How Ransom Came Into The World (version 2.0)

It had been 12 hours since Amy woke me up that morning to tell me she was having contractions. That was 2 in the morning. I was just coming out of my delirious state of sleep and Amy wasn't 100% confident that she was really having THE contractions but she did feel like something was changing inside her. Although our soon-to-be-born baby boy was still warm and comfortable inside his mother's womb, we had gotten pretty accustomed to his "personality" and were not the slightest bit surprised that the day of his induction would be when he would choose to come out on his own.

Amy's fever had gotten worse and we had been pushing for hours. I say "we" because each time she had to push, I couldn't help but push myself and was doing it so much that Amy was afraid I would pass out from lack of air intake. Maybe it was a natural reaction like when you are in the passenger side of the car and the car in front of you brakes suddenly and you push your foot to the floor looking for a brake pedal that isn't there. Amy says it's because I love her so much but that would seem too simple.

The nurse had told me that she had seen the top of our boy's head poke out a few times aleady and said that we were so close. I tried to see it during one of the pushing rounds but was so distracted by trying to help Amy get through the pushing that I wasn't able to see anything.

It had been 12 hours since I drug myself out of bed to get all of our baby day gear together and loaded into the car. I wanted to make sure, just in case this was indeed the real thing and we didn't have to wait for our 10 o'clock appointment for inducing, that I didn't forget anything. We had our clothes, books, a deck of cards, snacks (for me and some for Amy to sneak into her mouth when the nurse was not around),games and our baby's first change of clothes and his car seat for the joyous ride home. 12 hours and Amy was exhausted, fever still hot and no baby to show for it and I still could not keep myself from breathing and pushing too hard myself.

Doctor Ford had just recently joined us. Up until about 2 hours prior, it was just Amy, me and our nurse. Pushing. Taking a break. Pushing. Taking a break. Every contraction, about a minute or two apart, push! No baby. Take a break. Oops, the line on the graph is going up again. Push! No baby. Take a break. Enter Doctor Ford. We had wanted Ransom to be born on May 21st so that he could share a birthday with his father. Partially because I felt like it would be a nice bonding detail for us, but more importantly, since I am adamant that I do NOT want to celebrate my birthday ever again (and if anyone ever tried, let them know that that day they will rue) having a son born on the same day would be a good distraction from my own day of birth. Unfortunately, Doctor Ford also had a son with the birthday of May 21st, she wanted to have us induce the day before so she could spend the next day with her own son. We obliged but both Amy and I know deep inside our hearts that if we had waited, he would have been born on the 21st naturally because the contractions wer far enough apart that without the induction procedure, he may have waited until after midnight to come out.

The doctor told us it was time to bring in the vaccuum. I had never heard of the use of a "vaccuum" before but seeing how Amy was still growing hotter and hotter and grew more tired by each contraction, I agreed to anything they could do to speed up the birth and relieve her of the pressure.

Amy's legs were propped up on the stirrups and the big flood lights came in, the extra nurse stood by and the vaccuum pump thing was ready. COntraction. Amy pushed. I counted (and pushed). No baby. Breath. Short rest. Push! No baby. A couple more times and the intensity grew more and more.

I was getting lightheaded from my sympathy breathing/pushing and Amy looked like she was going to just collapse. The doctor thought it would be any moment. The line graph starting rising again and the next round of pushing started. I saw the vaccuum pump disappear under the sheet around Amy's legs and as Amy pushed her hardest ever, she began to cry a painful cry (I learned later that an incision had to be made to allow more room for the baby to come out) but the doctor encouraged her not to stop and I looked over the sheet and saw a small head poking out between Amy's legs. It was the back of his head and the full head of hair was plastered down to his head. I turned to Amy who seemed delirious and coaxed her to push hard, just once more. She let a strong gasp and pushed and I saw Ransom slide out into Doctor FOrd's hands, in which she reflexively tossed his limp 8 pound 6 ounce body onto Amy's tummy.

He laid there quietly and the room seemed to fall silent. Everything was in slow motion and I was holding Amy's hand, leaning against her head. We both stared in awe at the calm, still grey baby lying on Amy's tummy. And then there was a cough. And then a cry. A single cry that broke what seemed like hours of silence that passed in a mere moment. Then all the sound rushed back into my ears and I cried along with my newborn son. Amy was crying. Ransom was crying. And I cried to Amy, "He's beautiful! He's beautiful! You did such a good job! I love you! I love him!"

