Welcome to the eighth edition of Baby Steps, a column that was about pregnancy but is becoming a column about a real live baby because as you are about to read, WE BIRTHED THE BABY.

By the final month of her pregnancy, my wife Gretchen was reportedly exhausted but still seemed to be moving swiftly through the world with the nimble vitality of a junior varsity field hockey captain. She was still attempting daily workouts. She was still walking her deranged, maniacal dog around our neighborhood despite said dog’s dreams of dislocating Gretchen’s shoulder and submerging her entire body in a pile of garden fertilizer. She was still working 10-hour days, taking dinner at her desk long past sunset. She was still certain there was time left to decide on a name.

And me? Honestly, it didn’t seem entirely real to me that this was actually happening at all, that the baby was coming, and soon. I’ve been alive for 43 years and wanted to have a baby for the last 20 years, but on every single one of those days, I did not have a baby. So I guess you could say I was as ready as I’d ever been. I guess you could say I was ready for the baby. And worried about my wife.

At 38 weeks + 3 days, I text Gretchen from the living room: Baby name: final answer?

She sends me a link to an article headlined Woman Delivered Baby at Krispy Kreme, Names Him Glaze.

Gretchen jumps up and down in the kitchen waiting for water to boil. She never drinks tea but our Prenatal Class teacher, Willow, has her convinced that raspberry leaf tea will inspire our baby to birth himself.

Uh-oh, I think this tea bag is trolling me. Gretchen hands me its tag, which contains a quote from Lao Tzu: “Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.”

She abandons the tea, shoves a handful of dates into her mouth, hops back to her office like a kangaroo.

Gretchen would like nature to hurry because she is certain she’s been pregnant for over two thousand days. But she doesn’t want the pregnancy induced; she just wants labor to naturally begin as soon as possible. This feels unlikely — most first-time moms end up delivering after their due date.

But the possibility of induction feels increasingly vivid as the days march on.

Her first borderline problematic blood pressure reading came through at 37 weeks. Since then, we’d been “monitoring at home,” often seeing either systolic or diastolic numbers in the danger zone but never both at the same time. Anything over 140/90 is a sign of preeclampsia, which at this stage in the pregnancy, would be treated with an induction. At 38 weeks, the Doctor finds a dash of protein in Gretchen’s urine. At 39 + 1, she gets dizzy and blacks out during a Zoom meeting. She insists (to me) that she is, despite that, totally fine.

Nature does not hurry!! she reminds me. Yet everything is accomplished! 

If there was a soundtrack to our birth story it would be the sound of one’s blood pressure being taken, the stick and scratch of the nylon arm band as you wrap it around the arm and secure it, the deep mechanical hum of the tightening cuff harmonizing with the contracting Velcro, like a potato chip wrapper making its way up the sleeve of an industrial vacuum. The beeps, the other beep, and the final, finishing beeps. Then the ceremonial announcement of the BP.

At our doctor’s appointment on Friday, February 14, 39 weeks and 3 days into her pregnancy, the numbers are bad.

141 over 95, the nurse says.

Is that bad? Gretchen asks.

It’s not great, the nurse says.

It’s kinda bad, I admit.

Oh sugar, says Gretchen, who’s been trying to cut out swears for Baby.

The Doctor waves an imaginary flag in the air and tells us that the imaginary flag is red and we should induce. We look at each other nervously, not sure what to say about it.

Level with me here, the doctor says. Why are you afraid of inducing?

So I tell him about Willow’s class, how she warned us that induction was a sinister and unnecessary process beloved by doctors with upcoming vacations, that Pitocin would thrust Gretchen into 2-3 days of painful contractions, that our bodies know how to give birth and will do so, praise goddess, when they are good and ready, without any of the Devil Drugs!!!

Is Gretchen’s health at risk? I ask him. Is the baby’s life at risk?

Yes, he says with the confidence of an advanced medical degree. I think you should have a big breakfast, pack up, and meet me at the hospital. We’ll start with a foley catheter to get you a bit more dilated and then give you pitocin to induce.

