At the hospital for hours. It was a difficult birth. Suddenly, in the middle of the night, the doctors decide it’s go-time for an emergency C-section. They have me follow along behind them, and basically, by the time I get set up in a gown or whatever they put the dad in, it’s all over.
I don’t go into the operating room with my wife; I go into the adjacent room where they take the baby. The doctor comes in with my boy, pokes at him for a few seconds, then wraps him up and hands him to me, functionally saying, “Hold this a moment.” He grabbed my phone, snapped a picture of me holding him, and then he vanished back into my wife’s room.

He told me she’s doing fine, and he’ll be back in a bit. I had around 15–20 minutes with just me and my boy. Combined with the rush of the moment and being told everything is going OK, I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to put that time into words.- After four months of hellish work and chaos, I arrived at an all-inclusive resort in Mexico in the middle of a hurricane. I was initially bummed, but then proceeded to sleep for 12 hours, occasionally waking to monitor the storm. I felt like a new person. It’s as though those four months were erased by a hurricane-fueled nap. 10/10 recommend