So here we were late Wednesday morning, Michelle settled in at the hospital, ready for a pretty long siege/labor process lasting well into the night.

I was planning on getting at least 7 or 8 new entries onto www.guestwomb.com describing the whole process. In fact I was doing a little preemptive internet research trying to find sound byte files of famous actress screams in film/tv. You know….so I could provide some frame of reference for the noises I was expecting to last until Midnight or so.

Michelle’s doctor comes into the room and arranges for a quick ultrasound check, and I took a few moments to stretch my legs in the hallway.

When I strolled back in five minutes later, everything had changed. A flurry of five nurses were working all over Michelle. Doctors were running in and out of the room.

“Have they told you,” cried Michelle, eyes wide in shock?

“Told me what?, I asked.”

“C-Section!”

The ultrasound showed the kid’s head was jammed right up against the umbilical cord. During a long labor he would squeeze it down even further. It really WAS go time, technically an emergency C-Section although neither Michelle nor the kid were in danger at that moment.

But I guess they only have one speed when the order comes down from the doctor. 

One of the nurses threw me a package of scrubs and said, “Dad, put ‘em on….we’re going over to the operating room right now.”

Now there were two big problems with that nurse’s statement:

1. I  was not the Dad. I have made that painfully obvious through the previous 94 entries of my blog.
2. Me in operating room, around skin shredding scalpels and blood would create an entirely different medical issue. Operating table for two, please?

However when it was known that Michelle would have a general anesthetic, that ruled me out of being another casualty of squeamishness in the operating room. One crisis averted.

But then another loomed: the intended parents hadn’t even arrived at the hospital! Michelle had called them at 5 a.m. when we were on the way to the hospital, but told them it was going to be hours and hours of waiting. No rush. Take your time. Driving in from north Jersey, they wouldn’t arrive until noon or so.

So as Michelle was being quickly prepped and rushed to the operating room, I quickly dialed them on my cell phone to give them the news. Before I had a chance to say hello, one of the mom’s said: “We’re here. In the elevator”.

“Get in here fast. She’s having a C-section right now!”

……………… I’ll save the next hour of details for another time…………………………..

As they say, best laid plans and all that. But the outcome was the same. And just what we hoped for.

Cole Lewis Martino came into  the world at 12:03, about 20 minutes after that seemingly routine ultrasound check. Born with 10 little fingers, same amount of toes. Absolutely perfect condition.

Michelle’s doing great, after a pretty bad 90 minutes following the surgery because the post procedure pain management was woefully slow.  

As for me, I suffered a really annoying paper cut Thursday morning while reading the newspaper in M’s hospital room but I’m told I’ll make a full recovery.

And I’m kind of disappointed I didn’t get to use some of those movie sound bytes on the blog to provide a vivid description of the big event…..

That eviction notice did the trick.

Or maybe the threat of hooking a speaker up to Michelle’s belly and blasting Wayne Newton music 24/7…….

Whatever it was….it’s worked.

Baby is on the way. No doubt about it. Michelle is at St. Mary’s Medical Center at Langhorne, PA, all hooked to tubes, wires, monitors. Rested and ready. Looking forward to her first of many epidurals.

And I’m doing fine too. Thanks for asking.

 Stay tuned.

Dear Large Rib Kicking Being Inside Of My Wife,

Look kid: don’t take this personally but: It’s 37 weeks now, so……..

Get. Out.

It’s all over. Finished.

Scram! Hit the road! Take a hike (crawl)!

You’re done, son. Cooked. Baked. Ripe.

The checkered flag is waving. The final buzzer has sounded.

The Fat Lady has sung.. (ah, sorry that wasn’t about you, Michelle).

There is absolutely no reason why you aren’t out here with the rest of us, breathing, eating, pooping, trying to get a job, paying taxes and complaining about Congress.

You have officially overstayed your welcome. Consider this your eviction notice.

Cordially,

The Guy Who Is Not Your Father But Is Married To The Vessel You Are Residing In.

Michelle has a hunch. Or, put another way, she has a feeling ‘in her gut’ about the sex of the baby. In her words:

What is the most talked about subject when having a baby?  Is it a boy or girl….

Even when I was just announcing the news that I was pregnant  — only 10 days pregnant to be precise –  people then were asking boy or girl? Huh? Did they think that because it was a surrogacy that the IPs could specify what they wanted? 

Medical science hasn’t progressed that far — thank goodness. So I guess we will all find out…eventually.

