The best gift EVER!

Thirty-nine years ago, I spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in a hospital in Mobile, Alabama. And it was the best Christmas I’ve ever had, including the best gift ever!

My husband and I had plans to go to his parents’ house about thirty miles away for a big holiday party in 1979. I was really looking forward to the gala, figuring it might be my last fling for a while.

We didn’t make it to the party. 

Baby on the way

I had stayed awake most of the previous night with serious stomach cramps. Around dawn, it finally occurred to me that I must be in labor—but the baby wasn’t due until the day AFTER Christmas, not the day BEFORE. And I wasn’t ready to not be pregnant anymore—I liked it. 

By the time I got my husband up and moving, there was no doubt. My water broke while he was dressing, and what I had thought were cramps became real-life contractions.

Everything I had learned in childbirth classes quickly flew out the window. All I could think was how much it hurt—nobody had told me about that.

My coach wasn’t much better. He couldn’t remember what to tell me to do or when I should do it. In the delivery room, he was still telling me to push after the baby was out.

I survived the pain, and my husband survived the trauma. In fact, it was all a faded memory within seconds after Nathaniel Harlan Taylor slipped into our world at 3:35 that afternoon. The nurse handed the baby to my husband and told him to bathe it. 

A tender moment

This was the same man who practically fainted at the sight of blood, who had to be dragged to Lamaze classes, and who had resisted right up to the last minute even being in the same room with me during delivery. 

But he just melted into a blob of tender love as he held his tiny son at less than a minute old and gently cleaned him. Watching them in that moment touched me so deeply that nothing else mattered. I no longer cared that I was going to miss the party of the year. We had a miracle to marvel over—what could be more exciting?

I’ve often wished I had captured that on camera—not for me, but for my son. It’s forever etched in my mind, but he hasn’t seen much of that tender side of his dad.

The best gift a wondrous miracle

My Christmas Eve baby now has his own miraculous family.

On Christmas morning, the nurse handed me a big red stocking. Snuggled down inside, with just a head showing, was this incredibly gorgeous baby boy who had actually come out of my body. He was the perfect baby I had struggled for fifteen hours the day before to bring into this world, the one I had waited for all these years.

The pain of the previous day faded into oblivion as I stared at the bundle next to me. Holding his hand and watching him nurse, I was filled with amazement.

It’s been an incredible journey ever since. Now that he has a family of his own, I’m still in awe of the miracle of life.

Happy Birthday Nate!

This was excerpted from “The Nathaniel Chronicles: A Columnist’s bewildering, crazy, daunting, wondrous, jubilant journey through motherhood.”