Good night

Thank you for reading this blog. After you read the post below about our crazy hospital experience, click over to my new blog if you are so inclined.

Sharing Rowan

Innings

Batting practice:

Grandma Jackie just happened to be in town Friday to see Ava, so we talked her into spending Saturday with us so we could run errands and go out to dinner.

We drove up to Jason and Jen's condo late afternoon so I could install the car seat in their heated garage. I forgot what a sweaty job it was and probably would've been better off in the single-digit Minnesota psycho-weather. Then we all chatted for awhile and at some point Julie said, "I've had like 28 Braxton Hicks contractions since we've been here, but it's nothing."

Then, like hobbits, we ate first dinner. Julie's blue cheese and onion omelet with potatoes came out, and her eyes spun into gleaming moons at first taste.


I ate a sandwich out of politeness. It was 5:30. As Julie painstakingly scraped the last bits from her plate, she complained of more meaningless contractions.

Back home before our 7:45 dinner reservations, I packed the suitcase and threw it in the car, mainly as an appeal to Murphy's Law since we were so in the mood for tapas and conversation with a couple we haven't seen in way too long. Pack the suitcase, feel like a neurotic idiot later--that was the idea.

We never made it to dinner. Julie began gritting her teeth during contractions. When she said they were bad enough that she wouldn't enjoy her food anyway, it was an epiphany, like God got on his P.A. system and said, "Attention dumbshits. This is it."

The game:

Sitting in the same false-alarm prenatal room we sat in last time, we complained about our wasted night. Then the nurse reported the cervix door was more than slightly ajar at four centimeters, and suddenly we were transferred to a birthing suite and realized we were there to stay. We weren't prepared for that.

The nurse said, "Julie, do you have a birthing plan that you've thought about?"

Julie's immediate and cheerful response: "Drugs and more drugs."

One room transfer and one potassium IV bag later, the epidural went much better than last time. The anesthesiologist was quiet and quick, not the long-winded psych patient posing as an anesthesiologist that we had with the Lyla labor. We began to relax a little. Julie's eyes looked weird, like they were dilating differently. I mentioned it to the nurse, who couldn't see what I was talking about. I felt like a tool.

Then I held Julie's water bottle so she could sip from it, and, like the quintessential delivery room husband, I managed to dribble it all over her face and pillow.

The epidural didn't take care of all the pain, and Julie was working pretty hard to manage it. At some point I affected my best coach voice and said, "Wow, I guess there's a reason they call it labor, huh."

"Fuck off," she replied, labor-speak for "I love you."

The 9th inning:

After her water broke, Julie pushed for 20 minutes. The head was halfway out by the time the resident got her gloves on.

At 3:50 AM, Rowan burst onto the scene.






Extra innings:

The flurry of immediate postpartum activities: cutting the cord, quick exam (Rowan scored 9 out of 10, missing a point, I think, for not being able to walk and talk), photos, more photos. The weigh-in. The young man screamed at us for quite a while for various perceived infractions, such as, you know, evicting him from his mother's womb. Then Julie fed him like a champion and all was forgiven. At some point I drove home to fetch Julie's toiletries, somehow left out of the previous night's haphazard packing session.

While I was gone, Julie mentioned that her right arm and hand were a bit numb. Then in the bathroom she noticed what I noticed after the epidural: the different pupils. And now a sagging right eyelid. I had seen the eyelid during the last 20 minutes of pushing, but I didn't say anything ("Push, honey! Hey, why is your eye fucked up?"), and now I wasn't in the room.

The nurse called in the resident, who called the anesthesiologist. No answers. Then they called in the attending. More confusion. Eventually the attending left to call a neurologist.

I walked in, toiletry bag in hand. Moments later the attending returned, sat down, and said, "Enjoy the calm of the next 30 seconds. After that, things will not be calm in here." I remember him saying CAT scan, MRI, EKG, blood clots, facial droop, stroke, and small window. I heard a hallway intercom say Code 99 and our room number. Then the 30 seconds were up and all hell broke loose.

People poured into the room. I stayed as close as I could to Julie's bed. Stickers all over her with wires attached, neurological tests with flashlights, another I.V.-type tube in her other arm so they could draw blood or give injections at will. I held my emotions in check and so did she, but when they wheeled her bed out of the room, I sobbed harder than ever before in my life.

