Second Things First
Recently we added a new baby to the family and the boys got to meet their first sister. Birth is one of the everyday miracles we overlook but it’s astounding to think that between 12:07:59 and 12:08 p.m. an entirely new human began sharing the air with us. A lot can change in a second.
It took 12 seconds for our new baby to make her first cry (I checked the medical notes). The cord was wrapped around her several times and sometimes it just takes a few seconds for a baby to greet the world. Those are long seconds.
Seven hundred and twenty seconds later I was holding my first daughter. Seven hundred and twenty seems like a big number, but it’s less than half an hour. Only 12 minutes.
Fast forward one million seconds and that gets us to today. Our daughter is now 12 days old. Twelve days isn’t many, but a million is a large number. And maybe the seconds do a better job revealing secrets than days do.
Every second counts. It’s a tautology (it’s not like you can skip a second) but the play on the word counts (as in “is meaningful”) is what the saying turns on. And it took on new meaning shortly after our daughter was born.
Due to a fever and a viral meningitis diagnosis, we ended up spending two nights with her in the pediatric ICU. Turns out this is a good way to cause you to re-evaluate time. For one, the hospital functions on its own timeline. As best as I can tell, inside the hospital the day is broken up into two even halves and all time references are relative to that division.
If the nurse says the hospitalist will be in soon, glance at the clock and know if it’s before noon (even five hours before noon) “soon” means anytime before noon, even 11:59 a.m.. If you’re told the ultrasound will be later and it’s 8 a.m., it will be in the second half of the day some time before midnight.
As particular as the hospital is about specific weights, measurements, dosages, and vitals checks, the hospital is very broad with its relative time statements (soon, later, today, a day or two, etc). Which causes you (or at least me) to be extra preoccupied with each increment of time.
I spent many seconds holding our daughter through the night. The room had an analog clock on the wall right in front of me that ticked off the seconds. One second I was holding her and literally the next second, she abruptly grabbed onto my shirt and was holding on to me. In just one little movement in one little second, I knew her better and she had a much deeper hold on me than one would think possible in just a second.
But those seconds add up.
My wife was 41 weeks pregnant at delivery, so our daughter had already lived almost 25 million seconds (24,796,800 to be exact). Mom’s have a special bond with their children in several different ways, but surely being 25 million times more acquainted than anyone else is one of the reasons.
No one would choose to have their newborn in the ICU, but it created a circumstance for me to get to know her in a way, second by second, that wouldn’t have happened if we were at home. Thankfully, she has fully recovered and is a healthy and happy newborn.
I’ve been alive well beyond a billion seconds and there are a few things I can say for sure. 1) No two seconds are the same. 2) All seconds are not equal. 3) The sum of those seconds, whether it’s 12, 720, a million, or three billion, is a poor evaluation of their worth.