Best Day of My Life (Jeremy's thoughts and feelings on March 3rd)

The best day of my life began on March 3rd at 4AM. Heather’s water broke while we slept. Heather and I were both very excited, yet very calm as well. I quickly assessed how much time we had and made a mental checklist of all we had to do. Many items trivial, but we had time. Heather took a shower while I started to work through my mental checklist. Dogs taken out to pee, check! Load our bags, check! Call in to work, check! Take out trash, Do remaining dishes, straighten up living room, check, check check! Take my shower, warm up car, and put the dogs up for the day, check, check check! We are now on our way to the hospital. We waited and notified immediate family members as they got ready for work. We arrived at the hospital around 5AM and I will spare everyone the details from there, but Heather did a fantastic job and I am so proud of her. The labor and delivery went as I had expected. At 2:11PM Bentley Ryan Marks was born weighing 8lbs 9.5ozs and measuring 20 inches long. No crazy delivery stories and baby and momma are both given clean bills of health. The doctor even asked us to bring more babies their way since Bentley was so cooperative to be born on his due date during normal business hours.

What a great day! Well far beyond great! The best day of my life! Had I thought about it before… sure, why wouldn’t this become the best day of my life? But what about my previous best day ever? That is a question I had never considered nor could I really come up with any specific day to fit this. Maybe this is because nothing has ever been this significant in my life to cause such a high level of emotion. Sure, I’m extremely satisfied with my life and have had plenty of milestone events. However, March 3rd 2011 was unlike anything I have ever experienced before. To say it was monumental is an understatement. I get so choked up about so many of the events of this day and what the future holds for my family. I normally consider my self to be emotionally very stable, almost to a fault. I rarely express strong emotions which can often give me the appearance of being insincere, unconcerned, indifferent, etc. My emotions today were just completely off the Richter scale. This was an excellent surprise for me as I had concerns of how I may feel or react. Obviously, I have anxiously waited for this day, but was unsure how I may act or feel at the time. Often it takes me days or weeks to analyze my feelings and really understand the significance of many events. Some of this may be my logical nature and attempt to gather all data and facts prior to forming opinions. The sight of my child was a wild exception to my normal logical nature and little emotion. I was instantly overcome with something so wonderful and profound that I don’t think the English language has any word that even comes close to capturing the full magnitude of emotion. Certainly words like happiness, love, blessed, excitement, and pride are some of these emotions, but what I felt was far more powerful than any of those words can capture.

My logical systematic way of thinking had me analyzing what exactly was going through my mind and why did I feel the way I did? Am I overcome by the significance change this means for me? This is certainly a “game changer” while other major milestones leave your life fairly unchanged, such as my wedding. While this was a great and significant day it did not really change any day to day aspect of my life. Is it the future and the memories that Bentley will enrich both Heather and my life with? Is it the ability to raise a child and teach my life lessons to the next generation? Maybe it is some animalistic need to reproduce, but that certainly isn’t it because Heather is such a strong component of these feelings. Ultimately, it is none of these reasons and it is nothing I can put my finger on or logically reproduce. The emotions and feelings were instant. My mind did not contemplate any other thoughts, but was just instantly sweep away with amazing feelings far beyond any joy or happiness I have previously experienced. The day went very quick and is still almost surreal or dreamlike, but I will definitely have some very strong lasting memories that I will never forget. Before today I didn’t think I would have such powerful feelings right away. I was very excited about all the first’s in Bentley’s life. Christmas’s, Birthday’s, school, little league, hunting, etc. No wonder when all these milestones come and go everyone always says “seems like just yesterday you were born”. My memories from today are so strong it will always feel like “just yesterday” to me. Ultimately, I will drop my search for a logical or rational answer to these feelings and chalk it up to that unique feeling of becoming a dad and that very special bond Heather and I now have. For now I have several days to bask in the glow of my new family before I head back to work and have to come down from cloud 9.