She’s upping the dose. This stuff is like the anti-morphine. It doesn’t steal your pain. It gives it as a gift.
* * *
It’s a tag team effort, now. Me on the small of her back. Her mother rubs her upper back or shoulders. Her aunt monitors the fan. Sometimes I pocket the dolphin, hop over and give her some orange snow-cone.
That’s a mystery to me. No food or drink. Except she can have ice chips or a flavored snow-cone. When a snow-cone melts, it becomes a drink. Because ice is — as it turns out — just liquid, frozen.
And yet, no foods, no liquids.
That Gatorade I’m drinking? She can’t have it. But she can have a cup of melted orange flavor water.
“You cannot have this thimble of water, but you can have this thimble-shaped ice cube.”
Damn you and your mad logic, horse-spittle. Damn you.
* * *
The contractions are punching her in the back now. We’re afraid it’s “back labor,” where the baby is head down but facing the the more difficult way. (Curiously, it’s not.)
Her whole body twists with each tsunami crash. She’s like a sailor on that boat in that movie, except here there’s no George Clooney. He was sort of a dick in that movie anyway.
The whole time, though, she’s polite. She doesn’t yell out. No cursing. She’s nice to me the whole time even though I can do little more except stand over her juggling Snow-Cone and dolphin massages. It gets so she can barely speak: her words are breathless rasps, and even the effort it takes to make them is hard-fought. She sleeps between contractions. And the contractions are coming hard and fast now. Every minute, a new shelf of snow tumbling upon her.
“Bowel-twisting.” That’s how she refers to them. Like a kinked up yard of gutty-works that undoes itself after a minute, maybe a minute-and-a-half. But the twisting comes faster and faster.
They check her again, just an hour and a half later. She’s now 7cm.
* * *
She maybe wants the epidural. She doesn’t know. It’s hard to tell. She’s so tired. And it hurts. It hurts like a sonofabitch. Mean invisible hands twisting her guts and stealing her strength. Incubus hands.
It’s not that she thinks the epidural is the demon’s seed or anything. It’s not going to turn a good child bad. But it’s also not ideal. The baby might come out a little groggy. Maybe he won’t want to nurse. Could be that it’ll give him horns, or a tail. We know that the epidural can be nice and ease labor. Of course, pitocin is supposed to ramp up labor. You have an epidural, they might need to kick more pitocin. Which could lead to a longer labor overall. Or fetal distress. That train ends in a part of town called C-Section. (That morning, C-Sections all around us. A troubling warning sign.)
I tell her, give it 15 minutes. If you want a epidural then, you got it. If you don’t, then we go another 15 minutes. And on and on, in equal iterations. Agreed? She’s good with that.
We go 15 minutes. She says, “No epidural.” Not yet.
We don’t make it the next 15 minutes because next thing you know, she’s telling everybody she has this urge to push like she’s pooping, and that urge persists beyond the contractions.
They check. She’s 10cm dilated.
Shit just got real.
* * *
Ambrosia salad with a toupee on top of it. That’s the first glimpse I see of our son. That’s what he looks like coming out. An unformed deflated head that looks like gelatin. Gelatin covered in hair.
Birth is both a miracle and a misery. Like Buddha said, all life is suffering. He meant it in a good way. Or like in the Princess Bride: “Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.”
My wife is surrounded by a cheer squad of lunatics. Doctors in doctor garb, nurses, me, all cheering her on to push push push, bear down, push past it, keep going, breathe in, push, stop, relax, do it again. Everything is red faces and sweat and bright lights and lots of pain and yet despite that there’s this airy, eerie feeling of euphoria, this blissed-out top-of-the-rollercoaster sense of promise and possibility that hints at a secret truth, a truth that says that yes, indeed, all life is suffering, and that all the best things in that life require effort and pain and sometimes even misery to succeed.
Sometimes, it’s all about pushing past the ring of fire.
* * *
Nobody ever turned the TV off. It’s a special on Nat Geo about squid. Humboldt Squid.
