Introducing...

My wife is amazing.

Three weeks ago she was sprawled out on a table in an operating room to be sliced open so that our son could join the outside world.

This was not the outcome my wife had hoped for. It turns out that when you combine our DNA you get kids with big heads. I mean, we make noggins. And it takes medical advancements to bring these melons out into the world.

So my wife was in the OR, some 14 or so hours after going into labor, and many hours after the epidural wore off.*

The only thing, in my wife's opinion, worse than a cesarean, was being completely put under. Being right out meant not seeing the baby right away. It meant missing hearing the first cry, and missing that special moment, even though it is incredibly brief, where they let the mom see the baby before it heads up to the nursery.

She was not about to miss any of that.

Oh, and apparently I wouldn't be allowed in the room if she was right out. And she didn't want me to miss out on anything either.

Even if it meant having some feeling in her abdomen. As in, she felt the knife.

What?

Okay, there's no way I'd put up with that.

So, they couldn't freeze her completely, I get that. She had a lot of pain medication already, and her body was showing signs that the medication wasn't going to work.

So, she grinned and bared through open abdominal surgery so that the two of us wouldn't miss the first moments of our son's life.

I have a long list of proof that my wife is a whole lot tougher than I am, and because of stunts like this it  keeps getting longer.

And so our son emerged on September 17. Unfortunately, despite much pleading with the nurses, I was not allowed to recreate the scene from the Lion King by standing on the hospital roof and holding him out for the world to see.

But now that he's home there's no one to stop me. Oh, except for Sheena, who I'm now a little bit afraid of, because of what she put up with in that operating room.

Makiah's doing a pretty good job showing him off, and maybe that's even better. She tells everyone we meet: "That's my brother."

She's proud and possessive.

And if she doesn't hug him to death she'll do a great job protecting him.


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*how often does that happen?