soldiering on

I will begin by repeating the implicit claim made in the retelling of the story of my daughter's first week: this parenting thing is really hard work.

While Clara and I are getting better with the whole feeding / diaper changing / swaddling thing the effort is still very intense and while we are more consistently getting sleep at night in more useful 4 hour chunks, our default physical state is still defined by exhaustion. While I was initially worried that I was defining our baby as a "problem to be solved" more than a "miracle to be beheld", the former strategy seems to be the most practical one to pursue for the time being. The opportunities for interaction have thus far been minimal for it seems that most attempted forms interaction are deemed offensive by our two-week-old bundle of joy. Even a poorly timed photograph can set her off (see image).

Of course, all these difficulties do make the the precious moments that are free of full-diaphragm protestations all the more meaningful. After she had screamed herself to exhaustion during her bath yesterday (an event which followed her frankly disgusting umbilical cord stub finally falling off) she did calm down and the two of us enjoyed a moment of parent/child affection that resembled the rapport one might expect between a father and his infant daughter. As her skin adjusts to an environment that does not consist primarily of amniotic fluid, her skin - especially around her feet and hands - have begun to peel in a somewhat reptilian manner. With her propped up against my bent legs, I spent about an hour massaging her tiny extremities with baby lotion and for once, she did not seem to mind. I also brushed her thin but remarkably substantial amount of hair, noting that after being washed it's color was in fact much lighter than we had originally thought.

Of course, she eventually grew tired of my affections and started screaming again once she determined that my nipples were of no use to her.

*The following 8 posts recount in some detail the events of last week. While blogs are of course supposed to occur in real time the intense nature of last week required that I break that sacred rule and retell those stories after the fact. I've tried to remain as "in-the-moment" as possible, but a certain amount of reflection couldn't help but slip in...

day 7

sunday: the end of the beginning

When I awoke for my shift at 1 AM, Clara’s family reported that our child had been successfully put to sleep in a horizontal position for close to four hours. This represented another breakthrough and provided justification for the purchase of the “Snuggle Nest” the evening before. Baby Poogie and I learned a little more about the growth and development of the National Park system and when her mother awoke, we all got to try out the nipple shield (or at least Clara and the baby did). Whereas a “breast plate” was a critical piece of medieval armor that protected a knight’s torso from the piercing blow of a broadsword, a nipple shield is a little silicon sombrero that sits on one’s nipple and allows the child to suck without physically stressing the nipple. It looks absolutely ridiculous but my wife assures me the thing is worth its weight in gold. I’ll take her word for it.

By Sunday there began to be a few moments in between the feeding, sleeping and screaming where my daughter and I were able to interact in a slightly more civil manner. It’s funny, but when she isn’t screaming, she’s actually really cute and pleasant to be around. These moments of “active wakefulness” or whatever they’re called are dew and far between but they do, I hope, hold promise of what is to be.

My parents drove in from north Texas that afternoon and we enjoyed an afternoon of non-narrative entertainment provided by the new addition to our family. I’ve noticed our daughter tends to be much less fussy when visitors are around. Perhaps the additional stimulation does her well or she senses and appreciates being held by a professional as opposed to the amateurs that typically are her handlers. Either way, she gives off the impression to guests that she is quite pleasant to be around. I suppose that at the end of the day she is.

day 6

saturday: to babies-r-us and beyond

Some friends of ours with a baby of their own came by for a visit this afternoon. Their 14-month old son, Eamon, had for the previous nine months provided Clara and I with the closest simulation we could find for our own child. While we had always thought of him as small, we were surprised at how gargantuan he seemed compared to our own five-day-old child. I know this should have been a no-brainer, but somehow the contrast was shocking.

Later on we went for a walk with Eamon and his parents, the mothers pushing strollers and the fathers (one of which, oddly enough, was me) walking a few steps behind discussing the cruel irony of engorged breasts that are painful to the touch.