Endgame:

Birthing suites are already big rooms as far as hospitals go, but they feel gargantuan with the bed and mother gone. A nurse helped me bathe Rowan. Then he slept more and I sat in the rocker, wrapped myself in blankets, and shivered.

An hour passed. I ignored all texts and calls from family.

In she rolled. Her eye looked better and she looked normal, but she had endured a battery of tests including 45 minutes in a full-body MRI machine. They gave her headphones and asked what kind of music she wanted to drown out the sounds. "Rock." She avoided hitting the panic button by sheer grit: she never even opened her eyes.

We resumed normal parenting activities. Occasionally a doctor would come in and offer his or her theory. It was like an episode of House, only the patient got better right away instead of worse. As the hours passed, every single test revealed nothing interesting whatsoever. Long story short (too late, I know), the prevailing theory is that somehow the epidural caused a temporary condition called Horner's Syndrome. The big clue was the irregular pupil dilation that I noticed right after the epidural, a non-postpartum symptom. And the eyelid drooping during labor: non-postpartum. The numbness later could've been anything. But the pupil, eye, and arm on the same side of the body, without immediately connecting the dots about when the symptoms first appeared--that's why everyone freaked out.

So we're good!


Sorry you had to read all that scary stuff, but imagine how we felt. But yeah: game over, and despite all the drama, everyone's fine and we still got a free baby out of the deal. And he's a great baby, too. Handsome as hell and all that. And now we're home. It's quite a life, isn't it?

Born

Rowan William Kirkham
7 pounds, 13 ounces
Born at 3:50 AM



All is well.

Doings

Julie will reach 40 decades, I mean weeks, of pregnancy tomorrow. I still think next week will come and go without a baby, but I packed the hospital bag anyway. There have been, let's just say, some doings a-transpiring.

I think it's nothing. But it could be something.

It's nothing.

Julie's mom happens to be in town, so Julie and I are meeting friends out for tapas. Maybe I'll have her eat the spicy chorizo sausages and then make her hop back to the car, drive off-road the whole way home.

Then we'll dislodge that kid once and for all by having lots and lots of--

Hmm?

Yeah, it's nothing. Her next doctor's appointment is Wednesday, and they'll schedule the induction.

I think.

Update: I stand corrected. It was most definitely something. All signs indicate that we will have a son tomorrow--on his due-date.

Retaliation

In May I wrote about how Lyla got bitten twice in one week by the same kid at her old daycare. I was really pissed off.

Today I had to sign an incident report because some toddler got mad at Lyla and bit her on the forearm. My first thought was, well, I bet Lyla had it coming.

I guess I've evolved.

Dylan

Driving home from daycare today:

"Lyla, do you want to listen to some music?"

"Yeah. I wanna listen Bob Diddin."

I sort of wanted to burst into tears.

Singing is sinning

Julie had an appointment with her doctor today, and apparently the cervix door is letting in a slight, slight breeze. So if someone rings the womb's doorbell, the little man can look out the peephole to make sure it's not the FBI or something.

Gag.

On another subject (you're welcome), I'm trying to teach Lyla about cool music. I don't want her to be a lost cause like her mother.

"Julie, I'll give you a hundred dollars if you can name this band."

"Uh...Barenaked Ladies?"

"It's Led Zeppelin."

See?

"Lyla, this is the Beatles."

"Bee-toes."

"Yes. Paul is singing this song to his friend John's son Julian. Only he calls him Jude."

"Dude. Sin it, Dada."

I warbled along for a few bars.

"No more sinning, Dada. No sin Hey Dude!"

"Okay, okay."

"Oh-tay! Sin it, Dada."

"You want me to sing it again?"

"Sin it."

"Na na na na...Heeey Jude."

"No sin Hey Dude!"

"Don't sing it? Fine, be that way."

"Sin it right now, Dada."

"Do you want me to sing it, or not sing it?"

"Yeah."

"Whatever, dude. You're fickle."

"No evah dude. Hey dude."

"Heeey Jude."

"No sinning!"

Sun up

Lyla and I met my mom at Macaroni Grill.

"Pot-sta!"

"I think they have that here."

"I want pot-sta!"

"Do you want red sauce, or do you want cheese?"

"Yeah."

"Uh...do you want macaroni and cheese, or do you want pasta?"

"Pot-sta!"

