During the evening of last December 3rd, I was
blessed and honored to be invited to help welcome Brandon’s and his amazing
wife Christina’s daughter Morgan to this physical life. Brandon went from supporting
his wife during early labor, to a several-hour chemo infusion, and back to supporting his wife in labor for
another day. It was a long, slow process. I’d stayed up with Christina through
the night before Morgan’s birth, wanting Brandon to get some sleep after the chemo so he’d have
more energy for whatever the following day would bring. I’m not sure how much
rest he actually got that night, but he seemed ready to go by morning. He never
left his wife’s side.
With the obstetrician’s blessing, Brandon had planned to
catch their baby. But when the time came, an exhausted Christina needed him to
remain “in her face,” helping her focus and breathe so she could continue to
push their baby out. Brandon stayed “in her face,” where he knew his wife most
needed him in that moment. (And in that moment I learned an important lesson
about priorities.) Christina definitely worked the hardest that evening, but
her mother, Brandon and I were pushing with her, and we felt triumph with her
and with Brandon when 8 lb, 11 oz (3940 gm) Morgan Therese (finally) made her
entry. The nurse and I helped place her skin-to-skin on her mommy’s abdomen,
and Brandon cut her cord after it had stopped pulsating.
About an hour later and after her first breastfeeding, it
was Brandon’s turn to hold their newly born daughter skin-to-skin on his chest. Brandon
had wanted to be a daddy for a very long time. He was the one who’d helped his
friends learn to feel comfortable handling their newborns. He was more than
ready and he was very excited to begin this phase of his life with Christina.
Yet cancer and new “spots” on the PET scans were constant companions.
His plucked chicken look this time last year had left him
feeling physically sore and emotionally embarrassed, yet that evening his only
thought was for Morgan. He asked if it was safe for her to be placed on his
bare chest due to the chemo-induced skin breakout. It was difficult enough to
watch him deal with the physical discomforts of the side effects of each new
and old chemo cocktail, but it was even harder to know of the emotional toll
the treatments were taking. The nurse and I checked his skin, reassured him and
then placed his infant daughter where she belonged during her second hour.
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| The new family with their supportive L&D RN |
Morgan celebrated her first birthday earlier this week, and
her daddy could not be where he belonged as she entered her second year. Of all
the pain I feel with his passing, the fact that his daughter will not know his
hugs, his silliness, his love firsthand is, perhaps, the most profound. We’ll
all do our best to try to help her “meet” her daddy, but knowing him through us
simply isn’t – cannot be – the same…
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| Happy 1st Birthday, Morgan! |
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