Later on that afternoon I was once again released into the wild to run a few errands including what will no doubt be the first of many Babies-R-Us runs. Through an awkward combination of broken English pantomime, I had just awkwardly asked a where one could find “breast hydrogel pads” when I received a text from my wife asking for a “nipple shield”. This required me to go back to the same employee and ask where one could also find these items as well. It is worth noting that describing “breast hydrogel pads” and “nipple shields” is difficult when (A) you have no idea what they are exactly and (B) when you’re trying to avoid using the terms “breast” and “nipple”. It is also worth noting that by this time the terms “nipple” and “breast” has lost nearly all of their erotic content.

By the time I got home Clara was a bit frazzled. Having not yet mastered the ninja potato-sack hold she had been unable to comfort our precious Little Dictator. Nursing had become incredibly painful (hence the afore mentioned hydrogel pads and nipple shields) and because of the fact she had not enjoyed the same uninterrupted sleep that I had, Clara began to feel a bit overwhelmed. Luckily her parents arrived at the same time I did and we were able to send her to bed and allow the rest of us to do what needed doing. Clara got in a well-deserved nap and afterwards it was decided that she and I should get out of the house for a quiet dinner and yet another run to Babies-R-Us for more nipple accessories. The break did both of us good and the subsequent decision to let Clara sleep through the night and feed Baby Poogie formula was a good one. Breastfeeding books can be a little judgmental about the use of formula, equating it to feeding your baby liquified asbestos.

We went to bed early and slept the innocent sleep of a baby knowing our very own baby was in good and capable hands. I relieved Clara's family around 1am and managed a few hours of sleep thereafter.

day 5

friday: the great outdoors

I had recorded Ken Burn’s documentary on the National Park System when it had premiered on PBS back in September. I was wondering when I was going to have the opportunity to watch these but as I began to assume the early morning Baby poogie shift an opportunity was provided to do just that. My daughter was at this point still primarily sleeping only while being held and so I learned about Yosemite, Yellowstone and the rest with my child slung over my shoulder. As a result I will probably forever associate these places with her. Perhaps I will someday take her to visit these parks and together we will explore them. Or perhaps she will be like her mother and find nothing compelling about the outdoors and the dirt that seems to pervade it. Time will tell.

Friday morning was our first trip to our “official” pediatrician and while our daughter was still less-than-excited by the concept of being strapped into her car seat, she calmed considerably once inside. The meeting with the doctor went well and for all the challenges facing her parents, Baby Poogie was as fit and as blessedly normal as she could be.

Later on that evening I took her outside so as to introduce her to the nighttime. She seemed to enjoy it, and she expressed this by not screaming. This first week had been a lot more intense than I had imagined with my job as a father being much more hands-on. One fear I had harbored before she was born was that I would be awkward around the child and not particularly useful. That certainly turned out to not be the case as this first week turned out to be very much an “all hands on deck” effort. I would be lying if I didn’t admit it had been much, much harder than I had expected, but we had soldiered through the incredibly steep learning curve and by Friday there had started to maybe, possibly, tentatively be something of a routine that could be predicted and followed.

day 4

thursday: rebound

It is truly remarkable the difference a full night’s sleep can bring. Logic and reason return to one’s repertoire of facilities and, perhaps more critically, they are accompanied by humor and perspective. After Clara’s sister and boyfriend left and it was just Baby Poogie and me, we bonded in a way that was I think a turning point in our relationship. Did we stare deeply into one another’s eyes and come to some unspoken, unconscious understanding? No. Did I hold her naked body close to my beating heat instilling in her the message that I would always be there for her? Not exactly. Did I leap into a stirring oration about the love between a father and a daughter at the end of which my two-and-a-half-day-old child touched my face and said, “Da-Da”? Not quite.

