A Baby Story

Our little guy has arrived. There is a ton to write about, but while Mom and son enjoy a post feeding nap, let me run down our Monday.

• Friday - Appointment. 3.5cm dilated, 80% effaced (the same way she's been since the beginning of April. Midwife says, "I'd be surprised if you don't deliver this weekend, but don't quote me on it." Thus, I'm quoting her on it.
  
• Saturday - Due date. No baby.
• Sunday - Due date + 1. No baby.
  
• Monday - Due date + 2.
  
• 2:45: Wife has Non-stress test. Hooked up to machine that measures contractions and heart rate of child. She had 8 very mild contractions in 34 minutes.
  
• 3:20. Test complete. Everything looks good. We make another appt for Thursday.
• 3:40. Grocery shop. We spend some time in Aldi's. I mean, I think we spent $60. At Aldi. That takes time.
  
• 4:45. Arrive home (30 min from hospital), I put away groceries, wife uses bathroom.
• 5:00. Wife wonders if her water broke. Calls office.
  
• 5:45. Midwife on duty calls back and tells us to come in to hospital. En route, wife has first somewhat painful contractions.
  
• 6:20. Arrive at hospital, ask for room with bathtub in which to labor.
  Hooked up to monitors, contractions become more regular (4 min apart) and stronger. Her water has not broken.
  
• 8:30 Still considered outpatients, nurse checks wife, says she's 5-6cm dilated. At this point, we're in it to win it.
  
• 8:45. The nurse brings in a labor ball, and allows Nicole to get up and move around. Also, she's given a dose of pain relief via her IV.
  
• 9:00. Drugs make her loopy.
  
• 9:30. Midwife comes in, after helping deliver another baby. Asks if wife wants to get into labor tub, she says yes.
  

At this point, I should note that this tub is not intended for delivery. We did not deliver in this tub. She seemed to enjoy the tub, though. I think it helped take a little of the edge off of the contractions.

• 11:00. After two stints in tub, midwife suggests heading back to bed to check things out. At this point, contractions are virtually on top of one another.
  
• 11:10. Upon checking, midwife tells us that the dilation has increased to 9cm. With that, she's too far to receive an epidural. The midwife breaks the water and discovers meconium present. My son has already had a BM...while I'm proud, it's the first hurdle we've encountered.
  
• As we prepare to deliver, a pediatrician arrives to take care of potential problems presented by meconium.
  
• 11:46. After pushing through about 8 contractions, my wife gives birth to our son.
  
• After not hearing him cry while they suctioned out any meconium, we heard our son cry for the first time.
  

He was 8lbs 7.7ozs. A pretty good sized baby. Chubby cheeks and a fair amount of hair. Ten fingers, ten toes.

There's a lot to dissect here....so, over the next few entries, I'll focus on different parts of the labor and delivery.

Uh-oh...

Much like the teenage protagonist of a sitcom, I'm getting a zit at the worst possible time.

Kelly Kapowski gets the zit right before the big dance, and I get a zit right before my first child is born.


Such is life.

Birthing room idea

I need your opinion: playing this song and holding my son up like this when he's born.

a) Good idea
b) Awesome idea
c) Your wife will kill you...but that's one hell of an idea.



PS: I'm holding auditions for the part of Rafiki.

The countdown continues....

Still waiting on the lad to make the trip down the tunnel of love. I think my wife is singing Billy Ocean's "Get out of my dreams and into my car..." but she replaces "dreams" with womb and "car" with "arms." Maybe not. She hates Billy Ocean. Let's be honest, though, that song has a pretty bitchin' video...definitely worth a youtube trip.

Every noise my wife makes, a cough, a sneeze, a fart....I automatically panic and assume her water just broke.

As we near the end of the pre-natal portion, I've realized just how lucky we've been through all of this. We haven't hit too many bumps in the road. Aside from the naming rights, we haven't disagreed on much. Even on days she thinks she looks terrible, my wife is still looks gorgeous.

Rarely does she complain about being pregnant. It bugs us when people complain about being pregnant. Now, I've never been pregnant. I'm sure that it's a constant battle...being pleasant and pregnant. But, for every person that complains about wanting to get the pregnancy over with, there are probably ten women that would absolutely love to be pregnant, but can't. This makes me very sad.

As for what lies ahead, this song sums it up. I'm not sure where the video is from, but the song is sung by Melissa Manchester and Collin Raye.

Movie Recommendation

For our anniversary, my wife and I went to the movies. We're not really movie lovers....I think her favorite movie is Elf and mine is Major League. Not exactly Citizen Kane and The Godfather.

We saw Away We Go, with John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph. In short, it was the perfect movie for us to watch at that time in our life together.

Brief synopsis: Burt and Verona are pregnant. They travel the country, searching for a place to raise their child. Along the way, they interact with acquaintances, friends, and family, each with their own parenting styles.

For my wife and I, this really opened our minds to parenthood. At the time we watched the film, we were not pregnant....merely toying with the notion of trying to have a baby.

