A Dad's Point of View - First Contact


Hospital room door on the day Gogol was born

“Wake up!!! Wake up!!! My water just broke.”, she said.

“Oh, nice!! Let’s get back to sleep”, I said.

“Hey! Wake Up!! My water just broke!! We are going to have a baby!!”, she said.

It was 2:30 AM at night. The day we had been waiting for, the last 38 weeks, had finally arrived, and ~~we were going to be parents~~ I was going to be a father.

There’s a quote that goes,

A woman becomes a mother when she gets pregnant, a man becomes a father when he sees his baby.

I was happy and emotional and all that during pregnancy but nothing could compare to what Sagnika felt during those days. How her eyes lit up every time the baby moved or kicked. The sudden anxiety, she felt, if the baby did not move for 15 minutes. She had been a mother for some time now but today,

I was going to become a dad.

Coming back to the moment.

“Oh! Shit”, I thought and woke up with a jolt.

Before you jump to conclusions let’s clarify what the “Oh! Shit” means over here. I DID NOT think “Oh! Shit, I am going to be a father. How did this happen?”. The time for that was long past. I was very happy that I was becoming a father and was prepared for whatever challenges may present themselves. What I was thinking instead was “Oh! Shit, I am feeling completely sleepy and disoriented right now. I know I am supposed to take charge of the situation but I can’t remember any of the steps the doctor told us to take in case of a water break. What should I do? I am completely blank.”

Sagnika, in complete contrast to what they show in the movies, was very calm. She reminded me that first I need to give her a clean bedsheet and then, without panicking, call an ambulance.

The next 2 days from this point onwards were a whirlwind of events. I will fast forward the next two days till we came back home, mentioning only the key phrases so that you get an idea of what happened.

Key Phrases:

Ambulance to Cloud 9 hospital.
Repeat for the next 13 hours
- Labour Pain.
- “Take me home,” she said.
- “Nurse, Please Help”, I said.
- “Ok, I will come and check”, a nurse said
- “What is happening?”, relatives asked
- “Wait, more dilation needed”, the doctor said
- “It will be ok, be brave, this is normal”, I said to myself and Sagnika (as if I knew all there is to know about labor pain and giving birth)
Epidural. Ahh!! Relief.
Normal delivery is not possible. Let’s do C-section.
At 17:18. It’s a boy. Tell everyone.
2 days later, we came home.

Time for some pictures


Me after winning the World cup	Then there were three

Then Gogol came home. This is how we welcomed him.

First Night

A few minutes after we came home, Gogol fell asleep. Then pin drop silence. We, me and Sagnika, were like two little frogs(read first-time parents) looking at each other without a clue on what to do if something unknown happened. You see while at the hospital there were trained nurses(read demigods) who would swoop in at the slightest hint of a problem and solve the issue with unparalleled skill and finesse. But now we were all alone without any relevant experience and shivering at the prospect of the unexpected googly that parenthood might through at us.

Gogol sensing our precarious situation wasted no time and gave us an issue to solve and as you all might have guessed by now, we shit out pants. Not literally. That would be gross.

Issue: Gogol started hiccuping. Repeatedly. Continuously. Uncontrollably.

Sagnika started going crazy and started giving me that look that I have seen on numerous occasions previously which meant 2 things at the same time:

I somehow was to blame for all of this.
Since I did all of this. I should find a solution immediately.

Poor me. With my 2 days of experience being a father, I was completely shaken. But I kept a straight face, in complete compliance with the unspoken rule that fathers are supposed to show as little emotion as possible.

After 10 minutes of Gogol hiccuping, I also started losing it.

It was 2AM at night and we decided to keep all hesitation aside and Sagnika was about to call her parents. It was just at this point when we were trying to multiply the trauma by sending some of it to Kolkata, that I remembered one very important thing.

I told Sagnika not to call and I called the hospital emergency number that we were given just before discharge. Within 2 minutes we were smiling away our fears when they told us it was very common for newborns to do that.

Gogol somehow sensed that we had found the clue to the mystery and stopped hiccuping after some time.

Ending Note

It is questionable whether I have all the qualities of being a good father but that night I went to sleep with one undeniable fact. I was Gogol’s father and I was ready to take on the world for him.