Amy smiled a weak yet approving smile, allowing me to leave her side to go over to Ransom, who was not on a table, under a light, to be cleaned up and checked out. I walked over to the table where he cried quietly. I must have been in so much awe of how beautiful he was because I don't remember the crying stopping. I just suddenly realized he was not crying anymore. He was lying on his back, with a slight tilt of his head, looking outward and I could already see in his eyes that he was a smart boy. His eyes were open and his brow scrunched in the middle. The same look that I had been known to make when I was deeply in thought. I was amazed how aware his face seemed and I loved him. I wanted to grab him and take him over to Amy but I knew that the nurse had to finish what she had to do and did not want to risk messing any of her work up.

Now, at 11 and a half weeks later, as Ransom lays quietly in the other room, now sleeping through the entire night, I am reminded of that first night with him. Both Amy and I exhausted from little to no sleep and with him practically waking up every hour, we knew it would take a lot out of us but we did not care. He was now here was us and missing out on a day or two's sleep was not a big deal to us at that moment. Once again, he sleeps through the night now and we, too, get a full night's sleep each night now, but there is a part of me that misses that 3 in the morning time with him when he woke up then for feeding. It was a special time where he and I bonded, just the two of us. But I am cool with it.

This Wednesday, it will be 12 weeks after that night Amy woke me up and told me she thought she was having contractions. 12 weeks after that glorious baby's day out. And now, I have a lifetime ahead of me and I only fear that it will go by too quickly.

Future Dreams

Amy and I were having a wonderful day, walking in the park. The evening had quietly crept into the late afternoon and the dark sky above told us that it was getting late and we probably needed to turn back to our car before it got too dark. We were just passing a physical fitness facility when Amy decided she needed to make a pit stop before we began our walk back to the parking lot to begin the long drive back home. I waited outside as she went into the facility to use their restrooms. I wandered ahead, staring up at the sky to count the stars. It was right about that time when I saw the brightest shooting star I had ever seen. It glowed a bright whitish yellow with a wide tail that seemed to permanently mar the sky with its searing glow. What made this shooting star even more intriguing was that unlike other shooting stars I had seen in the past, this one did not get smaller and did not fade out into the night. In fact, the more I watched it, the brighter and larger it got. Just in my peripheral, I catch a glimpse of another shooting star coming from the opposite direction, this one not so brilliant and simply left a long white, smoky tail behind it. When my eyes finally adjusted to the second star, I realized it was not a star at all but a jet fling across the night sky. It was then when I realized the first star was the same, but that one was actually on fire. At this point of realization, I notice that both "stars" were flying straight towards each other, eventually colliding into each other. My eyes blink in horror as my body freezes up in shock from what I could not believe I just saw. Everything around seems to have stopped in time and I just stand there not sure of what to do.

And then, snap! I come to. I feel the life returning to my legs and my mind releases itself from the awe-struck state was in. I see that the fireball that was once the two "stars" is no longer hovering in space and time above me but was now falling to the earth, on a direct path towards the fitness facility that Amy had gone into. I jump and begin running towards the building to warn her and get her out. I consider calling her but can't seem to locate my phone. The air feels warmer as the flaming fireballs gets bigger and bigger as it plummets towards the building. I estimate that I am about 200 feet away from the building, the fireball even further but falling at a much faster rate than I was running. I see the front doors and push my legs even harder to get inside to find Amy but before I can take another step, I feel my body go limp and I am thrown backwards, landing on the back of my neck. The breath is knocked out of me and I begin coughing. The Coughing stabs at my chest and each cough rings in my ears, barely drowning out the remaining sounds of the explosion that had pushed me to the ground. When I am finally able to get up on my feet and turn around, I see the remains of the building, a charred fiery skeleton of what it once was, no survivors in sight. A call out to Amy with the sinking feeling that I would not be hearing any response ever again.

I gasp and reach over to Amy who is lying next to me in our bed.. She later tells me
that when I woke from my sleep, I was breathing heavily and immediately placed my hand on her belly, reaching for our unborn child. She comforted me and reassured me it was just a dream and eventually I am able to calm down and go back to sleep.

I find it interesting that we dream. I know that we can never really truly explain why we dream what we do and why our brains decide to project different images in our heads as we sleep. But the one thing I have come to terms with is that no matter what I dream, I have to keep in mind that on the most part, our dreams are merely replaying things in our heads that we have been thinking about, memories of the past or simply something we were exposed to. The mind's eye is limitless and can see whatever it wants to see. But the part that I feel really strongly about, the part I will argue about to no end is my belief that for most of us, if not all of us living today, our mind is limited to what it already knows. What that means is that I don't believe that our dreams peek into the future.

