THE DESTINATION BIRTH

In this remembrance, a man and his wife travel from New York to Montana for a wedding, where their firstborn child is delivered unexpectedly.

In 2022, when Bisset’s spouse, Lauren, was 34 weeks pregnant, they were assured by doctors that they could safely travel to a close friend’s wedding in Paradise Valley, Montana. Indeed, they were excited to embark upon a last adventure before the baby came. After some Montana hiking and a fun-filled wedding celebration, they were expecting to head home to New York City the next day. However, at 6:52 a.m. that morning, Lauren’s water broke; they had no car, were far from a hospital with a neonatal care nursery, and they were 2,157 miles away from home. The couple suddenly had to adapt to a different birth plan and navigate the complications of preterm delivery. They later had to adjust to living temporarily in Bozeman while balancing the care and demands of a newborn and Lauren’s recovery from a cesarean section. Bisset’s engaging narrative offers an offbeat combination of a parenting memoir and travel diary. It provides a firsthand account of a father’s experience of unplanned delivery, while also providing fine descriptions of Montana’s landscape, as when Bisset writes of a pre-dawn run: “As I crested the hill, a whole herd of elk was there crossing the road in the pre-dawn light. I watched it all at a safe distance as the bucks and cows led their calves to the next pasture.” The prose is brisk and informal throughout, while also encouraging expecting and new parents to seek out the support of others, as having a newborn is no easy feat. Indeed, the author’s descriptions of the emotional connections they made—with hospital nurses, with friends of friends who cooked for them—are appealingly hopeful. Overall, the book will be an especially good fit for fathers and partners who aren’t delivering, but who are encountering birth and parenthood for the first time.

An upbeat birth and childcare memoir from a father’s perspective.