I hear the phrase, “A thousand biting squid.”
And I think, maybe it’s time to turn the TV off.
* * *
Over the last nine months I’ve seen scads of videos of mothers birthing babies, and in every video is one moment I dread: the baby emerges, he’s purple, he’s blue, he flops over like a rubbery puppet whose strings just got snipped, and then they have to jostle him — only a second, maybe two — to get him to resurrect, a rebirth trapped in a birth. I’m not looking forward to this.
But a strange thing happens. His head pops out and he’s already looking around, his mouth moving. They corkscrew his body out on the next contraction and he’s red as a beet and dancing around and crying. No prompting. They give him an Apgar score of 10. They say they haven’t seen a score that high in a long while.
Then he’s with Mom. His crying quiets as he hears her voice.
* * *
I cut the cord. They don’t give me those kindergarten safety scissors I keep hearing about. These are small and sharp. Even so, it’s like cutting through calamari.
(“A thousand biting squid”)
* * *
They take him. Just for a few minutes. For the cord clamp, the measuring, the weighing, the warming.
I hover over him as they do all kinds of shit in the robotic embrace of a Robbie-the-Robot looking thing called a Panda Warmer. A tiny part of me cries out — No, that’s the wrong device! He’s not a panda! This insane robot is going to try to feed him bamboo! — but the fear is gone as they warm him up and prick his heel and squirt goop in his eyes and suck out some other goop from his face.
Then he’s back with Mom.
The wife looks to me and says, “No epidural.” She holds up her hand to high-five.
We high-five.
“Go Team Wendig,” I say.
And then, just like that — *snap* — we’re a family.
* * *
Benjamin Charles Wendig — aka “B-Dub,” or “The Little Dude” — is downstairs with Mom and Grandmom as I type this. Chilling out after the first feeding of the night. He’s cluster feeding, now, which means he likes to eat a lot in very short order. He’s like a shark the way he shakes his head and approaches the nipple. (“Boppy goes onto the bed. Wife goes into the Boppy. Baby’s on the bed. Our baby. Fairwell and adieu to you, Spanish ladies…” “We’re gonna need a bigger boob.”)
The kid’s got witch nails, so we have to cover his hands because he seems hell-bent to tear his own face off.
He’s got hair that’s equal parts black, brown, and blonde.
His skin is as soft as the toys you give babies.
Today he looks like a baby. Moreso than yesterday. Definitely moreso than the day before, when he looked like a angry little goblin man, a changeling who stole our original child.
We’re home now. He’s warm. And weird. He cries. He’s cute. Sometimes he makes these faces that looks like he’s on the edge of a smile. Other times he looks like Popeye. Or, perhaps, “Poop-Eye.”
He didn’t lose much of his birthweight, so he’s a good size — 7 lbs, 14 oz. Kid’s a rock star. And the brightest star in our constellation. And a hungry little sonofabitch.
He kinda looks like me.
Like I said, miracle and misery.
About The Author
ChuckWendig
Chuck Wendig is equal parts novelist, screenwriter, and game designer. He is the author of the novels DOUBLE DEAD, BLACKBIRDS, and MOCKINGBIRD. In addition, he's got a metric boatload of writing-related e-books available, including the popular 500 WAYS TO BE A BETTER WRITER. He currently lives in the wilds of Pennsyltucky with wife, dog, and newborn progeny.
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Congratulations. I’m glad nothing went terribly wrong (They had to pull me out with forceps and my brother almost slipped out before they could get my mom in a room). Best of luck to the little dude and the rest of team Wendig.
Quite possibly the most honest birthing description I’ve ever read.
Congrats on the kid, Team Wendig!
Congratu-fucking-lations! Count me jealous of two things you have, now!
Congratulations to Team Wendig!
