Book

So little has been written by men about mothers and babies, about the experience of birth and becoming a father. It is a welcome treat to read something that can nourish us at such a deep level with rich food for thought.”

Suzanne Arms, author of Immaculate Deception I & 2; A Season to be Born; A Handful of Hope; and Breastfeeding.

Summary:
To Wait for an Angel is a warm and touching story written from a father’s perspective, depicting how a tiny new soul is finally ushered into the world after 42 hours of labor, and in the process imparting to her parents a number of valuable lessons. It is an intimate account—part entertainment, part education—about childbirth, which demonstrates that our greatest lessons are often contained in difficult experiences. Parents, prospective parents, birth educators, women’s organizations, nurses, physicians and other health care professionals, will fall in love with this simple romantic love story about the wonder of bringing a new life in the world.

How “To Wait for an Angel” came about:
When I was 12 years old I remember thinking how, when I grew up, I wanted a large family, at least a wife and five children. These thoughts permeated my consciousness probably because the family I grew up in did not feel “close-nit.” So, as a child, I thought when I became an adult, I would create the family I always wanted.

But the dreams of children often go unrealized, for years later when I was married, and after six years of my wife and I trying to conceive, as well as many visits to fertility specialists, we were told I probably couldn’t father a child because of some esoteric medical condition. It was news that challenged me to change what had been a large focus of my life.

After a divorce, I met my second wife some years later. It turned out that, because of a serious case of endometriosis, she too couldn’t have children. So, we seemed a perfect fit, neither of us expecting ever to have children. For both of us the dream was forgotten.

And then it happened, totally unexplained, she (we) became pregnant and had the baby we thought we could never have.

My wife was close to forty, and I forty-six, when our daughter was born. She truly was an unexpected blessing that indeed changed our lives forever and connected my wife and I in a way I never could have imagined. Part of the reason for that connection was not just the fact that we had actually managed to get pregnant, but it was the way in which our daughter was born, the home-birth, the hours of challenging labor, and finally the crash Caesarean at a local hospital. Whatever could go wrong in a labor did go wrong, but the final outcome went “very right” because our daughter was born perfect and healthy, with an Abgar of 10 and a penchant for sleeping through the night (at least from midnight to 6 am) practically from the first day we brought her home from the hospital.

I was so taken by the birth of a daughter I thought I could never have, so filled with emotion and wondrous gratitude for having been able to father a child, I decided to write a journal explaining how this all came about and present it to my daughter on her 18th birthday, or when she herself married and became pregnant. So the day after she came home from the hospital I sat down and began to pen the entire story surrounding her birth, from when her Mom and I first met, through the entire 47 hours of labor, to the maternity ward at the hospital, and finally to the operating room where she finally entered the world.

The manuscript was completed in three days, all 200 pages or so. I sat and wrote around the clock, never left my computer except to eat and sleep. It was only when I was completely finished, that I went back and began to edit what I had written. That process took a few weeks. When I finally showed it to my wife, who was an avid reader, she told me it was good enough to publish. The thought of publishing such a personal memoir was not the reason for writing it, so at first I rejected the idea. But then my wife showed it to our midwife and from there it was sent to other notable women involved with the natural childbirth movement, and their comments seemed to convince me that the story had merit and perhaps would help others understand the birth process, especially men, for I was told that very little was written about the birth experience by men.

And so, “To Wait for an Angel” was born.
But for some reason, I resisted publishing the manuscript for many years. I guess inwardly I unconsciously believed that it was too personal to “put out there.” Perhaps the time was not right to have it published back then, and seventeen years had to pass before I finally felt ready to release it to the world.

And so, I do hope all who ready my journal will find meaning and value in the story, and be touched by the intimate account in a way that will bring not only joyful understanding, but even healing in their hearts around any unresolved issues they may have concerning a birth event that occurred in their own lives that perhaps, like us, hadn’t gone as expected.

Thank you all for taking the time to read “To Wait for an Angel.” And please, should you be so moved, share your thoughts and feeling on our website for others, I am sure, will find value in what you have to say.

William Thomas Sette