Watching your child come into the world is hard to comprehend, let alone explain.

When I returned home from serving a mission for my church, I kind of dreaded running into people that I knew because I knew they would ask me, “How was your mission?”

That might sound weird, but when you serve a mission; or perhaps you’re in the military and return home from serving your country; or after you climb Mt. Everest; or watch a loved one pass into the next life; or do pretty much anything that stretches you to extremes that you never thought you were capable of surviving, a question like that is almost insulting.

I just wanted to ask them in return, “Do you really want to know? Do you really care? It was the most exhausting, difficult, rewarding, beautiful, sacred, humbling, miserable, and challenging learning experience that I have ever endured. I gave my blood, sweat, tears, and heart. People spit on me, yelled at me, berated me, threatened me, and hated me. I loved every minute of it; even the parts that I hated. Everything that is good in my life right now is a direct result of the time I spent serving others. I would never trade it or do it over. It was the best time of my life.”

But, you see, even a response like that can’t impress upon someone the feelings and the reality of it all. In the end, words can’t describe it. So, you end up with a short, but trite replay like, “Good, thanks.”

The truth is there is no substitute for experience, and unless you’ve been there you just couldn’t really comprehend.

That’s how it felt to watch my beautiful, healthy, and perfect son come into this world. All of you who have experienced it are nodding your heads because you get it, and those who haven’t might be too. But, you can’t really understand until you’ve been there.

At some time around 7a.m., after a long night of tossing and turning from anxiety, the phone rang. Hanna, my wife, jumped a bit at the sound and it woke me up. She answered. I could hear a woman’s voice coming through the receiver asking, in essence, if we were ready and how soon we could come in to be induced. We knew they might call, but weren’t really expecting anything until later in the day. Hanna replied that we could leave within a half an hour.

The bags had been packed for days and we had been ready to go because of the four days or so of false labor that Hanna had been experiencing. The contractions would begin to come and they would get consistent for hours at a time, but would never increase in strength. She had dilated to a 3 1/2 about 10 days earlier and was 90% effaced. She probably walked 20 miles in those couple of days trying to motivate him to come. She was ready, but I guess our little guy wasn’t.

I climbed out of bed and just kind of wandered around the room in somewhat of a daze trying to figure out where to begin. I finally remembered where we kept the bathroom and decided to start there. About 35 minutes later we were both upright, clothed, clean, the car was loaded up and the dog was fed. We got to the hospital just before 8 a.m.

9 a.m. they broke Hanna’s water, 1 p.m. she decided she’d had enough fun and the epidural was given, and in the following two hours she went from a four to a seven. Just before 5 p.m. she was declared a 10 and the real work began.

I was exhausted at this point. I just didn’t think that I could take much more. I thought about asking if we could just keep her numb until the next day after I got a good nights rest, but Hanna insisted. I trudged forward.

My beautiful wife was a total champ at the whole push the baby out thing. She was really great. I was pretty nervous going into this thing because Hanna can be a bit aggressive, shall we say. I think that she might have considered that trading my life for our son’s would be an acceptable proposal so initially I wondered if it was really in my best interest to be within arms reach of her. Luckily, the drugs had made her quite pleasant, and we had a very positive and healthy experience working together to get that baby out.

After about 40 minutes of pushing, and still no baby, we were notified that we liked our children sunny side up. I guess they don’t so much. Instead of coming through the birth canal facing down, he was facing the ceiling. I think that it was just because he was so excited to put a face with the very manly and comforting voice that had given him pep talks every night before bed. Maybe he’s a back sleeper like his mom. Who knows? Whatever the case, it was cause for much more effort from Hanna.

After about an hour of pushing Hanna just looked at me with pleading in her eyes, and I knew she was ready to be done. She had done so great, but she was losing energy and confidence. So I did what any good husband would do, I lied.

“Oh he’s so close. He’s like right there. Just one or two more pushes and he’s here.” I was just practicing for when I’d get to tell my kids, “Oh we’re almost there. Just up around the next corner. Keep walking and quit whining.”

6:36 p.m. our precious baby made his appearance. (FYI: I too was born at exactly 6:36 p.m.) What a moment. After the doctor unwrapped the umbilical cord and cleaned the airways, there was the beautiful sound of an infant crying. The single most amazing moment in my life was watching my lovely Hanna reach out and hold our firstborn for the first time.

I couldn’t stop staring. He’s Perfect. For days now all I can do is stare. We have loved having him here and I don’t think that either of us knew that we could love so much. We think that he’s pretty special. And, we know that he was meant to be ours, forever.

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