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By Root 262 0

hands squeezing the handle on the car seat as if loosening my grip meant that my daughter would somehow disappear from my world. My eyes adjusted to the sunlight and I looked up at the sky. I pulled the shade of the car seat over Madeline, knowing that Liz would have been concerned about the sun hitting our baby’s bright white skin for the first time. I turned around, said good-bye to the nurse, and walked toward my car to secure Madeline into it for the first time. I was worried that I had installed it incorrectly, so I gave the car seat a few gentle wiggles before feeling fully satisfied that I’d successfully gotten the thing in, and went around to the driver’s side. Dad and Anya would follow us home in their own cars.

This day had come much more quickly than I had anticipated. Even though I spent a ton of time learning how to feed, burp, change, and even perform CPR on Madeline, I didn’t even feel close to ready to bring her home. Since the day she had been born, I’d been told that Maddy might end up staying in the hospital until her actual due date—seven weeks later. Now she was coming home after only fourteen days, barely bigger than she’d been at birth: just over four pounds.

Sure, I was looking forward to bringing her home with me and getting her out of the hospital, but I needed more time to get ready for her arrival. When the NICU doctor told me that she was being discharged, I presented the hospital staff with every excuse I could think of to delay the inevitable.

She doesn’t have any diapers at home.

I don’t have a car seat for her.

My dad is painting my house.

I don’t have any smoke detectors in the house.

Are you sure she’s ready?

Are you sure I’m ready?

These weren’t actually excuses; they were truths. Well, the ones about the car seat and the smoke detector weren’t really true, but I thought they were the best shot I had at buying a few more days.

“All new parents have doubts,” one of the NICU nurses reassured me, which of course, I knew. But my doubts were a little more pronounced than most. The nurse knew about Liz’s death, but she failed to realize that I wasn’t emotionally stable enough to grieve for my wife and take care of our newborn. Still, she insisted that Madeline would be going home with me that day.

I took my appeal to the NICU doctor on call. “There’s no medically necessary reason to keep her here,” he explained. “The sooner you can get her home, the better. The most dangerous place for a baby is in the hospital, but if you really think you need it, I can buy you one more day.”

The most dangerous place for a baby is in the hospital? I could think of several places that had to be more dangerous than a hospital: a lion’s den, Skid Row, the middle of the 110 freeway, and my not-yet-baby-proofed house.

I left the jokes in my head, figuring that this was not the time to demonstrate that I still had a sense of humor. I had hoped that by the time Madeline was ready to come home I would have the confidence and knowledge to deal with everything that came along with her. Two weeks in the hospital with the aid of doctors and nurses had taught me a lot, but I knew that one more day wasn’t going to give me all of the answers. Hell, one more year wasn’t going to get me where I hoped I’d be. When Liz was alive, I never doubted the fact that I’d be a great dad with her help. But after she died, I started to worry that I was going to fail her and our baby. I was convinced that I didn’t have any sort of inborn abilities to raise a child successfully.

And apparently, I wasn’t the only one who thought so. While my family and friends seemed confident that I was up to the challenge, encouraging me as if simply telling me I’d do well with Madeline meant that I actually would, others were not so sure. A few days after Liz died, a woman saw my mom crying outside the window of the NICU.

“Is your baby okay?” she asked.

“Oh, that’s my granddaughter,” said my mom. “She’s doing great.”

My mom—always one to strike up conversations with strangers—volunteered the entire story. When she