At Lodge Bread, we get our crusty breakfast sandwiches, gooey with cheese and mayo, eggs, bacon, sausage, arugula. I get a smoothie from the juice place next door. Gretchen stares at the table unhappily, Willow’s warnings echoing through the chambers of her mind.

Just think about it, I tell her. The sooner you give birth, the sooner you too can have a smoothie!

I do miss smoothies, she says wistfully.

This day? This day will be unlike all the other days? This is the day that a baby will be born?

We pack the recommended items and then some — favorite pillows, the coming-home blanket and outfit options, granola bars, trail mix, fruit snacks. Christmas lights, all our medications and underwear and t-shirts and travel-size shampoos.

We drive to Cedars-Sinai, and descend into the single-laned, overcrowded, $7-an-hour bowels of the Cedars-Sinai North Tower parking lot, a low-clearance inferno that recently made it to the Elite 8 in the Los Angeles’s Worst Parking Lot competition. We carry our possessions up the tower into Labor & Delivery check-in.

After being told there are no labor rooms with windows available, Gretchen tears up, possibly considering hurling herself out of the nearest one.

I move us into our Cozy Delivery Room Hideaway as Gretchen distributes portions of her urine and blood into the necessary testing receptacles. She then, of course, gets her blood pressure taken. This time, the numbers are good.

Gretchen starts sobbing: Are we doing the right thing? Should we have waited?

We’re doing the right thing, I assure her, vigorously pumping our birthing ball back to life. Your life was at risk!

I don’t want a balloon in my vagine! Gretchen cries.

Nobody wants that, babe, I reassure her, reassuringly. But it’ll be okay, everything will be accomplished.

We didn’t realize how closely we’d be working with the nurses, that we’d have a designated nurse rather than a rapid rotation of strangers, that we would grow emotionally attached to them in predetermined chunks of time and that they would be so entirely wonderful. We didn’t regret not getting a birth doula, as we’d worried we might. We only regretted not emotionally steeling ourselves for shift changeovers.

Nurse J1 brings us ginger ale and crushed ice and apple juice. With the helping hands of our first (but not our last!) lesbian resident, she gently ushers Gretchen through the insertion of the foley catheter. It’s a thin flexible tube with a small balloon at its top that will somehow inspire the cervix to dilate a little more.

Gretchen declines fentanyl in favor of an opportunity to prove her mettle by enduring the procedure au natural. Everyone affirms Gretchen’s above average pain tolerance as she grits her teeth right on through it, and Gretchen warms in the glow of her physical excellence.

An hour or so later, Nurse J1 removes the tube, and we’re all shocked and awed when the balloon pops right out of her vagina like a flume shot from Splash Mountain’s gaping maw, spraying onlookers with a vigorous splash of fresh blood. What a thrill! Four centimeters of dilation have been achieved.

I go on my first of what will be many small adventures from Labor & Delivery to the first floor of another tower in search of nourishment, hitting up the local café for mediocre quesadillas. Sometimes on these journeys I pass half-dead families holding fresh babies in their arms. Pleased customers! One day we will join their ranks!

I return with four meals Gretchen might like a little bit, and we munch on these rations and watch Severance on my laptop. Mark S still hasn’t finished Cold Harbor. Will he??! All the work is mysterious and important.

The Doctor arrives with unfortunate news — something dangerous is happening in Gretchen’s kidneys. Her situation has been upgraded from simple pedestrian Preeclampsia to Preeclampsia With Severe Features.

It’s also fortunate news, because it settles the “was it a mistake to induce” conversation. It was not. This is where we should be and what we should be doing!

Unfortunately, these Severe Features mean Gretchen requires not just Pitocin, but also a magnesium drip, which’ll make her feel loopy and unable to walk. She’ll have to give birth on her back, and stay in the hospital for 48 hours post-delivery to finish up the magnesium and then let it wear off. Also, she’ll need a catheter inserted to pee.

I guess we didn’t need the birthing ball, Gretchen laments.

It’s okay, I say, sitting atop it, bouncing wildly. It’s a fantastic chair! I’m glad we brought it!

When they begin inserting the catheter, Gretchen immediately screams in pain. Something down there has been ruptured by the Balloon incident. Gretchen is ready for fentanyl, pronto.