But as the days passed I have been growing more and more uncomfortable with what I was and wasn’t able to eat.  I never had nausea but the heartburn was annoying.  Not enough to keep an entire bottle of Tums with me at all times but at some point every day after every meal…there it was.

My guess,  it has to be a boy.  (Editor’s note — On behalf of men everywhere, I want to protest this outrageous assumption that males = heartburn.)

I never had any of these feelings when I had my two girls.  I know, I know….they say every pregnancy is different. But I almost could put money on it.  It’s gotta be a boy.

We will be finding out within the next two weeks so the wait will not be long. I’m going to have a super ultrasound that’s going to show EVERYTHING.

Now that I am into the 4th month, all of those awful feelings that crept up on a daily basis after mealtime are gone.  I feel great and actually have an appetite.

So the question remains…boy or girl.   The answer will be revealed in two weeks….stay tuned. And now that I feel normal again, it’s back to the gym.

We’re just ending month 2, and the baby is now as big as an egg. Albeit with fingers, toes, eyelids…and everything you need to form a person. Including sucking his/her tiny, tiny, tiny thumb.

What else is the baby as big as? About as big as public support for big Xmas bonuses on Wall Street.

The baby is also as big as the chance of the Gitmo inmates getting a fair trial in New York City. (I’m OK with that by the way.)

The baby is as big of the chances of me being in a mall on Black Friday.

It’s also comparable to the blocks of time I’ve been allocating towards this blog lately.

And now that Michelle is official ‘with child’, what’s different in our lives? Not much in some ways. In others…a whole lot.

Michelle has turned into ‘Ms. Health Zealot’ as I expected. No more Diet Pepsi or anything with artificial sweetners.

No more coffee. Of course no alcohol or anything harmful. I really doubt that B and M realize the kind of determined and dutybound woman they’ve chosen to carry their little one! This is going to be one healthy kid.

Now I’m not saying Michelle is taking better care of herself now then when she had Emma and Sara. But somewhere in her pregnant past, she forget to eat the kinds of foods/nutrients/vitamins that would prevent teenage sass.  

But because nobody really knows our little secret — or at least not many — we go through life pretty much the same as we have been. Course that’s going to change in a couple of days when I announce the existence of this blog. And even more so when the baby bump starts blossoming out.

For now Michelle and I just share a knowing smile every once in awhile, amused by the happy little secret we’re harboring.

And then there are differences from the other times Michelle was pregnant. We aren’t putting together a nursery, shopping for baby clothes, picking out prospective names. (Well, except here in the blog. : ) No budgeting for diapers.

And yet we are both aware of this life-on-the-way. Well, of course M is. But I am too. It’s not in a possessive sense…and in this baby is ours. Of course it’s not. It’s more in a….protective sense. We’ve been charged with the responsibility of delivering a healthy, happy little one to the loving arms of B and M.

And yeah, I feel the responsibility too. It’s not a burden; it’s a duty that Michelle has been chosen to perform. My part in this? I’m called to support her in every way I can.

While this is about the last thing I ever expected to be involved in,  ultimately it doesn’t surprise me that we’re here. Both us are wired in a way that embraces responsibility in everything we do. This is no different.

(See that little white spot within the dark area? Yeah, that’s it.)

A regular feature of this blog whereby we track the growth of the new life growing inside of Michelle, and compare it with items that occur in our daily lives.

The baby is as big as — a speck. Half of a BB.  About the size of this:     .

The baby is also as big as Sarah Palin’s qualifications to be President and Dick Cheney’s interest in the Bill of Rights.

The baby is as big as Paris Hilton’s IQ and Lindsey Lohan’s willpower.

The baby is also as big as the readership of this blog so far.

And as for my take on this idea, well…….

Huh? The picture? Hey, it’s MY blog! I’ll choose whatever picture I like. You do a blog….you can choose the image.

 Personally I think it’s a fairly good likeness.

 So back to that Sunday morning so long ago…..

 As we were watching this story, I noticed out of the corner of my eye that Michelle was staring intently at the screen. She’d gone quiet and was zoning in, cocking her head and concentrating on every single word. I could hear the gears whirring and clanking in her head.

 ’Oh boy,’ I thought. ‘Here we go.’ Because I had seen that look before. It’s a combination of curiosity and determination. Coupled with a sly, calculating kind of furrow of the brow. It’s a look that says: I’ve got the start of an idea. A wonderful, surprising, amazing, intriguing idea.

