Kicking it into Overdrive.

From my "research" and personal experience, every parent or parent-to-be undertakes a journey. It is the journey from the state of happy-go-lucky, my-decisions-only-affect-me to the state of what-if-something-happens.

For me, I feel as if I have reached this second state of mind. It isn't that I'm afraid OF my daughter-to-be... I'm afraid FOR her. Recently, I have seen the worst of what can happen to a parent; when the child you've been growing and loving for weeks and months comes very early and only sticks around for a few hours of loving embraces.

Recently, I have felt first-hand the fear that comes with the thought, "Something isn't right." A few nights ago, my wife called me into the bedroom with tears in her voice, telling me that she hadn't felt our baby move in three hours. She had tried everything she could to wake up the angel in her womb. Eating dinner, with a sugary dessert. Her daily allotment of caffeine in a short period of time. A cold drink. Poking. Prodding. Lying on her side in bed in order to focus on and feel the most minute of movements. When I entered the room, I joined her on the bed and began the ritual that had always produced a reaction from our daughter. I gave her Reiki, I put my head on my wife's belly and spoke to her. I poked, prodded and did everything I could to get a little kick.

When none of that worked, when our child was continuously unresponsive, we called Labor and Delivery. After running through the list of our attempts to elicit a reaction, the nurse very quickly told me to bring mother and baby into the hospital, and not to waste any time about it.

That ride, those meager little minutes, was the longest period of waiting that I had ever experienced. Fearing, as I drove faster than normal, that something horrible had happened to our littlest angel. Fearing, as I tried to see the lane lines through blurry eyes, that we would somehow have to cope with loss. She still hadn't kicked.

When we arrived at Labor and Delivery, the 45 seconds of paperwork they wanted us to fill out fueled a barely-containable fit of useless rage. They brought us to a triage room, and hooked my wife up to the fetal monitors. After a few seconds of piano-wire tension, our baby's heartbeat came through loud and clear.

After pulling myself back up from the puddle of relief that I had turned into on the floor of the hospital, I was able to relax and begin to think about how this experience had affected me.

I knew that my mind had traveled to the darkest of places, and that my fear fed upon itself as it said, "What if... what if... what if... what if..." And I knew that as much as I've tried to convince myself otherwise, sometimes fear is the appropriate response.

But as I said a few months ago, "I refuse to let fear drag me through my life; I am in charge." Regardless of it's veracity at the time, this mini-mantra has helped me regain my sanity faster, to push the fear into the background, and to help me know that I will do everything in my power to keep my family safe and healthy.

I just hope that I can keep it in the background long enough to let our baby make the mistakes that she will need to make in order to learn and to grow.

-A