You made me laugh, cry and remember the birth of my own child, now some 24 1/2 years ago but still as fresh in my memory as the Mongolian BBQ I ate for dinner. Trust me, be glad there was no food involved. When the body goes into labor, even without contractions, body functions–like digestion–cease. It’s not a pretty thing when the Pitocin contractions are two minutes long, two minutes apart and you’re heaving chicken-fried steak and a loaded baked potato. Did I mention the cream gravy?
Now, settle in, love your wife and son and experience all the joy and terror that comes with parenthood. Oh, that light at the end of the tunnel? Yeah. It’s a train. ;D
Congrats again, and so glad that mother, child, and father are all doing well.
Delighted to hear mother, father and son are doing well
And what a gorgeous little boy!
Congratulations Chuck!
What a fantastic husband! Lucky wife.
Congratulations, babies are the best thing in the world. I wish you all the best of health and happiness. I’m curious to see how your blog will change with the birth of your new muse.
Are you ready for tons of unsolicited advice?
Das Wendighaus is now das Wendigheim. Conratulations!
Congrats, congrats! Go Team Wendig!
Ob-Gyn Kenobi!? LOL!
Congrats! Both that baby AND your wife are rock stars!
Oh congratulations! Would you believe, it JUST KEEPS GETTING BETTER? Seriously. Enjoy the ride.
(And, truly – I’ve read a lot of birth stories, from the mother’s perspective, almost always. This was lovely and your kid is one lucky little dude to have this record of his birth. And your wife is truly a rock star. Pit contractions are straight from the devil…)
Welcome, little dude! And congratulations, Team Wendig!
I think that’s the best birth story I’ve heard in a long time. Thank you for taking the time to share it. Your wife *is* a rock star, by the way. Congratulations to you and your new family! Enjoy every minute, they go far too quickly. Soon he’ll be drinking up all your beer.
Chuck, that’s the best piece of writing about birth from the dad’s point of view I’ve seen in a long time (I should know – I was there at the bottom end three times).
My warmest congratulations to you, to MIchelle, and most of all to Benjamin C. Wendig – welcome to the world, Little Ben.
Perhaps one day I shall have the privilege of meeting your family. You never know.
MAZEL TOV. You made me cry, remembering the birth of my son (No epidural! hooray!)
Congratulations to you and your wife.
Go Team Wendig! *hi-fives Mom, Dad and The Little Dude*
Your wife is amazing. I love that she was able to stick to her plan, despite what she must’ve been going through. She’s one tough cookie. I admire that.
Also, your son is cute. (And I don’t say that lightly. Because I don’t think all babies are cute.) Congrats, again, to you and your family.
I’m glad that everyone’s home and doing well. Fantastic job on the birth description, btw. I’ve never read a better one.
@Ali: My Mom said the same thing, re: cuteness. “If I thought he was weird or didn’t like him, you know I’d tell you.” (She would.)
@Kate: *high-five
@Wood: Someday, I hope. I feel sad at the possibility of not meeting some of the people who I consider both professional and personal influences.
@Angela: He can have my beer. But he better be paws off my liquor cabinet.
@Angie: The blog will change in that I’ll talk more about the little tot, probably, but for the most part, I hope it remains the same.
The only question is if I can keep up the frequency of posts.
@Silver: Whoa, yeah, ewwww.
@Sparky: Nope, nothing went wrong. We were expecting it to — water broke, no contractions, uh-oh — but it all went really well. In fact, alarmingly so.
Thanks, all! Baby and the Wife (er, my wife, not his) are in the other room hanging out with the dog. Chillaxing. B-Dub style.
– c.
Hooray! Congratulations to the newly embiggened Wendig family.
So many twists and turns . . glad everything came out OK, congratulations!
She’s the only other woman I know of who had PItocin and no epidural! We are either very strong or freakin stupid
Congrats on your new bundle of stories, can’t wait to hear more!
Awwwwww, nice! Happy for you guys.