"Hey, do you want some pasta?"

"Yeah!"

Julie was at home doing work while extremely pregnant, sort of like an alien. On our way home with Julie's dinner in a take-out box, Lyla expressed her displeasure with darkness.

"Dada, sun up."

"The sun is sleeping."

"Peez."

"It'll wake up tomorrow."

"Wate up now! Sun, wate up! Dada, wate up sun right now."

"The Earth rotates, so the sun is shining on another part of the Earth."

"No!"

"Actually, yes."

"No, Dada. I want sun up right now."

"Uh..."

"Wate up sun peez."

Hospitality

Julie is 39 weeks pregnant today. Her back hurts, she's exhausted, and she's ready to be done. If only her womb wasn't so damn hospitable.

Today she was in the skyway walking to a meeting, and suddenly her feet slipped out from under her and she fell on her knees hard. In accordance with human nature, zero passersby stopped to help her up.

She was fine--at least it wasn't a belly flop--but one could certainly argue that the working world is beginning to reject her presence. What possible purpose does a pregnant woman at 39 weeks serve in the skyway, anyway? That was apparently the skyway's perspective, so it attacked her like she was a virus.

But we'll go 41 weeks and get induced again; I can feel it. Julie has one of those cervix doors that does not open without Pitocin. It's fine because the kid will be hearty and probably already know how to talk. The first thing he'll say is, "Ma, why the hell can't you relax?"

Typing in tongues

Yesterday morning while Lyla ran around and her mother slept, I sat on the couch with my laptop, in no danger at all of winning a parenting award. Lyla climbed up and started banging on my keyboard, so I opened a blank Word document and told her to write something profound. Here it is, a direct copy and paste:

º¬ˆ˚•ºˆøª–•≤ˆ––––––––––––––––––––– 6v––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––˙¶¶¶ªªªªªˆ•ªªªy

I believe that's the typing equivalent of speaking in tongues.

Tonight's blankie

Lyla's staying at my parents' house tonight, and our goal was that she sleep on her mattress there and not in the playpen. She's getting big for the playpen, and last time the transition back to her big-girl bed was awful.

So I ran through with my parents the recipe for big-girl-bed success: sit on the bed with her and read these books in this order, then read this book when she's lying down, then rub her stomach or back (she'll tell you) while talking about her friends and/or favorite animals. Then tell her she needs to stay in bed because you don't want to have to come upstairs and take her blankie du jour (last night a pink washcloth - and yes, it's a cruel threat, but you say it calmly and it works). On your way to the door, ask her if she wants the light on or off, she'll say on, you say okay, and boom you're out the door. Peek in and turn the light off in a couple hours. Simple!

Later, a text from my dad:

"Worked like a charm. Never heard a peep."


Woo hoo! It seems "book as pillow" was tonight's blankie.

Puppy

Kids grow up fast.

On an entirely different note, from what I've heard, your baby boy's penis will be your chief adversary. It urinates all the time, and during diaper changes it aims at your face.

Then at some point it compels its owner to play with it constantly.

It's like your baby boy is born along with a baby puppy, and you have to take care of the boy, but you better not forget about the puppy. With its various creams and attention-seeking behaviors, the puppy is at least as much trouble as the boy.

They have created a guard that you pop on it during diaper changes: the Pee-Pee Teepee.


Supposedly the Pee-Pee Teepee solves the fountain problem, but I have doubts. If it's not super-absorbent, then the urine will just drip into awkward places. And what if the kid's powerful stream shoots it into the ceiling fan?

To me it looks like a reactive measure. Your boy is on the changing table and suddenly a squirt of urine hits your chin, so you put the little dunce cap on it and say "Bad puppy!"

Enough said

Bob

Bob is an 85-year-old Walmart greeter, a classic Bob, an every-bob. You know Bob. Everyone likes Bob, but everyone also thinks it might be best if Bob just stayed home and relaxed instead of tempting his own health by hauling himself to work every day. Take it easy for once, Bob. You're still here, Bob? The worry is that Bob might have a major medical episode right there on the tile.

Tomorrow: Bob! Hello, Bob! Go home, Bob!

The next day: Bob? Again, Bob? My goodness, Bob.

The day after that: Oh Bob...

Bob smiles and nods wearily, but Bob isn't listening. Bob has work to do.