Here's a rundown of the parents Burt (which, by the way, is a name that I love) and Verona encounter on their trip:

1: Burt's parents, Jerry & Gloria (Jeff Daniels & Catherine O'Hara). Jerry and Gloria are planning to move to Antwerp (Belgium, not Ohio) for a few years, and wouldn't be around for the birth of their grandson. The elder Farlanders are decently selfish and self-absorbed.

2: Verona's old co-worker and her husband, Lily and Lowell (Allison Janney & Jim Gaffigan) in Phoenix. Lily and Lowell have two children. They seem to be miserable in their role as both parents and spouses. Lily might be sauced the entire time, and refers to her kids as fat and dumb. Lowell is a pathetic ball of lame hate, quietly voicing his distaste for, well, pretty much everyone.

3. Burt's cousin LN and her partner Rod (Maggie Gyllenhaal & Josh Hamilton) in Madison, Wisconsin. LN (Ellen, to you and me) and Rod are, for lack of a better term, new-age douches, worried about their energy and their spirit more than anything else. LN doesn't own a stroller, because, "I love my babies. Why would I want to push them away from me?" LN and Rod are very condescending toward people who do not share their own wacky beliefs.

4. Burt and Verona's friends Tom and Munch (Chris Messina & Melanie Lynskey) in Montreal, Quebec. Tom and Munch have several adopted children, and are incredible parents. WE find out later that Munch has had several miscarriages. Very heartbreaking, actually.

5. Burt's brother Courtney (Paul Schneider). Courtney, a single father, is terrified that his daughter will be permanently scarred because his wife walked out on him.



While it might seem as though Burt and Verona are perfect, and everyone around them is crazy, I see it differently. I see them as two people who want to do the absolute best for their child, but aren't sure what best is.

Eventually, Burt and Verona begin to make promises to one another, based on their interactions with the people they met on their trip:

Burt: Do you promise to let our daughter be fat or skinny or any weight at all? Because we want her to be happy, no matter what. Being obsessed with weight is just too cliché for our daughter.
Verona: Yes, I do. Do you promise, when she talks, you'll listen? Like, really listen, especially when she's scared? And that her fights will be your fights?
Burt: I do. And do you promise that if I die some embarrassing and boring death that you're gonna tell our daughter that her father was killed by Russian soldiers in this intense hand-to-hand combat in an attempt to save the lives of 850 Chechnyan orphans?
Verona: I do. Chechnyan orphans. I do. I do.

My wife and I see a lot of ourselves in Burt and Verona....a bit nervous, a bit scared, and a bit apprehensive. Luckily, though, as we look around us at other parents, we have fantastic role models. No LNs or Lilys in sight.

I think the quote that sums everything up about being a good parent, though, is from Tom, the father of the adopted kids...

It's all those good things you have in you. The love, the wisdom, the generosity, the selflessness, the patience. The patience! At 3 am when everyone's awake because Ibrahim is sick and he can't find the bathroom and he's just puked all over Katki's bed. When you blink, when you blink! And it's 5:30 and it's time to get up again and you know you're going to be tired all day, all week, all your fucking life. And you're thinking what happened to Greece? What happened to swimming naked off the coast of Greece? And you have to be willing to make the family out of whatever you have.

You might hate Away We Go if you watch it, but I hope that, if you do, you smile a little bit, laugh a little bit, but, most importantly, think about our role as a parent, or a future parent....or whatever your situation is.

Nursery

Despite what you hear, the dad really doesn't have to do much during the pregnancy. If you are thoughtful, attentive, and patient, you'll do fine. The mom does the work.

Just about the only tangible thing I could do was to redecorate our office into the nursery. While I'm no Bob Vila, I consider myself to be of sufficient handiness to complete this task.

It's hard to pick out a color that a baby will like. Do babies know colors? Can they tell the difference between lettuce and pistachio? Do they care? Do I care? (The answer to that last question: Only if my wife cares)

We had a friend of ours design some wall decals for us featuring the letters of the alphabet and children's book and TV characters. I stole this idea from Ken Jennings of Jeopardy! fame. Now, he had the talent to physically paint each character. For as much as I'm not Bob Vila, I'm even less of a Bob Ross.

All in all, I think it turned out rather nice. Charming, perhaps.

I enjoy receiving compliments about the nursery...it's a nice pat on the back.

More enjoyable? Seeing my smiling wife, 9 months pregnant, sitting in the rocking chair.

Most enjoyable? Well, that hasn't happened yet. But, eventually, I'll see my smiling (or exhausted) wife, sitting in the rocking chair, holding our son...in the nursery I redecorated.

Anticipation

Most monumental life moments come equipped with dates and times.

Graduation? Seniors count down the days left til they graduate...and the countdown seems to start during their sophomore year.
Your wedding? That date is set in stone about six seconds after you get engaged.

The arrival of the baby, though, simply happens. This is killing me.

Physically, we're all set. The nursery is done. The clothes are washed. The name has been selected (finally!).