What did happen is that over the course of that morning I changer her diaper several times. Each time she howled as if I was removing her intestines and replacing them with a new set of clean ones. After each of these traumatic events I would swaddle her. At first these efforts were quite sloppy but they improved over the course of the day. I observed that when she became fussy she would flail her little arms about, knocking out her pacifier and, more alarmingly, punching herself in the face. Thus tight swaddling became crucial. Referencing one of the many baby books strewn about, I learned the differences between the “quick” and “burrito” wrap and became expert at achieving both.

For better or worse, I also became “hardened” to the sound of my daughter’s cry. I know this sounds bad, but this was probably the most critical thing to happen that morning. It’s not that I learned to ignore her audible protestations, but I did learn to not take them so personally. before they were a parallelizing distraction that would prevent me from thinking clearly. By Thursday they were merely a symptom to be addressed (Baby is crying. Why is baby crying? Did Daddy bump Baby’s head against the wall? No, we’re good. Is Baby hungry? No, she just ate. Is Baby’s diaper dirty? Bingo. When the hell did Baby eat something with sesame seeds? Good question, but not one that is critical to answer right now. Keep moving.)

Throughout the morning I also perfected what I came to call the “over-the-shoulder-potato-sack” hold. This became the most sure-fire way to keep my first born from screaming her precious little head off. Hefting her over my shoulder and patting her fairly rigorously on her back seemed to soothe her when nothing else would. The discovery of this magic bullet was crucial. That and the fact Clara’s milk came in.

Having allowed Clara to enjoy a relatively easy morning I felt confident enough to make a brief appearance at work in the afternoon. It was a good thing to see the outside world again (as it was when I briefly returned to the house on Tuesday) and it was also fun to retell the stories of the past few days. I did find, however, that I struggled when I was asked if bringing the baby home had been the most amazingly wonderful experience ever. The proper answer of course was “yes, absolutely” but I didn’t really feel that to be the case. The reality was that it been hard - really hard – and at that moment the triumph was in merely surviving. In time I knew I could probably answer that question properly, but a little more time needed to pass.

The funny thing about memory is that even from the perspective of only a week, I know look fondly back at this time even though at the time it was one of great uncertainty. I feel nostalgic for this particular morning because I now know how this particular chapter turned out. As I held my child in my arms and “There Will be Blood” played on the TV (Baby’s first movie), I saw light return to the world outside my window. As the bluish light of dawn embraced the world outside I felt that I might just survive the daily slog of ensuring my child survived the day. It all seemed possible. And now, of course, I know that it was.

day 3

wednesday: rock bottom

Wednesday was as much about waiting as anything. We knew we were going home but needed Clara’s doctor to approve her release and the pediatrician to approve our child’s release. We secured the first of these fairly early but the latter one didn’t occur until the afternoon. Clara and I took turns napping in the bed and while the recliner was found to be just as useless for breastfeeding as it was for sleeping.

We didn’t realize it at the time, but we were both running on fumes. Both of us had enjoyed less than four hours of sleep over the previous two nights and that was beginning to take a toll when it came to our higher motor and social skills. Still we were excited to go home where we could at least be able to sleep in our own bed.

Finally all the papers had been signed and releases given and Clara made the triumphal trip out the front door in the most ridiculously oversized wheelchair we had ever seen. Once outside we loaded our little angel into the car seat; a process that sounded somewhat akin to an angel being dragged into hell. We drove away from the hospital with our little bundle of joy growing hoarse from her cries. Apparently Toyota designed the interior of their vehicles to provide the perfect echo chamber for a crying infant. Kudos to them.

By the time we were moving more steadily on the highway her anguish had abated somewhat though her wrath was reignited whenever we came to a stop sign. I never realized how many of those there were between the hospital and our house. A few California rolls later we delivered her safely to our house and into the coordinated hands of Clara’s assembled family. Clara’s grandmother cooked while her mom and sister took turns soothing the baby. Clara’s father was describing traffic conditions or weather patterns or something, but frankly it was a blur. I remember firing off some work-related emails and doing several other non-essential tasks before sitting down for an excellent but rushed dinner with my wife as our child slept peacefully in the nursery. This, we would soon learn, was just our daughter's nefarious way of luring us into a sense of complacency.

