Fast forward through that nasty separated disk and some sciatic nerve pinching and a good lesson in the relative values of Eastern and Western medicine (the former proving itself far more affordable and far more effective than the latter), a visit from the Mom-In-Law for the holidays, and a boring list of normal life stuff and we find ourselves looking at the calendar about a month ago, well into a healthy pregnancy that included a lot of tests and inspections and stuff like that, every one of which gave positive indicators as to the relative health of baby and momma. So as of a month ago, D and I had been to lots of appointments at the Women’s Health Center near our home in fabulous Portland, Oregon and during the final several visits, the doc and the midwife and the assistant and the ultrasound tech had all been saying things like “it doesn’t hurt to pack your hospital bag early” and “don’t be upset if he’s born before your sister arrives.”
I was immediately suspicious. I'm often immediately suspicious of things people say, but I was more immediate and more suspicious this time around than most. They wouldn’t say things like that if they thought D was going to go full term. My razor sharp brains elicited the obvious message: We medical professionals all think your baby will come early. This was fine by me – I was pretty excited to meet the little guy and see what he looked like out here in the atmosphere instead of the ultrasound images we’d been getting every couple weeks. Young parents don’t get so many ultrasounds, but D qualifies as “AMA,” which means “Advanced Maternal Age,” which really means “Old.” So we saw lots of pictures of the kiddo but we were getting impatient and wanted the tactile experience. And though we knew we'd be really busy once he was born, D was really very uncomfortable almost all the time and we thought it'd be nice to bring that discomfort to a close.
All our friends and relatives wanted to meet him too, and as you read in my last entry we’d asserted that everyone would have to get a pertussis booster. The problem that assertion led to was that I didn’t specify that anyone already current on their vaccine wouldn’t need the booster and the only people that had to get it were those whose shots were outdated, or those who didn’t remember whether or not their shots were outdated. One result of this was that a close relative who doesn’t think vaccines are a good idea in the first place agreed to wait until the kiddo is older to meet him in person (even though he recently had surgery and very likely received a booster without even knowing it). Another result is that a whole bunch of people we care about are now current on their pertussis (and diphtheria and tetanus, each of which are nasty things we're sure no one wants to suffer). There were other results, too, but those aren’t any fun to think about and I can’t come up with a way to present them that includes any levity.
And this was our first real venture into the realm of parenthood. The most common piece of advice we’ve received from other parents is to remember that we have the final say in everything even if we’re wrong about it, and that people will be offended along the way. Sometimes it’ll be us offended, sometimes it’ll be others. We won’t be keeping score.
There was a betting pool about when our son would actually be born. His due date was March 19 but after all the smart medical people started saying the things about not being surprised if he’s early, we all started picking dates. I picked March 10, D picked the 11th (11 is her favorite number) and a few other people picked other dates. Very early in the morning of the 10th it became apparent that the process had begun, so we called the doc. The doc told us to go to the hospital and that he reckoned that we’d have a baby today. We went to the hospital where they ran a couple tests and sent us to an enormous room called a “birthing suite,” telling us that today was the day. Birthing suites are really nice. There's a bed for mom and a long couch for dad, a private bathroom, a rocking chair, another chair, two sinks, a television (which we don't need or want in our lives but it adds to the fancy factor), extra bedding and a closet.
I won’t go into too much detail, because there’s no need and because the details of all this stuff are already known in a general sense and it’s really nobody else’s business anyway but suffice it to say that although he arrived several days early, the process of his arrival wasn’t as quick and easy as we might have hoped. Demonstrating that he loves his Mama more than his Papi, he chose to slow things down in order that he’d be born well after March 10 as I’d guessed, and instead made his debut at 1:43pm on March 11. As our friend Chad pointed out, E was born on the only palindrome date of the year: 31113. Obviously, this is extremely cool even if it does demonstrate that he loves his mom more than his dad.
Our own Moms had come to the hospital on the 10th, as we’d told them it was “any time now.” After continuing to tell them this all day and well into the night, we then told them to go back to our house and get some rest, which neither of them wanted to at all. But they did so anyway. On the morning of the 11th, I called and said something like “any time now – come on down!” and they instantly appeared in the waiting room down the hall, which is as close as anyone who isn't the dad is allowed to come. The docs and everyone were talking like we were an hour or two away. The moms waited.
And the docs kept talking like that for another 8 or 9 hours. Until, at last, our family of two instantly became a family of three. As anyone else who’s been down this path will attest, this was the most amazing moment in either D's or my own lives. We were spellbound. For the next twenty minutes or so we huddled together in the middle of the flurry that was a dozen hospital professionals, each of whom was quickly taking care of a specific and important task. We were the calm in the middle of the storm. Eye of the hurricane.
Then she fainted, which makes sense after more than thirty hours without being allowed to eat anything other than lollipops and popsicles.
I finally had a chance to collect the new Grandmas, which was an enormous relief for each of them after having waited for many hours beyond the the ‘any minute now’ they’d most recently heard. It doesn’t help that they can’t talk to one another. They sat and grew increasingly concerned. They called the nurse's station and were told that the nurses aren't allowed to tell anyone anything. Sorry Moms. We did our best.
