Early in the morning of January 29th I found myself sleep on my brother's couch, in the midst of my slumber my brother comes out and tells me to grab the phone I look at the clock and see that it’s 3 in the morning.
I ask him “Why in the hell do I need to grab the phone?”
He looked at me and told me with a stern look on his face “Bro grab the phone it's Oni.”
Right then I knew that something was going on, so I immediately jumped up and started to get dressed with the biggest grin on my face. As I came to the phone Oni told me what I already knew, her water had broke and she was getting ready to give birth to our child.
As I'm on my way to her house I am blasting music in pure excitement! After arriving to the house and helping everyone get settled, Oni’s father and myself began to set up the birthing center in living room. Although her parents had a lot of things already prepared it felt good to work with her father preparing a place for her to be comfortable and give birth.
It helped me be present, something that I have been missing a lot of with in my life. I feel at times I just go through the motions and don't really realize how present I must be to enjoy the little things in life and this was one of those moments. Every time I tried to reach for my phone when I thought I was in the clear, Oni would remind me and say,
“I need you here. Jeff I need you to be present here.”
No matter how many times she broke my hand or stretched out my shirt it felt really good to have someone to make me aware of what I was going to miss and what I have been missing within my life. As we got to the later parts of the day and Oni began to push the baby down the canal we made our way into the bathroom and I thought my baby was going to come out in the form of poop! LOL!
But as Oni stood, up everyone could finally see the head. As he progressed down, Oni cried. But I can tell that they were tears of Victory because she could feel the baby getting closer to coming out and when the baby finally made it’s Voyage to this plane, I screamed,
“It's a boy!”
I began to cry and I could hear others joining in harmony. My beautiful baby boy the greatest gift ever given to me by anyone and my lady Oni was the reason and is the reason that he is here.
I have really loved this series! Thanks Oni and Jeff for sharing your story. It was beautiful to read both sides and you both did a great job with imagery that really puts the reader there with you. Good job!