I was 39 weeks pregnant on September 17, 2013. That day, I awoke at 3 AM, took a shower, and got dressed as if it were any other day. But it wasn't. That was the day of my c-section, the day I would meet the little boy I had grown to love over the past nine months as he had lived and grew inside me. But I wasn't ready, and I knew it. I was afraid, and so I tried to maintain as much normalcy as possible to keep myself calm.

The car ride to the hospital that morning was the longest of my life. My ex-fiance and I rode without speaking, him driving and me staring out the passenger window. The atmosphere in the car was uncomfortable, and filled with so much uncertainty and fear. This little boy was our first, he had been unplanned, and we were so young... We had no idea what to expect, or how much our lives were about to change. And it was that uncertainty that made us afraid. So we didn't speak.

It was a little after 5 AM when we arrived at the hospital. We checked into the maternity ward, and were shown to our room. It was next door to the nursery, and the walls were painted with murals of rabbits and flowers. For almost two hours, we sat in that room answering question after question for the hospital staff; everything from when I pooped last to whether I would be bottle or breastfeeding. I submitted to temperature checks, heart rate monitoring, fetal dopplers, and numerous pricks in my arm as the nurse tried to place my IV. My ex had even already suited up in preparation to attend the surgery. None of it made the waiting any easier. Every second seemed to last for years. And just when I thought I couldn't take waiting anymore, there was a knock on the door.

A pair of nurses, who were all smiles, announced they were here to deliver me to surgery. I felt a sudden surge of nerves rush through me. My impatience was gone; I was back to being afraid. But I didn't have too much time to think it over as they wheeled me down to surgery, with my ex in tow. When we reached surgery, they told him to wait outside in the hallway, and wheeled me inside, alone.

It was cold, and the light was so bright, it hurt my eyes. But I didn't have too much time to focus on that, either. I had to move from my warm bed to the cold table, and that was no easy task with the IV in my wrist. Next came sitting in an uncomfortable position while they administered my spinal. Then I was finally allowed to lay down while the surgical staff put up the curtain and began my IV drip. While we were waiting for the spinal to take effect, I began shivering and feeling queasy. One of the nurses was kind enough to drape a warm blanket over me, and a doctor held a bucket next to my face while I threw up. Not one of my finest moments, but they seemed to take that as the green light to begin surgery. They brought in my ex-fiance, and sat him down on a stool at my head.

And finally, we spoke. We talked about how I was feeling (warm and sleepy), what I could feel from the surgery (nothing), and what was happening behind the curtain. My ex delighted in peeking around the curtain, but I was content to not see such things. In fact, I found myself wishing I could sleep - until the sound of a baby crying suddenly filled the room. The nurses all laughed and cooed, the doctors were congratulating each other, but we were silent. We were in shock. Had our baby really just been born? It didn't seem possible.

But then the nurse held him up over the curtain, and sure enough, it was true. He was here. And he was real.Neither one of us knew what to say. We just stared at him until the nurses whisked him away for cleaning and swaddling. So we sat in silence and held hands, waiting for him to be returned to us. Then I began having chest pains. Terrible, horrible, awful chest pains. A nurse assured me it was perfectly normal, but I was having trouble breathing through the pain. So another nurse administered more morphine into my IV, while the remaining surgical staff stitched me up. Yet another nurse then brought over our little boy, and placed him promptly into his father's arms. My chest pains eventually faded away as I watched father and son meet for the very first time.

Jack Alexander was born on September 17, 2013 at 7:56 AM. He weighed 7lbs 5oz, was 20 1/4 inches long, and had a head circumference of 14 inches. From head to toe, he was perfect.