The Worst and Best Day

NOTHING IS GOING TO HAPPEN FOR AT LEAST THE NEXT 90 minutes,” Dr. Chang says.

I am skeptical of this declaration from the woman who is helping my wife bring our son into the world for two reasons. First, my knowledge of delivering a baby is equivalent to my understanding of nuclear physics. Lexi is about to get an epidural, which I assume means the baby may immediately shoot out like a cannonball. The second — and primary — reason is that a lot that wasn’t supposed to happen has happened in the past 26 hours.

Yesterday, a routine checkup for my 31-weekspregnant wife turned into an urgent trip to OB triage at Northwestern Medicine. She had dangerously high blood pressure and severe preeclampsia, which, if left untreated, can lead to serious complications like placental abruption, seizures, and damage to basically every organ in a woman’s body. Last night, what felt like a soccer team of medical professionals pumped her full of magnesium, reviewed her lab results, and listened to the of a blood pressure machine every 15 minutes. The only solution to make sure that she and Walter — we already picked out his name — are OK is to deliver him 59 days ahead of schedule. To help us digest that news, a doctor from the neonatal intensive care unit tried to reassure us by sharing all