Bob wakes up every morning and hobbles out to his car. Bob drives through terrible weather. Bob works day after day even though he doesn't really need to.

Julie is Bob.

Embarrassment

In that photo Lyla has found my pretentious cast-iron teacup. One day things like that will embarrass the hell out of her.

When I picked up Lyla at daycare, she was hopped up on goofballs.

"Do you want to run?" I said.

"Yeah!"

And she was off. I followed her as she passed an amused mother, zipped around the corner, down the hall, around the next corner, and all the way down the next hall.

"You're a crazy girl."

"I CAZY GUWL!"

Lyla was in no mood to return to where we started; as I carried her back, we came up behind that same mother who was now walking with her own daughter and saying the following: "Walk, honey. We don't run in school." We passed them sheepishly.

By the front door, the still-wired Lyla and I had our first epic jacket battle in weeks. "NOOOO, DADA! NO DATTET! AAHHH!"

The civilized mother and daughter walked hand-in-hand past us and out the door as I wedged Lyla between my knees and began to stuff her first arm into the jacket.

One day things like that will embarrass the hell out of me.

Headache

I wonder when Lyla's personality will start to come out.

Julie has had a headache for the past four days straight. She went to the doctor's office today to get her blood pressure checked to make sure she doesn't have preeclampsia, which is Latin for "before the clamp." The blood pressure was fine, and the cervix door was shut but softening, a description that makes me gag a little. The doc thinks the headache might be a sinus issue, so she prescribed a cocktail of Tylenol, Benadryl, and Coke.

Oh, but guess what. Last night Julie let me back into the bed because she decided she could once again physically coexist with another human. So then she snored on my face all night long. It was super.

So if it's a sinus issue like the doctor theorized, then that would explain the headache and the snoring on my face. Let's hope the Benadryl works. My backup plan is to fill a sock with nickels and flog my head with it until I'm fast asleep.

Nesting

Julie's nesting instincts are in hyper overdrive. I'm surprised she hasn't gone outside to gather sticks and build an actual nest. Yesterday she bought a heap of clothes for both children and today she reorganized and further boyified the nursery. Last night she cooked us shrimp risotto, and tonight it was lemon and paprika tilapia with rutabaga and potato mash. She is June Cleaver, only stupefyingly preggers.

As for me, I raised the crib to the newborn height, transferred the TV and DVD player from our bedroom to the nursery to make breastfeeding more entertaining, and hauled up the bassinet from the basement for delinting and de-spiderwebbing.

Tomorrow Julie's 38 weeks along, so in terms of steak the fetus is about medium well. I have five days of sub plans swirling in my brain, but I feel like tomorrow I should actually put them on paper and leave them on my desk every afternoon.

Oh, and we should pack the damn hospital bag already.

Deforestation

At 5:45 this morning, the sleep sector of Lyla's brain held a brief going-out-of-business sale before shuttering its doors for good.

Luckily, she was in a fine mood and quickly dove into a project involving a roll of ribbon, some stickers, and a glue bottle that she really only used as pretend glue.




Last night Julie declared that our son would not be coming home to a house with a Christmas tree in it. So I dismantled the tree this morning, possibly the earliest we've ever gotten it down, our previous record being, I don't know, sometime in April.

Then I tidied, vacuumed, and did laundry and dishes. Our basement is still the heart of darkness, but the rest of the house is sort of ready for a second child.



And Lyla's definitely ready.

Working from home

Lyla woke up with a bit of a fever this morning, so Julie stayed home with her. It seems teething-related; molars are the scourge of toddlers the world over.

Since Lyla didn't feel like running around, and since Julie is a savvy and highly motivated pillar in an American corporation, a perfectly good sick day quickly devolved into working from home.




Like mother, like daughter.

Cuter

Possible superhero name: the Pantsless Wonder.

This afternoon I was chatting with Lyla about her brother.

"Did you know that I'm going to be [son's name]'s dada?"

"[Son's name]'s dada."

"Yes. I'll be your dada and I'll be [son's name]'s dada."

"Yeah."

"And Mama will be [son's name]'s mama and Lyla's mama, too."

"Lyla's mama, too." She squirmed in my lap until her head rested in the crook of my left arm and her feet rested in the crook of my right.

"[Son's name] will be a teeny-tiny baby, but you can still be my baby, too."

"Ha ha! I'm baby, too!"

