Yesterday Encarna came to the hospital to hold the baby so April could take a nap and I could walk home to pick up a few things. I didn't have much time at home, maybe thirty minutes, but I did grab a few DVDs off the shelf next to the TV. Even though we had been in the hospital for a day already, apparently I wasn't willing to give up the idea in my head that staying at the hospital after delivery is like staying home from work with a cold. Yes, you don't feel well, but really all you have to do is rest and get better. Eat, drink, lie around watching movies, and if you get really bored, find somebody to order around.

I guess I mean to say that I imagined that when all the drama of the delivery was said and done, the curtain would metaphorically close, and we would be left alone in our hospital room, our little nest, to get to know each other and be a family.

This is not an indirect way of saying we've had too many visitors. Actually, in the nicest way possible we've told everyone who asked that we wanted a few days to ourselves. Every other room on our floor has enough flowers sitting outside the door to start your own botanical garden, and we don't have any. And, I really don't mind. I thought maybe I would, but I don't.

I think the reason is, because as I was saying, I thought we would be lying around all day with our little girl nestled up next to April on the hospital bed and watching a movie or something on my laptop. I thought a few days in the hospital would bring April’s pregnancy quietly gliding into shore like a canoe. Instead, I feel like something has just begun (a new life, perhaps?). We're all busy as ants, as if you could follow the steady stream of nurses, cleaners, midwives, gynecologists, and pediatricians, like ants on the sidewalk, to the door of our hospital room and find them busy inside helping us put together our family.

This morning, for example, April was lying in bed with our daughter while the pediatrician stroked the baby's blonde hair and explained a few things to April. Another nurse stopped in and dropped off two plastic cups with pills. The cleaners had already stopped by and said they would come back in a half hour to change the sheets when the pediatrician was finished. And both phones were ringing. Not to mention the cold breakfast waiting to be eaten on the stand next to April's bed and doctor's orders to get out of bed and take a shower.

You would never have known April had pulled an all nighter, spent the early morning hours lying on her side with our little girl curled up next to her, being a mom, doing everything she could think of to help this little person eat. You would never know she had been shivering in pain in the delivery room the night before. Because now she looked so determined, so ready, so willing. She was....mom, and for this little girl, there was no substitute, no other person who fit that description. There wasn't anyone else in this wide world that was her mom.

If you think about it, every relationship is unique. I have one mom, one dad, one wife, one sister called Monica, and one first niece, Jayden, and the list goes on down to the most ridiculous things like one pair of favorite jeans and one fishing pole.

No relationship is disposable, because each relationship is one of a kind. On a larger scale, our society has tried to cheat the system with copies of things like Big Macs or t-shirts from H&M. We try to produce that one thing over and over again. As for me, I like the fact that I have a personal relationship with everyone and everything I interact with.

I didn't know my daughter any more than you did two days ago. She was a mystery to all of us. But I'm her dad, and that makes you and me different. I’ve decided to be her one-of-a-kind dad and so there are certain things I get to do for her. I got to kiss her mom on the forehead while she was being born. I got to show her off to her mom after she arrived while her mom was getting stitches. I got to change her first diaper. I got to clean her eye boogies. I got to watch the nurse clean her umbilical cord so I could do it myself in our hospital room 3x a day. I got to tell her the millions of little white dots on her nose look like the Milky Way.

What greater occupation do we have as humans than to give meaning to each other’s lives. By our words and our actions, we let others know that our lives would not be the same without them. I guess you would call this…love.

Posted with permission from Spain Dad

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