And here. We. Go. Again. That look means business. Serious business. When she had found a house she liked. Or an idea for her business or new career path. Or a way to decorate a room. Or deciding to have a child.

Now just having a particular look on her face doesn’t guarantee an outcome but it does promise action. Of that I was certain. We were on the start of a journey.

The Big Bang!

While this idea of surrogacy was a completely new idea, it did revolve around a very familiar topic of debate in our household. The subject of children – more of them, that is — had been a semi-regular topic in our home. The topic would resurface every year or so. Completely out of the blue. Triggered by God only knows what. But certainly not by me.

Because I was oh so very certain in what I wanted in this way. I was done. Fin. Add your own favorite way of saying ‘no’ in any language on the planet. That was my position.

I hate to equate having children with gambling on a game of chance, but: I figured we had beat the house twice on Emma and Sara. Blackjack and Royal Flush. Happy. Healthy. Smart. And I had already backed away from the table, and seemingly cashed in my chips.

How so? At the risk of sharing too much information, I had made the decision to..be…well….fixed. Yes, I’m comfortable with the slang associated wtih vetinarians rather than the human medical term. My squeamishness knows no bounds. Rest assured you’ll read not one more detail about this experience in this blog.

So I was mentally and now physically finished with the whole idea. To think about getting ‘un-fixed’ wasn’t an option. And still the topic kept creeping up, like a persistent weed that recharges itself from deep buried roots.

As for Michelle? Well, it turns out she wasn’t so sure. Even after she had enthusiastically offered me up to be the one to seek the ultimate birth control solution. A little TOO enthusiastically for my liking now that I recall, but it made sense at the time. It still made sense. And yet about every year or so, she’d restart the discussion.

‘Wouldn’t it be fun to have another little one’. Or: ‘What if we would try to have a boy’. Was she just thinking out loud?Or was she trotting out ideas to guage my reaction? I’m not sure.

When the subject would rear its (baby) head, I would quickly move to block/blunt/quash it. I had a list of reasons and issues ready to go at merest mention of little ones.

Take a deep breath: Diapers. No sleep. No social life. Cost of college education. Really poopy diapers. Braces. Ear infections. My mother visiting. PTA meetings. Elementary school fundraisers. And god don’t forget those frangrant diapers.

These functioned as my babymaking herbicide, my weed spray to keep those ideas from sprouting. And the topic would soon dissolve and be forgetten….for awhile.

This Sunday morning, however, I didn’t recite my list. Why? I really don’t know. Maybe it was the look on Michelle’s face. Or the hope reflected in her eyes. I’ll pick up that subject another time.I get a lot of questions about why I agreed to this project. It was a pretty simple decision and I have a lot to say about that. Later.

For this morrning I just nodded and agreed with Michelle’s idea. Maybe she’d look at the website. Maybe she’d give them a call and just investigate it. It did sound interesting. Who knows…….

I often wondered what would have happened if I had chosen to try to squash this idea. Would we be here now?

It’s the first decision every parent has to make. What’s the baby’s name?

This new blog is my baby. So I have to name it. And, appropriately enough, this blog is ABOUT a baby. Or two. That’s coming in the future.

More about that later. And more about the purpose, scope and goals of this blog.

For now, it just needs a name. A handle. So I put my big 50,000 megawatt marketing brain on high power thinking and pondered.

Here’s my short list:

BabyGarage. My early favorite. Said it all with one camelbacked word. Different. But: Blog Heroine, better known as my wife Michelle, the surrogate-to-be shook her head: no.

Her bun. My oven. Same reaction, although head shake was a little more bewildered. I like it; I’ll use it somewhere else.

BabyMaker. Ugh. Sounds like a porno, or the life and times of an ex-NBA star.

Like an organ transplant. A whole bunch of them. All in one little bundle. Except that you’re not dead. Plus, you get to spread a little joy. Wordy, but descriptive. But can I get the .com of that name? Doubt it.

Baby Bump. Huh? OK, I was getting desperate.

Baby Farmer. Why do I imagine little baby heads popping up out of the soil? No.

BabyHarvest. Even creepier.

Baby Momma. Oh. Taken.

Octomom minus 7 brats. Really desperate now.

GuestWomb. Yes. Short and catchy. Perfect description of what’s going on. And now the real litmus test. I read it to Michelle.

Blog heroine chuckled; I took that for a big thumbs up.

GuestWomb it is.