“Happy tear,” I thought was a terminology that could only exist in books and movies until the day I got to experience the same myself. It was the day our son was born. I was only 27 years old then, and my wife was only 25. We were so young and inexperienced in life that we didn’t know how big a day we were up against the night before my beloved wife went into labor the next morning.
We started from our house to the hospital when we realized the labor was beginning. In the hospital, I held onto her hands and sat beside her bed. These are special moments when a husband gets a chance to show his wife the care and affection he has for her. Would I miss that for the world? No way.
My mother now reached the hospital. She met my wife and checked how well she was doing. Seeing my wife making slightly painful noises, my mother told her that this pain was nothing compared to the pain she would experience in some time. My mother is a person who generally exaggerates even the little things in daily life. My wife therefore totally ignored what my mother said. That is the problem when you exaggerate everything.
It is like that childhood story of a boy who found joy in fooling his village people, where he often screamed out, cried and called for their help to save him from the tiger which was attacking him, and when the villagers came running to save him from the tiger, he would laugh at them for falling for his prank. One fine day this boy genuinely calls for help to save him from the attacking tiger, but the villagers don’t turn up because they thought its a prank.
Gradually the dawn broke, and my wife sadly realized my mother wasn’t exaggerating this time. The pain was getting more intense that she was now screaming out loud, and she didn’t even turn to look at my face when walking into the labor room. She seemingly was in a state where she would have punched anyone in the face who went near her. We had to wait outside the room from then on.
It was the toughest wait of my life. I remained at the doors for hours, waiting for the doctor to come out and share the good news. We didn’t expect the labor phase to be over 13 hours long. The tension and pressure in my head worrying about my wife’s and baby’s well being had reached the pinnacle. That’s when the doctor came out. She informed us that both the mother and child were doing fine. I was so happy that the tears broke, and I could not control it. I kept crying for five to ten minutes. My mother kept asking, “Why are you crying? She and the kid are doing fine. Why are you crying?” That was the pressure getting released.
What a moment!