By Eddie Shleyner

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Months before Beau was born, my sister — herself a mother of three — recommended we put a “NoseFrida” on our registry.

“It’s this rubber tube,” she said. “One end goes in the baby’s nose, the other goes in your mouth. Then you suck.” I laughed. Being childless at the time, this was a shocking concept. “It’s clean,” she said, “there’s a booger-catcher thing in the middle.” I laughed again. “Nothing goes in your mouth.”

I looked at my wife. “I’m not doing that.” She rolled her eyes and palmed her belly.

Months after Beau is born:

He’s still very small. I’m on the couch, horizontal, lying on my back, holding him above my head. My elbows are bending. I’m moving him up and down. We’re playing, laughing. My mouth is open.

Beau spits up.

My mouth is suddenly full. It’s breast milk — recently consumed and now regurgitated — but I’m not phased, believe it or not. My son is three months old, after all. Strange things happen. I look at my wife. She’s cackling at my misfortune. I get up and pass her the boy and go to the sink and spit.

“Kels—” I call out.

“Yeah?”

“Have you seen the nose thing?” I said. “He’s stuffy.”

The day Beau was born:

Kelsey woke me up early. It was still dark outside. Light from the bathroom poured into the bedroom. “My water broke,” she said.

We drove to the hospital. We went through triage. We met the nurse and the doctor and settled into the delivery room. “This is a process,” said the nurse. “Try to get comfortable.”

We tried. I closed the blinds and dimmed the lights and adjusted my wife’s hospital bed until she said, “That feels good.” The room was dark and quiet, calm. Kels fell asleep. Her back was to me. I was sitting in a recliner, reading something, listening to my son’s heartbeat come through the fetal monitor.

I closed my eyes. The door opened. My eyes opened. “Okay—” said the nurse, “we have a grumpy baby in there—” Kels sat up. I stood up. “I’m gonna have you roll over—” the nurse told my wife.

Then, suddenly, another nurse walked in. And another. And another. Then the obstetrician walked in. Then the anesthesiologist. Suddenly, a dozen people surrounded my wife, shifting her this way and that way, propping her up. “It’s gonna be fine, dear—” said the nurse, “just breathe, dear, breathe—”

I backed up until my heel hit the wall. I was in the corner now. My wife was on her knees and elbows now. I couldn’t see her face anymore. A doctor approached me. “Dad?” I looked at her. “The boy’s heart rate just dropped.”

“Dropped?”

“Yes,” she said. “One-ten to one-sixty is normal in utero—” I looked at the monitor. It was beeping and bouncing: …read more

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Author: Aaron