Julian Hice Horvath

There's pretty much one day out of the year that you can guarantee I'll be hung over. It's not the day after Fourth of July or New Years or even my birthday. Heck, I've been known to take it easy now and again. No, the one day where it's absolutely assured that Chris Horvath will be desperately seeking the hair of the dog that bit him, is the day that follows the famous House of Prime Rib Night.

For those not hip to the scene, House of Prime Rib Night is the annual event where my good friends Blake and Jon and I go for a pre-Christmas dinner at the, aptly named, House of Prime Rib restaurant in San Francisco. We've been doing it every December for a whopping 14 years now. I think that's pretty good tradition for such young lads as ourselves.

Basically, the night consists of getting all dressed up in suits and indulging in a good ol' fashioned steak while washing it down with several bottles of fine wine. All day long, before and after the meal, we hit a bunch of fancy bars and pretend we're a lot swankier than we really are. A very Dionysian experinece, if I may say so.

For those keeping score, my intake last Tuesday consisted of (in order):

- 2 glasses of French Rhone wine
- 1 pint of oatmeal stout
- 1 Manhattan (sweet vermouth and bourbon)
- 1 bottle of Anchor Steam beer
- 2 glasses of Duckhorn Vineyards cabernet
- 2 glasses of Grgich Hills cabernet
- 1 glass of Royal Tokay dessert wine (my favorite)
- 1 glass of Glenfiddich 10-Year scotch
- 1 pint of Madredeus belgian ale
- 1 bottle Samuel Adams lager

Combine that with a bunch of cheap cigars and an end-of-the-night, multi-hour, undefeated run at Street Fighter 2 until the wee hours and you begin to get an idea of how I felt waking up on Wednesday morning... er... afternoon.

Why am I telling you all this? Well, because it was this particular day that my son decided he wanted to check himself into the world. Which is fine by me, except that I wasn't quite ready for it. He was, after all, fifteen days early. And I was, you know, quite beat.

Birth is quite a laborious experience; hence the term- labor. Yeah I know, not so much for me as much as for Erika. But you need to understand that for the last nine months everyone I know that's been through the experience themselves has decided to regale me with their horrific tales of 36-hour births and adamant pledges of "never again." The birthing industry doesn't help either as it seems their only goal is to scare the bejesus out of soon-to-be parents in order to get them to cough up more cash.

In sharp contrast to all that, Erika wanted a completely natural birth with no medication or pain-killers whatsoever. She felt that if women could do it that way for the previous ten thousand years then there's no reason she couldn't as well. Especially since medications only result in increasing the chances of something else going wrong later. Apparently a whopping 30% of all births today are performed via C-Section.

In order to help her achieve her goal we hired a doula and attended a birthing class. This was an extremely important event in her life and she wanted it to be a great experience. The pressure was on. I even had Blake schedule the House of Prime Rib night a week earlier than normal in order to avoid any possible overlap. A lot of good that did.

So here I find myself Wednesday afternoon crawling up to Piedmont Ave for some coffee and a quesadilla when Erika calls to tell me that her water had broken. She then promptly got off the phone. Now I knew that water breaking had something to do with birth, but I wasn't sure exactly what it meant. Was he coming now? Or could this just mean he's getting ready and he might arrive in the next week or so? I called Emily, our doula, and she told me that he is, in fact, coming now. Yikes.

We quickly went to the doctor's office. She checked Erika out and then sent her home. She told us to head to the hospital when her contractions reached a certain frequency. I actually went to work that night while Erika began her labor. The doctor had instructed her just to go to sleep anyway and I was already having anxiety about private school tuition so I decided I better go make some money.

At midnight we checked into Alta Bates hospital and soon after things began rolling.

I helped out through the whole process, even holding Erika's legs and head up as she pushed. I saw Julian's head slowly poke out into the world. It was thrilling but I began to get quite nervous about the fact that his hair was dark brown and not blond. Did they switch the embryos? They totally could have. I had been thinking about that possibility ever since the pregnancy began. What if this isn't my kid? What am I gonna do?

By the time they finally pulled him out I had worked myself into such a tizzy that when I stared at his purple and black body covered in white gunk and blood and looking like he was an extra from the Star Wars Cantina scene, I was quite positive that he was definitely not my child.

But then they cleaned him up and put him on my lap and I pondered him more closely and decided that he was so darn cute that I was gonna keep him anyway. That's when I pulled out my phone and took his first picture which I promptly sent out to friends and family.

In the end, everything worked out perfectly. Erika had the completely natural birth that she wanted and Julian is as healthy as can be. The hospital staff even commented that my hang-over was advantageous because it kept me cool, calm and collected throughout (little did they know that I'm an ace pizza driver and that I'm always like that.)

We stayed in the hospital until Saturday and friends and family members came by and visited.  Towards the end of the night on Thursday we pulled out his zeroest birthday cake and celebrated his literal birth day.

Now Julian's home with us and life couldn't be more fun. There's no better feeling in the world then having the little guy sleep on my chest and wrap his arms around me like he's giving me a big hug. Even his crying is all worth it for that wonderful moment when you can get him to feel safe and stop. And watching him occasionally open his eyes and take in the world is indescribable.

As I sit here now and write this, I look at him on my lap and think about what a long, arduous journey it was to get here. About this time last year I was frantically scouring the internet trying to learn anything I could about my recently discovered medical condition and wondering if I would ever be able to have my own children. With financial thanks to my mom and grandparents and some amazing technology I truly feel like one lucky guy.

Anyway, ya'll should come by and see him. He loves visitors and he's pretty mellow most of the time. He only woke up twice last night and both Erika and I have been getting decent sleep. If you're interested you can check back here for more pictures in a photo album I'll create and also stop by Erika's site for her take on the whole deal.

Welcome to the world, Julian.