For the next couple days, we were visited by lots of other medical people who checked things and told us things they thought we needed to know. We were pretty grateful for all of this. And finally, they sent us home. A friend of mine told me about the time he left the hospital with his first child and said something about walking out the door feeling almost bewildered, thinking “Really? They’re just going to let me leave with this new baby?” We didn’t have the same sense of disbelief when we finally made our exit but what we did notice was that every single thing in the whole world had made a fundamental change while we were sequestered within the hospital.
I suppose part of it is that I now feel that, for the first time, I might believe myself qualified to be called a Man. Up til now I’ve wondered how it’s possible that I’ve been able to keep everyone fooled.
The first day we were home, we spent our time marveling at this amazing new thing, trying to not be overwhelmed with the knowledge that no matter how difficult this might get that we simply cannot quit and absolutely must not fail, and feeding him and changing him and watching him sleep.
We'd been told, by the nice lady who taught the “you’re going to have a baby” class as well as the lactation consultant and the nurse and some other person wearing blue scrubs and all of the books we'd read that the way to know that the bambino is getting properly fed is:
1) feed him until he stops feeding
2) watch his eyes roll back into his head as he enjoys feeling sated
3) burp him and have fun watching him spit up a few times onto your clean shirt
4) let him gently drift off to sleep until he wakes again and demands food
5) repeat.
What nobody told us is that this is exactly the same routine a newborn will practice when they’re not getting enough to eat and are becoming exhausted and dehydrated. On our second day home, E (our son’s name starts with E) turned yellow and was, quite suddenly, inconsolable. We checked his log (we keep a “eat pee poop” log for the tyke) and realized he hadn’t peed in far too long. I can go that long without peeing and so can you, but little boys who tip the scale at a whopping five-and-a-half pounds are supposed to pee a lot more often than the rest of us.
Anyway, I called the doctor’s office at about 1 am and talked to their person on call, who asserted that the right thing to do was load E into the car and make our way to the Emergency Room at the Children’s Hospital here in Portland. We’re glad to have one of these in our hometown, though we weren’t glad to have need for it in the moment. Clearly, this was a time to move with purpose.
Usually when I'm on the phone for our collective benefit, D asks questions like "what did they say" and "what do they think?" She wants all the details, which is the smart way to do things when you’re going to be making decisions. But this time, when I replied with only "they said to bring him to the emergency room right now," instead of asking questions, she sprang into action, was dressed, had her 76 year old mother dressed (we told her to stay home but she adamantly refused), got E dressed and into his car seat and we were out the door in moments.
Some might think poorly of a new father who exceeds the posted speed limits with a brand new baby and mother in law in the car. But at 2am, we found it a clear and dry night without any traffic and the Subaru has nice new tires, and I did qualify for a competition driving license a few years ago, and we were all wound up about E who was now in and out of consciousness and wasn't always responding to D. I will make no apology to anyone that E's second ride in a car attained speeds that may have included triple digits. And should something like this happen to us again, I won't hesitate to do exactly the same thing.
We made it to the hospital, parked illegally, ran past a fellow who was smoking a joint next to the "No Smoking" sign and checked E in. The three of us spent the next three days there, with E getting IV fluids, Mama's milk and milk bank milk, and blood draws about twice a day until his bilirubin level dropped and his sodium went back to normal and a host of other important things went from marginal-at-best to better-than-average. There's nothing like watching an IV attempt go south and seeing your four day old baby bleeding out of his head. The only thing that's worse is seeing his mother when she catches a glimpse even though you're holding her hands and trying to block her view and reminding her that you're in the right place and that very good people you don't even know are focusing all of their attention, love and expertise on your child.
Most of our friends who are parents have expressed their support and concern when we’ve told this tale. Most of them. This was really scary – I mean THE most scary thing I have ever experienced – but it wasn't so far outside the norm that we can count on someday having this be our only ‘taking the kiddo to the hospital’ story. It means we might do things like this again. If E is anything like his father, we should be on a first name basis with the ER staff in the next few years. I have a new appreciation for what I put my own parents through. And I might secretly be hoping he gets his "Hey, look what I can do!" genes from the other side of the family.
Since we came back home, everything has been going very well. He's gaining weight faster than expected, he poops and pees as often as he should, eats lots and lots, and does all the things babies his age are supposed to do. It took us an extra week or so to find our new normal than we expected but we’re happily settling in as best we can. It’s tricky to do this with D’s sister, brother in law, niece, nephew and mother all here at the same time but it’s been really nice to have their support.
It does seem a little funny to me that D’s Mom so quickly responds when E starts crying, swooping him up and into her arms and then coddling and cooing him until he calms down (she’s very, very good at this) and that when she’s not doing that, she’s telling us that we’re teaching him that crying is the best way to get immediate attention. She does this thing more than anyone, then tells us we’re doing this thing too much already. There have been a lot of little ironies along the way, each made unusually complex given the different views on everything even remotely related to child rearing. I can assure you: having been raised by a rather liberated woman for a mom myself, my views on how much and in what ways I ought to participate in this baby raising gig are quite different than my Mom-In-Law’s views. She lived through World War II, then raised two daughters in a culture and at a time that didn’t make a lot of room for Dads when it came to changing diapers. We’ve got cultural differences at work that are, I believe, unlike those enjoyed (?) by most other families.
And that’s exactly what D and I signed on for when we got hitched three years ago. Neither of us would change a single thing.
All best,
E and Co.
cool. glad everybody ions doing well. sounds like you have plenty of help. love ya
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