Welcoming Charlie-Marie

This is a reflection of my thoughts during Tina's labor and delivery of Charlie-Marie. Charlie-Marie is now 7 weeks old. I went out to Florida 5 days before she arrived. Tina and I had a wonderful time visiting and taking long walks. I was hoping I could be of some help to her after Charlie-Marie arrived, but I wasn't sure how that would play out. Finally on Wednesday afternoon Tina started feeling some stronger contractions. She would come up to me eyes shining and a big smile, "That was a strong one!" All I could think of was a line from Bill Cosby's tonsillectomy routine where he is promised all the ice-cream he can eat after he has his tonsils out. "We're gonna have ICE-CREAM!" Then the pain is so great after the operation, he doesn't even want to eat the ice-cream. So every time she came up excitedly proclaiming "Another good one", I would say, "We're gonna have ice-cream!" Knowing full well the excited smiles would soon be replaced with bewildered agony. We just don't know what we don't know.