A bit over a week ago I felt like Michael Fucking Landon, taming the prairies
and building a log cabin with my two hands. Really I was just putting
together some second hand Ikea baby furniture.
I guess it was not in the stars to have our baby on the 16th. We had him on the fifteenth instead. The Ides of March. Those are his footprints and I am not sure where the, uh, index toe on his right foot is. He has one, I assure you. I just looked at it. Eveyone says, "Oh, you can't really be prepared for a baby. You can do your best but you'll never understand until you are in it". This is one of those times when everyone is right. We had the baby on the 15th, at 4:44 pm. It was something else. Erin had to have c-section, so the whole thing was shockingly scheduled and orderly. We got to the hospital around 2:00 or so, filled out some paperwork, Erin got an IV, I got to put on a paper space-suit. Around 4:15 Erin got wheeled off to have some tiny needle inserted into her spinal column (No big deal! A trifling matter. Although my mindset was slightly wobbled by the fact that they chose that moment to give me the complementary "Sometimes you have to make tough choices about heroic measures" literature). A bit after 4:30 they led me into the operating room. Half of Erin (the bottom half) was hidden by a blue sheet and a swarm of doctors and nurses. I patted Erin and held her hand, she was already in good spirits. The anesthesiologist saw that I had my camera. She asked me if I was squeamish. I thought to myself, "Well, normally I am pretty unflappable but the idea of a doctor pulling our baby out of a 10 centimeter slit that she has recently cut in my wife's belly sort of goes beyond the realm of 'squeamish'" I said "No, I'm not squeamish". I kept petting Erin. The anesthesiologist said "All right Daddy. Now's the time!" so I stood up and looked over the curtain and, indeed, there was a little tiny foot in Dr. Carter's blue-gloved hand. And another! And then a quick succession of legs and then a butt and a back and then, after some deft spinning and pulling and an audible wet "pop!" I was looking at the gooey little face of our little boy! Wow! I was shooting pictures pretty much this whole time. They are something else, but not really for posting here. A few sucks of goo out of his mouth with that little turkey baster and then Dr. Carter quickly lowered the curtain and sort of handed the baby to Erin. He stopped wiggling quite so much, opened his eyes and grabbed Erin's finger before the cord was even cut. Erin said, "Hi baby!" A lot of c-sections seem to be pretty industrial and cold, and the baby is instantly whisked away to some robot in a janitor's closet somewhere for cleaning and sterilization and stuff for a few hours before they even let you see, let alone touch, your child. Ours was not like that, everyone in there seemed joyful, and there was reggae playing (Erin's choice), and Erin got to touch and caress the baby right away, and we are extremely grateful for that. The cleaning station was just a few feet away, and I was right there with him talking to him and Erin could still see him (once I remembered to get out of her line of sight). He had quite a set of pipes from the get-go, and all the doctors and nurses were laughing about it. He started hollering immediately. Loud. We were glad. Healthy lungs in pre-term births are very important. Once he was cleaned and weighed and foot printed and bracelet they brought him back to Erin who got to hold him on her chest and coo and gush and melt with him for a few minutes. Then they gently wrapped him up and asked me to carry him to the nursery for his first check-up. So I did. Once he was checked out (A-ok!) we brought him to Erin, who by this time was all rigged up in a little recovery room, and he got on the booby more or less right away. We didn't let him out of our sight for the first 3 days. We didn't get much sleep, and what little we did get was punctuated and interrupted by breastfeeding and screaming and bloodpressure checks and thermometers and stuff. This whole thing was pretty overwhelming. We still didn't have a name. We had a few that we kept kicking around. We'd hold him and look into his little face and say, "Are you (name)?" and then the other of us would say, "No. Definitely not (name)". We eventually decided, more or less without even talking about it, that the first name we both liked, that we thought of for him some months ago, a name we sort of forgot about for a while, a name that both of his grandmas expressed some uncertainty about, was in actuality his name. His name is Milo. We brought Milo home on Sunday. He's really just amazing. I think he looks like my brother Drew. Erin thinks he looks like her brother John. Really, he just looks like a CUTE little bug. He came out a little kittywampus because of the way he was positioned in the womb. Sort of smooshed up with the left side of his head pressed against the wall. His head was a little bit asymmetrical but is already much better. Milo makes the sweetest little sounds, cooing and trilling like a baby animal of some sort. Because of course, he IS a baby animal of some sort. He is a baby animal of OUR sort. He is about the size of a small roast chicken. I look at him sometimes and just want to explode with delight. He is really just breathtaking. We love him so much. Erin and I are just mush. Mush! Milo divides his time between:
Erin has the lack-of-sleeps even worse than I do. I do what I can to help get her more sleep but ultimately: she has the chuckwagons and I do not. When it comes down to it she really does have to get up and stay up every 2 hours or so. I have (and want) to help but it quickly becomes clear that my time would be better served by sleeping so at least one of us keeps our head in the game. There are a million pictures of him that you can see if you like. Just shoot me an email and I'll send you the link. |
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