The first Noel (felt like hell)

My wife, Tracy, and I moved into our new house in our new town on Saturday, September 15, 2012.

Eight days later, on Sunday, September 23, we were still not unpacked. Boxes and disassembled furniture made our bedroom look like a storage unit. We still hadn’t painted and set up what would be the baby’s room.

We went to bed that night in a place that didn’t feel like home.

At around 1 a.m. on Monday, September 24–just two hours after we turned out the light to go to sleep–Tracy shook me awake.

“It’s time to go to the hospital!”

An hour later, we were in a delivery room. Tracy labored hard for eight hours. I stood by her the entire time, doing whatever she needed me to do for her. At around 10 a.m., Dr. McBride told us the baby’s head was too big. He saw signs of stress in both baby and mother. So, about an hour later, we all met in an operating room. They hung a kind of curtain to block Tracy and me from seeing the lower half of her body. I sat in a chair as close to her head as I could get. When Dr. McBride came in and got started, I could hear the sounds coming from what I could not see on the other side of the sheet. Tracy’s head and shoulders jerked a bit as the doctor cut her open and pulled our baby out.

I heard the sound of my son’s first cry. A feeling like the wings of a million tiny angels carried me into a parallel dimension that looked like an operating room, but felt like sitting in the lap of God.

They set our baby boy on a little table nearby. An armature held a lamp of some kind up over the stainless steel tabletop. It looked a little too much like the table we used to keep french fries warm back when I was a teenager working at Hardee’s. Here was my naked little newborn son, eyes shut tight, crying and moving his brand new little arms and legs on that table. I asked the closest nurse if I could touch him. She wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in my arms.

Through chokes and gulps and tears, I said: “Hello, son! I’m your dad! I’m so happy to meet you! I love you so much!”

I carried our baby boy over to Tracy. She was still on the operating table, so she couldn’t hold him yet. I put him close enough for her to kiss his face. Tears of joy washed away the tears of pain she had been crying until then.

Soon after, we were alone in a dark, warm little room. Tracy’s mom came in. A nurse brought the baby and put him in Tracy’s arms for the first time. We named him Daniel (“God is Judge”) after the Bible hero who spent a night in the lions’ den.

As we all gathered in close around Baby Daniel, we felt like we were at the very spot where the hope and peace of heaven was touching Earth.

But that feeling soon ended. What happened over the next few days is what I call my own “personal Vietnam.”

All three of us were exhausted. By late afternoon on Daniel’s birthday, Tracy and I had two hours of sleep between us in the last 36 hours. Family members started to arrive. We greeted them with joy, but the coming and going made it impossible to rest.

In a foreshadowing of the kind of person Daniel would be, he refused to breastfeed. He would not even try it. The hospital even sent a woman they called “The Breast Whisperer.” The nurses spoke of her as if touching the fringe of her scrubs was enough to make breasts flow and newborns drink.

But even the Breast Whisperer could not get through to Daniel.

He was not having it. The only thing he would let pass through his lips were sips of formula that came from a cup the size of a thimble.

While we stayed in the hospital for a few days, the Breast Whisperer tried everything in her bag of tricks. Nothing worked. Tracy felt like she was failing her baby. Why didn’t he like her milk?

Sometimes, both Daniel and Tracy would be crying at the same time.

I tried to console them both, but I was starting to feel like crying myself. While the nurses were taking good care of Daniel and Tracy, I desperately wanted a good meal, a hot shower, and a long sleep in my own bed.

What I remember most about our stay in the hospital were the nights. Tracy would finally fall asleep. Daniel however, was hungry. The Breast Whisperer insisted that we not give him formula so that he would have to get used to his mother’s milk. I tried to be a “team player.” For hours in the middle of the night, I walked him around and around and around and around the baby wing of the hospital. I rocked him. I sang to him. When he finally fell asleep, I took him back to our room. Without fail, a nurse would come in and turn on the lights within 15 minutes of all three of us finally being asleep.

Day after day, night after night, this went on.

We were depressed and tired. Finally, Tracy and I had a heart-to-heart with both of our moms. We made the decision to give Daniel formula (as both Tracy and I had when we were babies). We convinced Tracy that she was not a failure.

It was such a relief to fire the Breast Whisperer and let the formula flow! Soon after, the three of us went to the new house to start making it a home together. Many more hard days and nights came in those first few weeks. There was the time that Tracy and I got the flu at the same time. One very bad night, we were up with Daniel all night long. Both of us were shivering and sweating with high fevers. When one of us was feeding the baby, the other was in the bathroom vomiting.

We spent two other long nights in the emergency room.

I remember one night when Daniel would not stop crying. The only thing that calmed him enough to make him sleep was driving him around in his car seat. I drove around the city for hours until the sun came up.

If you have kids, these stories are familiar to you. You have stories of your own. Maybe your stories are more painful or scary than these.

These birth stories are what we should keep in mind when we think about the first Christmas. The night when Christ was born was no Christmas Eve service down at the church. It was no nativity scene.

It was a teenage girl, “groaning pregnant,” riding a donkey 20 miles a day and then trying to sleep on the ground at night.

It was being far from home.

It was a husband frantically trying to find a bed and a room where his wife could rest and give birth in comfort and safety. It was the feeling of every door being slammed in his face. It was the feeling of failing to provide.

It was hard labor and giving birth on the floor of a cave with no familiar faces around to comfort, encourage, or help.

It was being homeless for at least the first few days and nights of the baby’s life. It was being a spectacle for the stares and whispers of the locals.

It was being cold, hungry, lonely, and tired. It was constant discomfort and pain. It was danger. It was rejection. It was shame.

This is how the Christ chose to enter the world.

This is how the Christ chose to live his entire life among us.

While Christmas brings the promise of the end of human misery and suffering, it is a mistake to think that Christmas is the end of those things. It is not (as we well know).

Rather, we celebrate that we can believe the promise because, in Christmas, God joined human misery and suffering. As surely as Mary wrapped the Baby Jesus in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, God wrapped himself in the highest highs and immersed himself in the lowest lows of human experience.

At Christmas, we don’t celebrate that God came to us; we celebrate Immanuel, that God is with us.

Merry Christmas.