Miracle man

So. That happened.

A routine doctor visit turned into a second doctor visit; that visit turned into an overnight hospital stay; that turned into a three-night hospital stay; and, on Friday, that stay turned into this:

Jacob Christopher, this is the world. World: Jacob.

Friday morning, Christy was amazing. I can't even describe. I put on my Brave Face^TM, but I was absolutely terrified. While they prepped her for the surgery, they dressed me up in Hospital Ninja scrubs and left outside the room to wait. I sat there for a hundred thousand years about twenty minutes, almost shaking in fear.

And then I saw the doctor walk past me into the operating room. He looked up at me, sort of gave me that I-am-acknowledging-your-presence head raise, then returned his gaze to his Blackberry. He held his fanny pack slung over his shoulder. He was the least impressed, calmest man I've ever seen. He might have been on his way to retrieve a bag of Hot Fries from a vending machine. I watched him walk by, unable to even speak.

A few minutes later, a nurse beckoned me in, and Dr. Nonchalant cut open my wife and removed our son, acting for all the world like this was the 17893rd of these he's done. Which it may have been.

"Okay then," he said, as though he hadn't just been a central figure in the most important moment of three different lives. Yeah, here you go, I've just brought life into the world, hope you like feeling the universe shift beneath you. *yawn*

But Christy...seriously, you guys. I don't know another word to sum it up, so I'll have to return to amazing. Something like six hours later, she was crawling back out of bed to go see our new son. She has no use for the hospital's recovery schedule. If it was me? I would be dead. No doubt. She's refusing help walking and grumbling that she can't drink as much Diet Coke as she wants. She's a goddamned superhero.

And then there's the little one himself, the tiny little thing. Jacob is here almost two months early, he just cleared four pounds, but he's a shocking bundle of life. The enormous incubator they keep in at the NICU makes him look even smaller than he is, really, but he acts for all the world like he wants nothing more than to break out of that plastic box and ride out of this hospital on a gigantic motorcycle, probably with flames shooting out of the back. Maybe I'm projecting.

I'm not used to this. Life-Changing Moments, for me, have happened gradually. My relationship with Christy has grown over these years, and there have been incredible moments to remember for sure, but they felt like the slow building of something much larger. This? Jacob was not here at 3:12 Friday afternoon, and at 3:13 he was. The entire world changed in that one minute while I was watching him. It's hard to explain how exactly, but...

Home Alone 2 came on some random cable network last night, and we watched it in Christy's hospital room. You know that part at the end, when Kevin's mom tries to get an NYPD cop to help find Kevin, and she goes into that sappy monologue about how he deserves to be at home for Christmas, with his family and his Christmas tree?

I almost completely lost my shit. I have no excuse for this.

Except for, of course, Jacob, who was probably smirking to himself in the NICU.

Yeah, Dad. Don't think I wasn't paying attention when you read me The Lorax last month, you sappy son of a bitch. You can fool everyone else, but you can't fool me.

He's been alive for all of a holiday weekend, and he can already see right through me.

I couldn't be happier.