Mentally, I'm not sure that we'll ever be totally prepared for that.


So, we wait.

The baby isn't due for another couple of weeks, yet, we're still on high alert.


We're ready....I think.

Tricks of the trade

Here's one trick that I've been working on. All parents are incredible with it.

I call it the Carlos Mencia.


Child is playing with an object that is not a toy...perhaps a remote, or a Sharpie, or the cat. Parent, in an attempt to stop child from playing with dangerous object, offers a second (incredibly lame) toy while taking the fun toy.

It's a lot like Comedy Central offering Mind of Mencia to fill the void left by Chappelle Show.

Car Seats

In order to be a certified car-seat installation checker, you have to sit through a four day training seminar.

Four days! That's half of Hanukkah, folks. And, for the gentiles, it's a day longer than it took Jesus to resurrect from the dead!

It's as long as the average NASCAR race.


Anything that takes four days to learn has to be important.

And, after trying to put that thing in the car alone, I gladly called up the health department for a little tutoring.

Thankfully, our unborn child now has a well-secured ride in the same back seat where he was conceived.

Okay...just crossed a line.

Also, I'm fibbing.

Go bag, Go!

We're getting really close to kickoff. Or, is it tip-off? Faceoff? First pitch?

The problem with the baby is that, unless you have a scheduled c-section, you don't have a countdown clock. We could be T-minus 4 weeks, or T-minus 4 minutes.

We're making our last-minute preparations, which includes packing our "go bags." I've been told that go bags are very than many other types of bags, including golf, grocery, douche, saddle, bean, rosin, and bowling.

In the go bag, (and by "go bag", I mean "go bags") you have to cram everything you own. This includes, but is not limited to:

toiletries, pillows, Mountain Dew, underwear, clothes, wiffle-ball bat, clothes for the baby, a hat for the baby, mittens for the baby, a pacifier for the baby, a pacifier for the mother, contact lists, That Thing You Do! on VHS, camera, video camera, batteries, memory cards, Flintstone vitamins, car seat, hard candy, several JeffJams/Jeffapalooza/Joestock mixed cassettes, streamers, cigarettes*, cigars**, urine samples, my wife...

Yeah.

So, I've resigned myself to being okay with forgetting something, so long as it's not the wife. She's the important part during all of this.

Right now, we have a suitcase packed for her, a duffel bag packed for me, nothing packed for the little guy, some snacks, cameras (not for the circumcision), and a carseat which is not properly installed.

Hopefully, T-minus 4 minutes is not the case.


*Cigarettes will be chain-smoked*** in the waiting room while I wear a hole in the floor from my nervous pacing back and forth, just like in the cartoons.

** Cigars will be passed out to everyone I meet, letting them know that I've had a baby, and that I'll soon be begging for reasons to get out of the house.

*** I don't smoke. Hospitals don't permit smoking on their property. Waiting room floors are pace-proof. My jolly ass will be coaching in the delivery room, not watching SpongeRobert SquareTrousers in the lobby.

Quick thought...

...we have a cat.

Would it be possible to litter-train our child?


I can picture it....in a few years, I'll be on the toilet reading an article in Sports Illustrated about how the Cleveland Cavaliers won their 4th consecutive NBA Championship, my son crouching in the litter box reading the hilarious adventures of the Timbertoes and Goofus & Gallant in Highlights.

Naming Rights

How the hell does this work?

Finding a name that we both love has proved to be the biggest challenge of the pregnancy. It's not that we can't find a name we both love...we can't find many names we both don't hate.

Now, hate is a strong word. I don't hate names. I merely have strong aversions to names based on three main reasons:

• I know and dislike a person (real or fictional) with that name.
• It sounds goofy
• My wife really loves it.
  

Wow....that's a bit harsh. But, I think it might be true. After having several of my absolute favorites mercilessly shot down, I figured I should go on the offensive.

We have a book which offers up 50,001 potential names for our child. Since we know we're having a boy, that leaves us roughly 25,000.5 names from which to choose.

We agree on one thing. We'll need to figure out a name soon.

My main test is this: When you say a name, what instrument in the school band to I picture a kid with that name playing? If the answer is "flute" or "clarinet," it is thrown out.

No offense to male flautists or clarinetists.

Everyone has their suggestions.

Parents offer up advice...."We just knew." "You'll know it when you see it." Really? We'll know it when we see it? I just read 25,000 and a half names. And of those, there are about 800 real names, and about 17,000 lame attempts to fill up a book. Page 288: Trampus (American) meaning Talkative.

Really.

__

It's not like a name is a big deal. It only lasts for eternity.

I think unborn children should have to read What to Expect When You're Expected. They'd probably be more prepared for birth.

Chapter One: Head first!

Chapter Two: Face down.

Chapter Three: Bundle up...it's cold out there. Also, don't forget the eye stuff in case your mom has gonhorrea!

Chapter Four: Circumcisions and you...what your buddies won't tell you.

Chapter Five: Boobs....it's what's for dinner.



I mean, this would be a good read, yes?