Summer Chased By Autumn

I didn't cut the umbilical cord for any of my three kids after they were born. It's done as a matter of course anymore, with the dad making the last snip becoming an automatic assumption. I can't say I demurred out of any sense of provocation or pure contrarianism, but more out of the the instability in my knees. The first one was 25 hours of labor for my poor wife at the time, so I'm not allowed to actually complain or even make note of anything that affected me on the day, or on either of the two days that followed in later years when my other offspring were offsprung. I'm not sure if that's an absolute rule or a couples rule, though, and seeing as my children's mother and I divorced several years ago, I've decided: fuck it, it was a long day for me too.

When recounting birth stories, there are loads of unwritten rules for a couple. The man's job (in the majority hetero cisgender-type pairing) is to nod as the woman recounts, throw in the occasional back pat and "Mm hmm, yeah, I remember..." and then only speak sentences that make you look incompetent, foolish or panicked. Anything else is an invitation to competition that is unwinnable. "I remember being tired..." will be met with an incredulous "Oh YOU were tired?!" and eyerolls and headshakes from the listening throng. "And I'd been on my feet for hours and was all sore..." followed by "Oh YOU were sore?!" etc. I mean, yeah, I didn't produce a human from any of the openings of my body. But in my defense, I never had to ask anyone for drugs either. Which one of us is the wimp now?

Oh right, probably me.

After a lawyer and the state tag-team-doula your partner in the transition from wife to baby-mama, she's not there for the birth story if/when it comes out. And I know what your thinking: who the fuck is asking a single man about his kids' birth stories? The obvious answer of course is: there are things people don't know they want until they already have them. And sometimes you have to decide just to give it to them. They'll thank you for it later. Politeness is a heavy yoke. Some people can really be pulled around by it.

So I'm going to get through the rest of this without apologies or qualifications about how my side of the birth experience of course can't compare to blah blah blah. Stipulated, OK? There's nobody here to validate except me. My ex doesn't read this shit.

I didn't cut the cord because it scared me. A first child is a life, but it's all theoretical, all hidden potential, with nothing but a couple of ultrasounds and some alien squirming under its birth mother's skin. It's like the magician's pigeon under the handkerchief: it's there, sure, but it also isn't, a Columba schroedingeris that may or may not have been eaten by the cat.

When you arrive at the hospital, it most definitely isn't there. Unless it's in some kind of trouble, the child shrinks from the immediate equation and your whole focus is on the very real distress and visible pain your partner is in. A lot of monitoring and mediation goes on, but all you can really do as the obvious third wheel in a process that is in no way tricycle is stay close by and also completely out of the way. Having some shitty, intrusive relatives helps with that. It at least gives you something to do.

Yes, it can be a long day. No sleep or food, little if anything to drink, the existential stress of the very medical reality of everything happening and then, right after the peakiest peak of the screaming, bleeding drama, when the tiniest chink of relaxation appears in the adrenaline armor, everything wants to let go at once. And now, for the first time in your (young adult, in my case) life, you have two human people who need your attentions at the exact same time. "Letting it sink in" is a luxury forfeited in perpetuity in that moment.

And this is when they say "would you like to cut the cord?" Just then is when I noticed the shake in my hands and the wobble in my knees and the sight of the very real, very active (but still very non-threateningly standard) bleeding happening from my wife and I thought: you know what, I'm just going to stand right here for a minute or two. So a new grandma cut the cord. I felt OK about that.

I didn't always feel OK about it. There are people who are still shocked by the revelation. And I figured since I didn't cut the first one, I probably shouldn't cut the other two, so I didn't. This also shocks people.

But as of this past weekend, it's been 18 years. That oldest child is now an American adult. He seems OK with it, and OK also in general. As for me, if asked for an explanation, I feel like the intervening 18 years, about half of which I spent as an at-home parent, count for plenty. With as solid a parenting record as any divorced man might boast, I can now confidently say: cutting the cord is gross. There's blood and it's all weird and snakey looking and it's attached to placenta and afterbirth and whatever other facehugger slime blobs come out with that tentacle. It freaked me out and I'm glad I left it alone.

Anyway, happy birthday to my boy.