I heard a co-worker speaking the other day about how she knew when she was pregnant, before she had her ultrasound and was told she was having a girl, she already knew she was having a girl because her baby girl spoke to her in a dream. Apparently, she had a dream where a little girl approached her and said to her, "Mommy, I am a girl." This was what told her that she was having a girl and that was why she was not surprised when the ultrasound tech revealed it to her. Now, based on my hypothesis, I guess technically, this is possible because even though she may not have been able to look at the child on her own her accord and know that she was a girl, her mind may have already known it deep inside her brain because her mind is connected to her, at the time, unborn child, thus possibly subcosciously already knew the gender. But based on this example, that does not support anyone outside of the mother being able to know what the child is going to be. Anyone outside of the mother is merely guessing and having a strong sense of confidence in their guess. But that is adifferent discussion altogether.

Getting back to dreams, though, I believe in the historical accounts of Joseph and his dreams telling him that he would one day be a leader and that many would bow down to him. I believe in the dreams that other prisoners in the jailcell that Joseph was in, telling them that one of them would be forgiven while the other would be killed. I even believe that the pharaoh at the time did indeed dream about the foretelling of a coming famine in which Joseph was able to translate and prepare them for well before it happened. But I don't believe that God talks to us that way anymore. I'm not saying that believe that God CAN'T speak to us this way but merely statng that I believe that he DOES NOT speak to us this way today. At the time of Joseph and the many others who God spok to in dreams or through visiting angels or burning bushes, there was no Word so that was what was needed in order for God to communicate with us. Today, the Bible is how God speaks to us so there is no need for dream speaking or future telling through our mind images. In fact, having stated this, I find it hard to believe that God would use this great communicating ability to merely tell us what gender our child would be or that we would be late for work next week because of a car accident. The events in the Bible where God spoke directly to humans to prepare them for the future were always phenominal events, big outcomes. It would just seem silly that he would go from telling the virgin Mary that she would be carrying the Son of God in her womb to merely making it easy for to know whether or not we should choose pink curtains or blue ones for our baby room.

But what about people who have declared that they have dreamt about big things? Huge premonitions? I don't know. I just don't see it. I am more willing to accept that
someone's mind just so happened to coincidentally insert your images into your head
that later resembled something that happened later than I am willing to believe that God spoke to that person to give him/her insight on something that was going to happen in the future. The reason for this is because all the accounts in the Bible where God spoke to someone in a dream, the dream made it possible for that person to make a difference in the future. Why would God merely give someone a sneak peek into the future realm merely for them to see it happen later on television in the news with no way of using that information to help affect the future? It would be a waste of time. Here's an example of what I am talking about.

In 2001, around August 20th or so, I had a dream that I was flying a plane. One of
those small cargo-type planes with just room for a few passengers. There was a guy on the plane holding a gun to my head and forcing me to fly the plane into a building. I remember not wanting to do it and eventually steering the plane into a mountain or something. I remember telling Amy about this in passing and didn't think much about it. About three weeks later, two planes crashed into the Twin Towers in New York, killing many and changing the way the Us of A thought about their safety here in the States from that point on. If I didn't feel strongly about my belief in dreams today do not predict the future, I would have been a nervous wreck thinking that God was telling me there was going to be an attack and I did nothing about it. But that isn't what I believe. In fact, I can guarantee you that there are probably a good handful of other people who may have had dreams loosely similar to the attacks prior to them happening. So what does that mean? It means that a group of people had dreams conjured up in their minds based on their own experiences whether in life or something they read or saw on TV or whatever, driven by anxiety, anxiousness or merely the mind just replaying information for the sake of doing so, but just so happens to resemble the events of 9/11. Mere coincidence and has nothing to do with being psychic or God talking to them about the future.

Now, with dreams, I do believe that you can affect the future by using your dreams but I am talking more about the fact that you can also affect the future by analyzing your past. You can see where you made mistakes or where you may need to rethink something or you just have been distracted from the truth because of all the other things you have to deal with in life. Dreams can be used as an avenue for your mind to replay things going on in your life right now and can put together little dramas directly connected to those existing feelings and thoughts. Your mind may be visually showing you that you are nervous for a test or that your relationship with a friend is on the rocks or that you are hungry. But it is all based on the events of now and events of the past. The dream may show images of possibilities for the future based on existing knowledge but I really do not believe our dreams will show us the TRUE future as it will be. I do not believe our minds will show us the inevitable.

So, what does this mean for us today? For me, at least, it means that I can keep
talking about my dreams and I can keep analyzing what they mean but I cannot use that information to set a unchangeable precedence for the future-yet-to-come. My dreams are not telling me the future and I am not ready to believe anyone else has that ability today. I can muse over other’s interpretations and see where a dream is telling something about themselves today but as for the future, it isn't yet written and, well, if anyone what the outcomes will be from the events of today, I just don't think it is any of us.

Okay, enough about this. I will lay this one down to rest. Sweet dreams, everyone.