By about 10:00pm Clara's family had left and we had both showered and fallen into bed after placing our precious, innocent child into the co-sleeper a few feet from us. The bed felt amazingly soft and comforting and I believe we were commenting on this fact when our child began to stir. Then she began to fuss. And then she took to crying. And that was a prelude to the car-alarm scream that we would come to know so well.

I'll skip over the next two hours to a point in time around midnight when I was feebly attempting to calm her with rocking and singing. I had abandoned first the co-sleeper in the bedroom and then the glider in the nursery and was finally holed-up in the family room in hopes that her cries would be muffled enough to allow my wife to get some sleep. When you have not slept much and all your insecurities about fatherhood are magnified by your child’s unceasing cries, it is difficult to keep yourself from joining in on the waterworks. So when my wife came back in the room she saw an infant crying like a baby whilst being held by a father who was himself crying much like a baby. This was not my finest hour. Luckily Clara had enough working brain cells to sum up the situation and decide on a course of action: she called for backup.

So the blubbering father was sent off to bed as Clara’s sister and boyfriend (both nurses) arrived on the scene. Guilt issues aside, neither Clara nor I had any trouble finally getting several hours of gloriously uninterrupted sleep. In retrospect, I should have gone home on Tuesday night and slept a full night in my own bed so I could be well rested and fully relieve Clara on Wednesday night with all my wits about me. We were both so focused on the birth that he hadn’t really thought much beyond it. That’s such a rookie mistake.

It’s worth mentioning that at no time during this unfortunate cascade of events did Clara or I ever contemplate shaking or otherwise causing harm to our child. That said, I think both of us have a better understanding of where such an impulse comes from. As precarious as our situation seemed at the time, we had many more options than a single teenage mom without the support system we enjoyed. We are forever grateful to that support system (and especially Clara’s sister and boyfriend) for so totally bailing out our sorry, blubbering asses.

day 2

tuesday: good cop / bad cop

Not much sleep occurred on Monday night. While Clara was comfortable enough in her bed my "guest recliner" was a cruel hoax. For one it did not fully recline flat and I had to position myself high on the chair to keep the infernal contraption from returning to the upright position. When this happened, the sound of the vinyl upholstery rubbing against the chair's arms would awaken mother, father and daughter alike. Stupid interior designers.

While Clara was moving forward in the breastfeeding department because of her limited mobility (due mostly to her IV) the task of diaper changing fell to my timid and unskilled hands. By this time most of the meconium (the freakish, tar-like poo) had worked itself out of our daughter’s system since most of it, if you will recall, ended up on my wife immediately after birth. While I was more than happy to let a nurse do the deed if she happened to be in the room, I did become reasonably skilled at the dark art of diaper changing. Our child, however, did not seem to feel as confident about my abilities as I did. Her vocal and physical protestations were loud and vigorous. Before our daughter was even a year old my wife and I had already reverted to that of good cop / bad cop: Clara provided nourishing milk whereas I tortured her until she was hoarse.

Dinner was quite pleasant. Clara and I sat in the room’s two chairs and ate our respective dinners with our daughter for once sleeping soundly next to us. She looked so peaceful and after commenting on the phenomenon, Clara and I simultaneously stared intently at our child waiting for some sign that she was, in fact, still breathing. When a reflexive head jerk communicated that we hadn’t yet killed our child, Clara and I breathed a collective sigh of relief and momentarily turned our attention back to our dinner. This pattern of wishing the child would sleep followed by wishing the child would stir to prove she was still alive would repeat itself numerous times in the coming week.

Sleep was no less challenging than it was the night before. The thought occurred to me that I should throw the chair out the window, but the baby was sleeping at the time and so I decided it was in our interest to refrain. Besides with all the nurses coming in to poke and prod it’s not like I would have slept much anyway.