"[Son's name] will be cute, but you'll be way cuter."

"Yeah."

Whoops, that was a dad foul. You're not supposed to tell your daughter that she's cuter than her unborn brother. You love them equally, you think they're equally cute, and all that. Right?

Right?

See, I don't feel that way at all right now. I haven't even met this new kid, so how am I supposed to know what to feel about him? Pregnant ladies have all those hormones swirling around that fuse their emotions to the fetus. As a dad, though, my prevailing feelings toward this kid are that I'm curious to meet him, and I'm a little upset with him for making his mother so unwieldy.

Oh, it'll change the instant he splashes out of his mother. Then he'll be my son and my heart will open and swallow him up forever. But tonight when Julie kicks me out of bed because the only way she can sleep is with legs perpendicular to torso, like a 90-degree angle with her stomach as the arc, I'll feel justified in saying that Lyla is much, much cuter than her fetus-brother.

Her Cheerios

I think Julie is starting to show.

When I leave for school, Julie and Lyla are always upstairs. Julie gets ready for work (stuffing the beach ball up her shirt, etc.) while Lyla eats Cheerios. The other day, Julie was blow-drying her hair, and Lyla stood on the stool and started pressing Cheerios against Julie's belly.

"Sweetie, what are you doing?"

"I feeding my [our son's name]."

"Oh! Well you know, when babies come out, they only drink milk."

This information blew Lyla's mind.

"Tee-ohs."

"Cheerios are for big girls. Babies only drink milk because they're so teeny-tiny."

Lyla nodded her head pensively. "Babies dink mihk."

"Yes."

"My Tee-ohs."

Read her thoughts: "So you're saying I don't have to share with the baby. Score!"

Heightened

This afternoon I hightailed it out of school and picked up Lyla early, then came home and stuffed her with all sorts of good food (I gave her that pizza in the photo after she finished her cucumber and apple slices and organic chicken nuggets; she only ate three bites of it). Then we played; Lyla brought Julie and me various delectable plastic foods from her kitchen, and we pretended to eat them as she warned us they were too hot.

"Bow on it, Mama."

She blew.

"Bow on it, Dada."

I blew. It was a plastic cookie in a cup with a fork.

Last night Lyla's bedtime was two hours of hell, so tonight every aspect of the evening was planned and arranged like precarious chess pieces, all with the goal of peace and contentment at 7:00. Since we're about to welcome a young man into our house who has no respect for earthling sleep patterns, we felt heightened anxiety when the impostor, alien Lyla suddenly showed up at bedtime.

But tonight went better; she's down. Hopefully she'll stay down and move past whatever phase this is. Julie's 37 weeks along, she's gained an average of 2.5 pounds in each of the past three weeks, and as of this morning she's one centimeter dilated--which never happened when she was pregnant with Lyla.

In other words, we all need all the sleep we can get.

Terrible twos

Bedtime has been so wretched this week that I think Lyla might grow up and spend her free time stealing puppies or burning down libraries. She's a sweetheart during diaper, teeth, and book, but then Jekyll turns to Hyde and she's incorrigibly defiant the second it's time for bed.

Ladies and gentlemen, she's two and she's terrible.

Not as feral

As much as Lyla's raised-by-wolves hairstyle is a great conversation piece at the zoo, you still want people to think she's a visitor rather than an exhibit.

So today we took her in for her first haircut.




No, we did not keep a lock of her hair for the scrapbook or whatever. "Look honey, your first fingernail! And here's your first newborn bowel movement, black as tar." Don't say hair is different; hair is hair.

The secret to Lyla's good behavior was the promise of candy.

"You get a treat."

"Teat!"

"Trrreat."

"Teat!"




Now Lyla doesn't look as feral, although she's refusing to stay in bed as I type this. The haircut seems to have had an inverse behavioral impact.

Psycho drama

Julie has always regretted not being a ballerina when she was little, so I always assumed that Lyla would be one and Julie would be the overbearing, vicarious-living stage mom. I would be the dopey dad with the camera.

Today we saw the movie Black Swan, where Natalie Portman plays a prima ballerina with more than a touch of psychosis. It was when her character tore a bloody cuticle halfway up her finger that I began to think of other possibilities for Lyla. Maybe the young astronauts club, for instance. Or she could volunteer at, like, the library or something. Anything but ballet.