Personal Narrative: My First Child

It was a chilling Thursday night in March of 2010. My wife Noemi was nine months pregnant at the time and started feeling contractions around midnight. I always thought this was the time to panic and rush to the hospital as fast as we can but that's only in the movies. To me, the day of the birth of my first child all happened in slow motion. It was like the universe wanted me to remember this day for the rest of my life. As I look back at this day I can’t but cherish every moment for it had a profound impact on how I saw life from that day forward. Children are a gift and can become our most valuable asset but also can challenge us in many new ways. Although having a child can be a blessing it also can be quite challenging. Emotions were swarming my mind intensely while at the hospital waiting for the arrival of my first child. We knew that we were having a baby girl so the gender was not going to be a surprise. I remember being filled with so many different emotions. “Am I ready to be a father”, I thought to myself. It was like the ascension of a rollercoaster ride inching its way to the top. The worries of all the difficulties life can bring rasing a child was similar to thinking what if this ride safety bar doesn’t hold. The enormous responsibility of taking care of a newborn was very frightening. However it

By this time we were waiting for hours so I was feeling exhausted. I had to leave the room for a minute while they gave her drugs for the pain. At first, my wife tried to give a natural birth but ended up having a c section. That is when they cut the lower portion of the belly and remove the baby. I was holding my wife’s hand as they were doing the operation. At this moment I was ecstatic. I could not wait to see my daughter for the first time. With the camcorder in hand, I waited to hear her first cry in addition to capturing the