Thank you to Baby and to God for giving me this last safe opportunity to get high at a time of pain and discomfort, my sober wife Gretchen says to the ceiling.

I think I left our retainers in the dental pod, I say. Do you think I should ask Anne to get them for us?

Are you serious, Gretchen says, also to the ceiling.

Night is descending outside but, in our little room, we have no idea what time it is or ever was. I’ve strung up one sad string of Christmas lights and turned on our battery-operated candles for atmosphere, but Gretchen rejects my offer to play soothing music. I eat my first box of Cheez-Its.

Gretchen thinks her catheter is broken and then realizes that maybe actually her water has broken. Nurse G, who is wearing a headband with sparkly heart tentacles to celebrate Valentine’s Day, agrees, but brings in a lesbian resident to double check. The lesbian says it’s not all the way broken. She sticks something up there like a pro to complete the breaking. Queer community is healing!

The myriad monitors keep us abreast of Gretchen’s Pitocin-induced contractions, the baby’s heartbeat and his movements. But the pain has become unbearable, and Gretchen is ready for the epidural.

The anesthesiologist is the only medical professional we encounter throughout the labor and delivery process who I don’t like. His endless forehead glistens in the fluorescent light as he gets his instruments together, sets up the field, puts on his gloves rather late in the game, and inserts the epidural.

In the absence of helpful instructions from the doctor himself, Nurse G attempts to walk Gretchen through what’s happening without stepping on his toes. He inserts something suddenly without a warning. Gretchen screams. But soon she will know peace.

It’s midnight or so, and we both try to sleep, her in her bed with her cords and me on a child-sized plastic sofa. The IVs are titrating, the blood pressure cuff is squeezing and beeping every 30 minutes, the baby’s heartbeat is going strong.

After managing perhaps 15 cumulative minutes of slumber over the course of a restless hour, I awake to find Gretchen in distress — itching, nausea, a headache, deep-seated dread and unbearable pain.

How much longer? She asks me, a doctor.

It’ll be okay, I insist as Nurse G brings us Tylenol, an ice pack, anti-nausea meds. Gretchen’s nose and vagina both start bleeding in tandem.

Gretchen sits up for an epidural boost, and she’s hunched over and shaking, her generally radiant epidermal glow replaced with the sickly pallor of a haunted Victorian child. I have never seen my wife this miserable, even when she avoided the dentist for two calendar years, chewing only on one side of her mouth for six months, until the pain grew so severe that she required emergency dentistry at 3 a.m. without anesthesia.

After a re-explanation of how to keep the epidural IV flowing and a rearrangement of cords, Gretchen finally experiences peace again. She reclines. I eat a second box of Cheez-Its.

I’ve just about almost fallen asleep when our room is suddenly flooded with medical professionals. There is an aura of panic.

The baby’s heart rate is falling.

He’s not moving very much, and usually he likes to move a lot!

The Doctor arrives to announce they’re stopping all the IVs until the baby’s vitals improve.

If things don’t get better in an hour, we’re looking at a C-section, he warns.

We’ll turn this shit around, Gretchen grits her teeth. We got this. 

Gretchen puts her hands on her belly, whispering maniacally to our unborn child. Okay baby we gotta do this okay, you gotta start moving and grooving! You got this buddy. She is probably imagining saying something similar to him in the future when he trips over a soccer ball and breaks his arm. We got this okay? You can do it okay??

I give Gretchen a similar pep talk and pray to every God I have ever believed in.

Twenty minutes or hours later, the baby’s heart rate picks up. He starts moving more. We’re safe to re-start the Pitocin.

We did it, Joe! Nurse K exclaims.

I go on my third journey to the bustling hospital Starbucks. It is morning? I am a creature from a timeless place with tiny mole eyes, bumbling through life.

I return to find Nurse K on the phone. She’s bustling around the room, looking between Gretchen’s legs, and telling whomstever she is talking to that in her opinion, the baby is moving quite a bit actually! She has great bloody show, Nurse K says of Gretchen. I’m seeing a lot of bloody show! I think we are on track.

Gretchen and I smile. I squeeze her hand. Nurse K is fighting for us. It’s inspirational.

