What The Smock?

After 24 hours of labor a variety of factors led the wife to opt for a C-section. Once the call was made our doctor said we would be holding our baby in our arms inside of a half hour and he gave us a few minutes to gather ourselves for the impending surgery. What would you do with these precious few moments before your spouse went under the knife and your life would be changed forever? Of course I reassured her that she made the right choice and that everything was going to work out (in the end it was spooky how lucky of a good call we made), and then I immediately changed into the "special clothes" the nurses gave me for the operating room visit, ran into the bathroom and snapped this self portrait of me as some sort of deranged commercial painter.

At first I was bummed that I didn't get a pair of empowering scrubs to welcome the little guy into the world, but then I realized that there would be no better way to soften the blow of a "we're having a C-section" text message than including a goofy ass pic of me in a painters smock and hair net. Most people would probably remember the unnerving amount of tenstion in the air prior to surgery or the amazing skill and precision with which the doctors delicately liberated the little dude from my wife's abdomen. But for me what really sticks out in my mind was me sitting in the hallway prior to being called into the operating room thinking, "Oh crap, I really have to go the bathroom. No time now, the boy is coming and the wife needs me...I really might crap this goddam painter's smock during delivery".  And that's when I knew I was ready to be a dad. I was literally willing to shit myself in public instead of letting the wife or son down.