My only bigatin son, technically, is a lightweight.

Even from her spot at the operating table, her mind and vision still cloudy with heavy anesthetic, my wife Jo could make out that Deuce was small.

The little guy came into the world at a little over five pounds. For context, eight and a half years ago, his older sister, Isay, was born at close to seven pounds. But you didn’t need to know that to understand Deuce was on the smaller side. Physically, he did look a tad undersized.

But boy could the little guy make you hold your breath—while he held his.

But then, he finally cried. I did too. And I was initially surprised at how much more freely the tears fell than they did when Isay was born.

After all, I had always wanted a daughter and when we got that in 2015, I thought that I would live out my life exclusively as a girl dad.

From that time until about early last year, I never thought I would be a father for a second time. My wife and I didn’t think that we’d be parents for a second time. It was Isay who kept praying for a sibling since she turned four.

But when I held Deuce in my arms for the first time, I understood where the tears were coming from.

Not smooth sailing

Deuce was not a smooth-sailing pregnancy. Okay, let’s get one thing clear: This isn’t some story about overcoming a life-threatening experience. Some parents went through more harrowing experiences than we did. It’s just that at some point during her term, my wife was diagnosed with gestational diabetes. That meant we needed to proceed with the pregnancy with extra caution.

Diet. Medication. My wife did everything possible to make sure the diagnosis wouldn’t affect Deuce. There are many ways gestational diabetes could affect babies. For one, the baby could grow too big too fast, causing an early birth and underdeveloped lungs. Hypoglycemia is also a possibility.

So off the bat, there was a conscious effort to keep Deuce’s size in check. The goal was to get mother and son as close to the Jan. 27 due date as possible. Any serious misstep could land Deuce in the neonatal intensive care unit.

As December approached, however, there was a slight wrinkle in my wife’s efforts to manage her diabetes: During a routine checkup, her sonogram revealed that her amniotic fluids went on a precipitous drop, prompting her OB to drag her out of her diet and get her to eat and drink as much as she could.

Within a few days, the fluid levels rebounded. But by the first week of January, new problems surfaced. Jo began having frequent contractions. We were still three weeks off the due date and the contractions were not exactly comfortably spaced apart. In fact, during checkup, the possibility of giving birth then was raised.

But her OB, the wonderful Dr. Catherine Donato, refused. She was steadfast in her goal of giving Deuce enough time to build up his lungs and keeping him away from NICU. She gave my wife medication to calm the contractions and another one to supplement Deuce’s lung development—medication so rare, we needed to search in Cebu and Nueva Ecija for it.

That last checkup was on the 11th. That weekend, things had calmed down.

On Sunday evening, we drove around to look for pan de sal. We had ice cream for dessert. We went to bed at 10 p.m.

At 4 a.m. on Monday, Jo’s water broke.

We were off to the hospital. Since we are a household of three, that meant Isay had to tag along and miss school. Jo was wheeled into the delivery room at around 6 a.m.

We were prepared to camp out for a long stay just in case Deuce would develop complications—we brought food, toiletries, vitamins, books and everything else.

I scrubbed into the delivery room and parked myself on a stool beside the operating table and watched as Doc Cathy worked to deliver Deuce.

During checkups, Doc Cathy comes across as a gentle yet frank woman with a ready smile. In the OR, she transforms into a different person, someone who commands her team with the firm authority and efficiency of an army general.

At 7:49 a.m., she finally had Deuce out.

Roar

I waited for Deuce to bawl. But for some reason, time seemed to slow down. After all those days worrying about Deuce’s health, my anxiety started growing. Had something gone wrong? It felt like hours passed in between the time Doc Cathy said she had Deuce and when Deuce finally cried.

When I heard my son roar, there was a wave of love and relief that washed over me. And tears.

I looked at the time. It was still 7:49. My mind was playing tricks on me.

After I cut the cord and the obligatory photos were snapped, reality set in. There was still a lot to be anxious about. Deuce was whisked to the immediate care unit so they could check his blood sugar. NICU wasn’t out of the equation just yet.

Thankfully, Deuce passed first screening. He had more to go. Mother and child were wheeled into our room at 1:11 in the afternoon and Isay and Deuce finally met.

As it turned out, the reason my wife’s water bag broke early was that the umbilical cord had looped around Deuce’s neck. Incidents like this are generally harmless, but it seemed like Deuce was uncomfortable enough to get stressed and send a signal that he would rather enter the world soon, thank you very much.

Little bugger must have kicked the water bag, I joked.

There was more monitoring that followed. And monitoring glucose levels meant drawing blood from the baby by lancing the sole of his foot with a sterile needle. When a baby cries at the pain of his sole being jabbed, the sound is closer to a parent’s soul being ripped apart. Nurses performed the test thrice. To me, it seemed like they turned Deuce’s heel into a pin cushion.

At one point, Deuce’s blood sugar had dropped to low normal levels, so a pediatrician advised Jo to breastfeed Deuce every two hours to jack up his glucose numbers. But from 7:40 p.m. on Tuesday to 11:30 p.m., Deuce refused to feed. Jo tried every trick to nurse Deuce, but he wouldn’t have any of it. If the little guy wouldn’t feed soon, that would mean more needle jabs to test his sugar levels.

Free to go

Close to midnight, he began latching. Early in the morning, he was tested and his glucose levels jumped five points up. Still on the low normal side, but it was trending upward. We were free to go. We could finally drive Deuce home.

On our last night at the hospital, I looked back at everything that had happened and wondered how prepared I would be for everything yet to come.

There was still the risk of Deuce developing Type 2 diabetes or obesity later in life. There was still the need to help the little boy rebound size-wise. So many checkups lay ahead. And then there’s growing up.

In our first moment of crisis, it took an incredible amount of support to get us through—Deuce’s literal Day Ones.

Doc Cathy, probably the best OB in the country today. She quarterbacked us through two pregnancies and has delivered two wonderful, perfect babies for us. My wife did all the heavy lifting during the pregnancy, like the star player of a basketball team who carries most of the scoring load. Doc Cathy, however, ran the plays. Need an OB? Look her up and thank me later.

Her OR team was simply amazing as well. The nurses who manned the St. Therese maternity wing of Our Lady of Lourdes hospital were always ready for Deuce’s needs.

Then there was family. My in-laws, Edwin and Cecilia Padiernos, drove all the way from Gapan, Nueva Ecija, to help us. My mother-in-law stayed with us for two nights at the hospital and for a week at our home to help us with Deuce. My family sent messages and prayers.

Isay was simply incredible. She kept up with Deuce’s hours for an entire week—and still had energy for school. At the start, having been the only child in our household for so long, she would over-worry whenever Deuce cried. She always thought that whenever babies cried, something had to be terribly wrong. She would sing lullabies and talk to Deuce frequently, assuring him everything was going to be okay.

It was an assurance we all needed.

Eight years later, we are parents again. I’m a father again. For the first time in her life, Isay is an ate.

I closed my eyes and imagined Isay whispering to Deuce, “It’s okay, don’t be scared; everything will be alright.” Only in my mind, she was whispering to me.

That was all the assurance I needed.

I opened my eyes, looked up and smiled. Behind the cool glowing blue letters that spelled out the hospital’s name, I saw the moon. And it was smiling back at me.

The author is the Philippine Daily Inquirer’s Sports Editor and now a dad of two.