Jade would beg to differ at this point.

Look at me. I'm calm, cool, and collected. I'm so together that I'm writing in my Journal as this is going on.

They tell us not to come back to the hospital until contractions are 5 minutes apart. But each contraction lasts a minute, so do they mean the five minutes apart from the BEGINNING or the END of THE PREVIOUS CONTRACTION?!?!? SWEET GOD ABOVE, SOMEONE SAVE ME!!!

[Pie fight ensues]

We have this CD called "Angels of Healing," one of those hippy New Age CDs. I thought that during the most recent round of contractions it might help to turn it on. "How about some Angels of Healing?" I asked.

"That tape is from the devil," Jade growled.

Rushing your pregnant wife to the delivery room is one of the few times in life that you can legally break every traffic law, and I was looking forward to it. But it was 4:30 pm on a weekday in Boston, and rush hour was already so bad that I was stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic for most of the trip. In the end, the only traffic law I considered breaking was hitting a blind guy, who was walking across the hospital driveway at such a mind-bogglingly slow pace that he probably deserved it. If I run him over, I reasoned, he won't be able to identify the car anyway.

He crossed the driveway an hour or so later, and I gunned it to the front of the hospital, where I parked the car two wheels up on the sidewalk. Boston parking is always at a premium, but last night I found out how to park for free: you simply screech up to the front of the hospital, two wheels up on the sidewalk, and tell them your wife is in labor. I swear, it worked. We kept the car out there all night, looking like it just returned from a fresh joyride, and nobody towed it. The invisible pregnancy shield keeps it safe.

I grabbed a wheelchair and rode Jade in the door of the women's center, both of us remarkably calm considering the circumstances. A young Goth chick was manning the desk, wearing a black T-shirt for a local band called "Stiletto," tattoos encircling her right arm.

"My wife's in labor," I said.

"WHAT?!" said the Goth chick, panicking. She leapt up from her chair. "Let me get you some paperwork to fill out!"

Jade was wincing in pain as another contraction came on. "Would it be possible to do this later?" I said.

"WHAT?!" she yelled, "YEAH!" She ran back and forth from the desk, to the other desk, to the hallway, papers trailing in her wake. Then she remembered us, and ran back. "FOLLOW ME!" she said, breathing heavily.

"I think she's new," I whispered to Jade.

We went back to the same delivery room we had visited earlier that day. The same resident that had said, "Hope to see you later this week," was quite surprised to see us back so soon.

Jade, for her part, was holding up amazingly well. I joked earlier that she had bitten my arm, but that was not true. The contractions were obviously terribly painful, but she was very focused, very (for the lack of a better word) appropriate. There was no swearing, no grabbing of 'nads, no hitting over the head with blunt objects. They wheeled her into a birthing room (which, in this hospital, is actually more like a hotel room) and got her onto the bed, but it was clear that she was in tremendous amounts of pain. "Can we have some drugs now?" she asked.

"We're going to get you some drugs," said the nurse. "Have you decided what you want?"

There are many different types of painkillers you can request during delivery. We had decided that Jade would decide what she needed when the time came, and we would place no stigma on her decision. "Epidural," she panted, referring to the anesthesia which numbs the lower half of your body.

"OK," said the nurse, "we just need to call the anesthesiologist."

The resident took me out in the hallway. "She's already 4 cm," he said. "This is progressing remarkably fast, especially for a first child. Usually it takes days to reach this point."

"Lucky her," I said, listening to the screams coming from the room.

"I wouldn't leave her side at this point."

"Do I have time to go get my camera out of the car?" I asked, thinking of our Tercel parked Starsky-and-Hutch-style on the hospital's front steps.

"I don't think so," he said, "unless you want to miss the big event."

I had been coaching Jade through all her contractions, and was dizzy and lightheaded from all the breathing I had been doing. I really live for moments like this, sheer excitement and chaos. My mind was racing, my hands were shaking, and yet I was calm and focused. It was glorious.

"Tell you what," said the resident. "Give me your keys, and I'll get your camera for you."

"You are getting quite a tip from me, young man," I said, giving him my car keys with a wink.

I rushed back into the room as Jade went into another contraction. She was really yelling now, a series of loud yelps that alternated with the breathing. "Let it out," I said. "The louder you yell, the faster these people move into action."

As if on cue, the anesthesiologist came through the door, yelling "BREATHE DEEPLY! RELAX!" The guy looked, I am not making this up, like Super Mario. He looked exactly like Super Mario, but without the hat. "YOU MUST-A BREATHE SLOWLY AND DEEPLY!" he was screaming at the top of his lungs, creating the least peaceful atmosphere I could imagine. "THAT-A WILL GET RID OF THE PAIN, JADE!" It was like trying to do yoga in a cymbal factory.

"How about that epidural now?" panted Jade, desperately.

"I am-a going to ask you to lay on your side, with a perfectly curved back," said Super Mario. "Just like an angry cat."

"Angry cat," repeated Jade, in between breaths, "angry cat."

The resident, who had returned with the camera gear, pulled me back out in the hallway. "Sweet Lord, she's already at 9.5 cm," he said. (He might not have said "Sweet Lord.")

"And how far do we go?" I asked, unable to remember.

"10."

"Sweet Lord," I said.

"Angry cat," moaned Jade from the other room. "I want my angry cat."

"She's too far along to give her an epidural," said the resident. "The best we can do is administer some drugs through her IV."

"That's the way I normally do it myself," I said.

"Where's my angry cat?" Jade was whimpering when I came back in the room. "This really, really hurts!"

They injected the morphine, or cough syrup, or whatever, into the IV. It, of course, did nothing.

They had Jade put her legs in the stirrups and begin pushing. I had been told by several of my male friends that the wise thing to do was to sit at third base, not in the catcher's position. "Don't be a catcher," they all said. "You'll never want to have sex again."

I had to play catcher.

Everyone was in full battle gear at this point. There were enormous blue surgical drop cloths placed over every available surface and person. The OB/GYN was finally there (sauntering in, like a rock star, just moments before the baby started crowning), the resident, the nurse, and two or three guys I had never met. I think they might have been from an insurance company.

Within five minutes, I saw my first peek of something grey and wrinkled. "What's that?" I asked the resident. "Umbilical cord? Jade's liver? Alien life form?"

"The baby's head," he said.

And then before another word could be said, the baby SHOT OUT with the force of a HUMAN CANNONBALL, knocking ALL SEVEN OF US against the wall in an explosion of blood and mucous. It came out that fast, I swear.

"It's a boy!" I yelled, before anyone could beat me to the punch. Everyone else was still dazed from the impact, and I was the first to notice, proving that my college anatomy class was not entirely forgotten.

It would take a far more eloquent writer than I to describe the first moments of seeing your child. For nine months, we had lived with nothing more than an amorphous lump in Jade's body, and suddenly that lump was a person, another human being. He was so tiny and perfect and pink as they placed him on Jade's breast that I was actually, for once in my life, at a loss for jokes. I even forgot the line I had planned on using ("But I was expecting a puppy!"). I couldn't do anything except wipe away my tears and kiss Jade on the forehead.

She did great. She really did great.