When Jason was born, the thing on TV for us was Spiderman. I as tired. Maggie was exhausted. And as everything got moving along, I remembered be a little irritated that he decided to come out just as Spidey and Gobby were having their big slapfest at the end. Maggie was not amused. When Thomas was born, it was Lost Boys, and I may have mentioned that he would interrupt the “my brother, a shit-sucking vampire” line. Maggie was not amused. When Amber came, Maggie did not allow me to turn on the TV.
(I did anyway, when she was in the bathroom. For Amber it was Mythbusters.)
Fucked up how that is what I remember? I remember clearly what all four of my children looked like at birth, still remember how they felt and smelled, but I couldn’t tell you what I was wearing or if Maggie cursed me out or not… though I am sure she did.
Your delivery story rocked it, boss. Another huge round of congrats to you, the misses, and the little senor of Casa Wendig. You’re gonna be great parents.
(And now we get pics of Michelle binge drinking again!)
Congratulations! Welcome to the night-shift.
Thanks for sharing! And many, many congratulations!!
Wow, congrats Chuck! So does this mean that Der Wendigspawn arrived on Rapture Day 2011?
Much happiness to all of you. You have some great times coming. ^_^
Love the write up! Congrats to you & the Missus and a welcome to young B-Dub!
Congratulations to the Family Wendig!
Welcome to The Baby Bee and big high five to the warrior wife. My own two sons were born in much the same way, except we did the opposite–no pitocin and then held out for the epidural until the Latvian anesthesiologist who looked like a villain straight out of Stan Lee’s imagination showed up and gave me the walking kind at the end stage.
So, I say from experience, that your wife is hella tough and you did your part admirably.
Enjoy your bundle of happiness. Oh, and nap when the baby does.
Congratulations and enjoy little Ben’s first precious weeks. The sleep deprivation gets easier to live with and the baby smiles make it all worthwhile.
Congratulations, Chuck! I was wondering if this was the weekend! We definitely went through the “I can’t believe this baby is mine” phase… Now, I don’t even remember what life was like before we had a kid. Oh, well, we didn’t have to wait until her bedtime to get things done. At least when they’re little all they do is sleep and eat. It will feel to your wife like all she ever does is feed him… but it gets better!
And you think little ‘B-Dub’ is cute now, then 6 months from now he’ll be even cuter and you’ll wonder why you thought that squishy funny looking baby was so cute… er was that just me? They all look the same to me, hahaha.
Anyways, I’m sure you’ve already discovered that you are not as incompetent as you thought you’d be! Congrats!!!!!!!!
Congratulations on this fantastic birth, for weathering it together so incredibly well, and for making a grown man cry.
I’m just a big softie for this stuff. Brought back memories. Makes me miss my son.
Team Wendig rocks! Loved the write up. The kid will love it, too, when he’s older. Big Hugs!
I laughed. I cried. I spit tea. All common reactions to a Wendig blog post but this one is special. I am so happy for your family and can literally understand what your wife went through. I kept saying, “Yup, that happened to me too.” Damn pitocin. This is possibly the best description of the birthing process I’ve ever read. I wish you, your wife, and B-Dub all the happiness you can handle.
-Karen
That was fantastic Chuck! A really enjoyable read.
And so its finally beginning.
Looking at your photos of Ben, its almost getting hard to imagine our little girl being that tiny just 3 months ago. Its really like a rocket or something the way it all moves from now.
Enjoy it all.
Frankly, I wouldn’t have been surprised if your Apgar score had gone to 11.
Congratulations, Chuck!
Welcome to the Daddy Club, good sir. It’s all, what? Downhill? Uphill? I dunno. Just it’s all hilly from here. Up, down, sideways. Everytime you think you’ve found a plateau, somebody tilts the world for you. But it’s all better from here. It is that. Give Michelle an attagirl for us. And have a goddamn drink. You deserve it.
Your wife is hardcore! Congrats to you both.
