Once the receptionist got my wife checked in, she told us she’d walk us down to triage.

Now, I’ve never been in a triage unit before. The only experience I have with triage is what I’ve seen on TV. Typically, there’s been a school bus accident and the entire high school marching band has been seriously injured which overwhelms the hospital’s resources and staff. So the whole band is in the triage unit and it’s causing mass pandemonium. There’s blood everywhere, the students are screaming in pain, and the head doctor is yelling at her residents to get more bandages; “We’re out of bandages!” One of the kids almost dies but makes it in the end thanks to the rockstar surgeon. The tuba player forges a special friendship with a rookie doctor and confesses that he has a crush on one of the cheerleaders. A life lesson is learned.

None of that happened on this particular morning.

My wife and I found the triage unit to be a rather chaos-free environment, but I was still feeling a bit anxious. It seemed like a matter of principle that we should be expecting bad news since we were in triage. When the doctor arrived, he introduced himself and explained that he was going to “make sure” that Kari was “actually in labor.” I was a little insulted by this. My wife was bent over, wincing in pain, and sucking air because a small human was trying to burst forth from her body. I didn’t know what other evidence this guy needed, but I decided to trust his judgement.

Moments later, the doctor confirmed that my wife was - in fact - in labor and we were quickly moved to a labor and delivery room. Things were about to get REAL.