Gretchen’s blood pressure does a sudden death drop to keep everybody on their toes. Is the preeclampsia in the room with us today? Apparently not.

We reduce the Pitocin again.

At this point, my memory is fuzzy, besides that I know we’d been there for our entire lives. We live here now, I write in my journal, although it is only noon.

Our friend texts us to complain about our other friends and ends the text with I hope you’re not in labor or this would be really terrible. I take a picture of the wall clock to send her later.

Gretchen closes her eyes, waiting for a cowboy to take her away. Time passes, I think, and then more residents arrive. They’re here to check how dilated Gretchen is. It is the moment of truth. I’m praying for a 6 or 7, anything that indicates forward progression.

The chief resident sticks his hand inside her and declares: You’re complete.

Time stops. The Christmas lights twinkle with merriment. Oh my god, I say.

FUCK YEAH, Gretchen yells, thrusting her hands in the air like she’s wilding out at a heavy metal show. She bends over, looks the chief resident right in the eyeballs and says straight into his surprised eyes, I will never forget you.

Around 4 p.m., it’s time to push. We’ve been here for over 24 hours now. Nurse J2 is here. The Doctor is here. Two other nurses are here, maybe three nurses? It’s hard to say. We have not eaten or slept or showered in 75 years. The Doctor reiterates how close we were to a C-section.

I told you I could turn it all around! Gretchen reminds him before announcing her intention to get the baby out in one or two pushes.

Another doctor comes in to tell us she is going home for the evening. We’ve never seen her before in our lives so we say that’s okay, she’s free to go live her life! But it turns out she’s here to ask if her entire class of residents can observe the birth in her absence.

Bring em in! Gretchen yells, high on life.

By the time the pushing begins in earnest, there are at least 15 people, one mirror on a stand and one birthing ball in this room. (I have misplaced the tool that deflates it, a problem that will dog us for the rest of our stay until a nurse lances it with a paperclip.) I’m finally allowed to play music, and I queue up the Birthing Playlist our friends prepared for us, which contains topical gems like “Push It,” “I’m Coming Out,” “Let’s Hear it For the Boy” and “Hot To Go,” but also, inexplicably, “I Kissed a Girl” by Katy Perry.

The two hours of pushing feel like 20 minutes but also four hours. Soon enough, we can see his little head poking out. The doctor makes a little mohawk with his hair in the space between pushes.

I play “Birds of a Feather” when we’re at the final push.

He emerges, then, a little gremlin with creamy skin and a silent scream. Gretchen’s jaw drops. I feel like we’re in a movie. His eyes are shut and his eyelashes go on forever. This is it. This is the guy I’ve been waiting for all my life, the guy who used to have a tiny foot I could feel through Gretchen’s stomach.

He’s here and he’s alive, resting on Gretchen’s chest. Everything is bloody and messy and beautiful. The cord finishes pulsing and then I cut it. The Doctor offers us the placenta, which looks like the mystery meat I avoided my first night at sleepaway camp. We decline.

What’s his name? I ask Gretchen.

I think it’s Jude, she says, stroking his milky face. Below us, The Doctor and a nurse are stitching Gretchen up like they’re hemming a pair of trousers.

He is 6 pounds and 14 ounces, 20 inches long. He opens his tiny mouth. I can’t believe he’s ours. I can’t believe they are letting us take him home with us. First, of course, to a High Risk post-labor room, where they’ll teach Gretchen to breastfeed and I’ll sleep on a chair and Nurse Dulce will take him to the nursery and bring him back every two hours to feed. In the morning, we will call our mothers.

When she finishes the magnesium drip, we’ll be transferred another time, out of high-risk into low-risk, where we can shower for the first time, and our friends bring us sandwiches and smoothies, and I can hold him in my arms, right up against my chest, and on Monday late afternoon we will finally, finally, at last, go home, and we will take 25 minutes to put him into the carseat. And on the drive home we play the Beatles and Gretchen will tell him about how she used to run down these very sidewalks with him in her belly and we will both cry.

We did hurry nature, after all. But everything, absolutely everything in the whole world, was accomplished.

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