This is fantastic. Makes me want to revisit my birth story. And dude, I’m so freaking proud of your wife. Mad love to her for sticking to her guns and you rock for helping her do that. Snuggle the Little Dude and enjoy every freaking minute…even the 3am crying jags when you have poop in your hair and haven’t slept in 8 days. Enjoy that because it blurs by. Here’s hoping that you have a very happy, warm, blissed out blur.
That was wonderful. Go Team Wendig. Congratulations and double that for your wife!
Congratulations, sir. A harrowing experience, indeed, but goddamn that went fast. Your wife is a badass. Which after that ordeal I’m sure she’s fully aware of.
Cigars and scotch all around.
Welcome to the world B-Dub! You are adorable and squishy like babies should be. Congrats to Mom & Dad!
I gotta tell ya that was incredibly moving to read. Funny as you always are but full of new-dad heart as well. Congratulations!
Congrats, Team Wendig! What a beautiful story. I find myself envious; my sons are 19 and 16 and God do I miss them when they were new, I was new, and the world was one big giant Wow!
Fasten your seatbelts… the fun stuff is just beginning!
Ahh, so amazing Chuck. You know what’s neat? You’re going to keep a record here of his every little smile and fart and it’s going to be like a diary about him that one day he’ll be able to read. Very cool.
I loved this. Just… all of it. Hope you’re managing some sleep, and congrats to Team Wendig.
Congratulations! I’m glad to hear everything turned out well.
Heartiest of congratulations to your family! Your wife *is* a rock star, and that pic of B-Dub is more than likely inspiring more than a few of us to possibly consider another. You take care of Mama and tag body parts for their resemblance to their original owners.
Right now, go sniff his head. Remember that smell. It will keep you from doing something you regret in nine years when he’s accidentally set the couch on fire.
Funny thing about our babies (even the old ones)…they are the reason we will fight to survive an apocalypse.
Congratulations. And don’t worry: The second one is easier. I kid! You guys will settle into a routine very quickly. Of course, then something new will happen and screw it all up. That, as you say, is the joy and misery of parenthood.
Hey, that’s a nice piece of writing. Congratulations all the way around.
Thanks so much for sharing this! I laughed and cried. Your wife totally deserves a high-five.
Wonderful story, and reminds me of the birth of both of my kids. I have always said that Childbirth is the grossest miracle.
Congratulations.
Congrats to both you and your wife, sounded like a crazy (and wonderful) time.
From the guy whose posts have inspired me and given me the bravery to use ‘motherfucker’ in my every day blog, this was a very sweet, real, and honest post. Congrats to you and the Mrs.
My favorite part of having a new baby was looking in his eyes. I don’t know what your religious leanings are (and it doesn’t really matter), but there’s something in a tiny baby’s eyes that seems…wise. Distant. Bigger than everything. And one day, a month or two after the baby is born, it’s gone, just like that. It’s incredible and humbling, and it reminds me there are things in the world we still know nothing about.
Reading this was fantastic. I haven’t bought Penmonkey yet, mostly because I don’t want to be a writer, but I should just to give you lots of money for doing what you do because you’re fantastic at it.
Yesterday my son asked to go to the zoo, so we did, and amidst all the parroting of animal noises he ate the peanut butter and jelly sandwich we made for him, almost the whole damn thing, and a bunch of grapes too. It doesn’t stop being amazing. It just keeps going.
Congratulations to you both, and to little Ben-Wen!
Sounds like you’re doing a great job so far. Keep it up!
Congrats Chuck! Awesome retelling of the birth!
Wow, congratulations! *throws confetti* Health and happiness to your little one!
Congratulations!
Congratulations, Wendig family!
Congratulations to you and your family, Chuck.
Go Team Wendig!
CONGRATS! Phase 1 is done!
Glad she was able to dilate. I don’t think we had pic available when I had my daughter. When I wasn’t dilating the doc points to a small place on my back and tell my husband to press there. I thought it was weird he didn’t do it himself. Thought it weirder still when he left and left John to it. The moment John pressed the spot, I knew why. We’d have had a dead doctor! Almost had a dead husband.
Unfortunately for me, that gimmick didn’t work so I was one of those hurried C-Sections (unlike the planned ones in class where they let you be awake). So for 25 years it’s been somewhat surreal because though I carried her for 9 months, I never saw my daughter born. She could be an alien! (Shshshsh don’t tell her!)
Oh and the movie playing when I was coming back to was Ben Hur. During the chariot race. Seemed very apt at the time. lol.
Here’s wishing you, your wife, and your baby much happiness. Let the games BEGIN!
Thanks for writing this up during the hectic new baby times. And dang it, making me cry in the middle of the day just ain’t right. Sniff.
Welcome little one. Hang on, it can be a bumpy wild weird ride out here. You’ll do just fine. I mean look how your daddy can write up all the stuff you do to make the rest of us grin.
I don’t want babies. Kids, really. I don’t. But…
I think I’d like to come live with you guys for a month or so. You know. No reason.
This was an amazing piece of writing. I love this. All of my awe and respect and adoration are with Michelle and you and B-dub right now. This post, right here, ranks among my all-time favorites.
Congratulations, guys.
Congratulations! That’s wonderful.
Looking forward to many, many posts about the Wendigbaby as he grows out of–or perhaps into–those witch nails and crazy hair.
Many, many congratulations to you, your wife, and the little man.
Go, Team Wendig.
I’ll be smiling about this article ’til I meet you. Until then, I know and cherish that you’ll keep us posted. And, again, because it can’t be said enough, “Congratulations.”
Congratulations to Team Wendig!
Great post!
Oh. Oh, wow. I want to say, “Great writing” but that’s kind of irrelevent at this point, isn’t it? Showers of congratulations to all three of you.
Incidentally, I just found out I’m pregnant. (Good to know one can’t get pregnant from reading a blog, or I’d be concerned about you, Mr Wendig.)
I look forward to all the slimy, scary stories.
Louise Curtis (who’ll be blogging about Mini-Me starting this Wednesday).
Woo-hoo for Team Wendig! Congratulations to all three of you (although we all know who did all the real work!) Welcome to your new Real Life Adventure.
Since you decided on Benjamin, I think you could have chosen his middle name/s with more care for exciting initials. Benjamin Thomas Fredrick Oliver.
BTFO!
When I gave birth, I pretended I was a monkey. Long story. I too remember what was on the TV as I pushed each kid out my cabbage. Funny how the mind works.
Congratulations, Wendig family. I’ve been beaming all day thinking about the three of you.
Congratulations! Welcome to the world, baby Ben!
This here is why you’re a good writer. You can do sweet and beautiful as well as side-splitting. My favourite post of yours, ever.
Your lovely wife is in fact not a rock star, she is a legend and I am in awe of her, since under those same circumstances I could not turn down the epidural (“GIVE ME DRUGS!!”). I’ll bet she could punch the Rapture so hard it would leave the room crying.
Congrats! So glad you were able to experience something that even writing cannot do justice, and certainly not television for sure. You’re going to be an awesome dad, I mean that sincerely. Way to go!
[...] and wife had their baby! She, of course did most of the work, but Chuck has a lovely, touching post, a play by play very nearly on the blessed event. Welcome Baby Benjamin Charles Wendig! [...]
(1) Congratulations!
(2) Hell of a fine writing job.
Congratulations to you and your family!
thanks for sharing your amazing day / gift with us
congrats !!!
particularly to the new mom
I couldn’t feel the contractions, or they weren’t strong enough either. Your descriptions are spot on for the pit and its effects. Incredibly moving blog. Congrats on your new life.
Congrats, Team Wendig! Madddd props to your wife.
(And sorry for the unauthorized nickname usage the other day. It just came to mind. I know parents can get tetchy about that. My bad!)
Day late and a dollar short (as usual), but congratulations to you all! I wish you all nothing but the best!
Fantastic news! Welcome to Club Dad.
[...] Which means our son was born two weeks early. [...]