The interruptions weren't always bad: at one point Clara was having trouble nursing and the on-duty nurse stopped by to help start the flow of milk via message. Thus I awoke to see a nurse fondling my wife’s bare breasts. If a few of the variables of the story were different this could be spun as a highly erotic male fantasy. As it was, however, it seemed perfectly normal and not even particularly notable. It is in fact only now that I find it even worth mentioning.

day 1

monday: a child is born, and man is she pissed

Monday morning started with my wife experiencing the same contractions as she had the day before. My wife would slap my arm which would be my signal to unlock my iPhone and hit the lap button on the stopwatch (Labor? There’s an app for that). The contractions were a little closer and after some somewhat intense discharge we called the doctor who told us not to worry. Curiously, Clara’s OBGYN did not sound as perky at 2am than he normally did at our daytime appointments.

Some time later Clara felt the baby shift and felt what she thought was her water breaking. She expressed it in a way that I can only describe as “orgasmic” and after that event we jumped into action: I showered, Clara transferred clothes from the washing machine to the dryer and we headed out to the car.

The drive was remarkably mundane. There was of course little traffic at 4 in the morning and we were in a room at the hospital in time to see the sunrise. My wife changed into her ever-so-stylish hospital gown before being violated by a nurse who announced wife’s cervix was already dilated to at least 6cm. We were well on our way.

Clara’s family (Mom, Dad, Grandmother) soon arrived and for a while there were a few too many people anxiously milling about. When Clara’s OBGYN arrived for his morning rotation he looked much more chipper than he had sounded on the phone a few hours earlier. His exam was used as the excuse to eject Dad and Grandma and so they missed hearing that she was already up to 7cm and that her water was, in fact, not broken. The doctor rectified this situation with an instrument that looked suspiciously like a crochet hook and then asked if Clara wanted an epidural.

“Yes, please," was her response.

So the IV was inserted and eventually the epidural was as well. The on-duty anesthesiologist was delayed somewhat by an emergency Cesarean birth and for a moment Clara considered the possibility of passing on the epidural. After all, it hadn’t been that painful so far and she was most of the way there. A couple of hard contractions later she was thinking clearly again and when the anesthesiologist finally arrived the procedure was rather quickly executed. Apparently Clara’s blood pressure momentarily dropped a bit along with the baby’s but the anesthesiologist and attending nurse dealt with the situation so quickly and calmly neither Clara nor I really knew what was going on until it was over.

By then it was around noon and things had gone remarkably smoothly. One of my biggest fears was seeing my wife in pain but for the most part that aspect of the equation was missing. There were no scenes of Clara doubled over in the hallway, immobilized by a contraction. I never gently patted her forehead with a damp cloth as she grimaced in pain. As near as I could tell, this whole labor thing was turning out to be a lot easier than it had looked like in the birthing classes. And with the epidural in place, there was little to do but wait for her cervix. It didn’t keep us long.

When it was decided it was time to push, the hospital bed Clara had been resting in all mornings was transformed into a birthing robot. The lower portion of the mattress was jettisoned and stirrups appeared to respectfully hold my wife’s legs high in the air. A large bucket also appeared. It was lined with a red plastic “biohazard” bag and was positioned below my wife’s out stretched legs.

“Is that bucket to catch the baby?” I asked.

“No,” The nurse answered, “It is not.”

In my innocent imagination I had always assumed I would experience the birth of my child from the perspective of my wife’s head. Perhaps I would hold her hand or stroke her forehead as the doctor held up our newborn daughter and presented her to the world, much like Simba in the Lion King. The best part of this scenario is that it kept me (and more importantly my eyes) well north of the equator. I might know conceptually what was going on down there but I wouldn’t have to see any of it.

When the nurse asked Clara’s mom and I to grab a foot and help push them towards my wife’s chin while she bared down in sync with the contractions I was on the one hand grateful to be able to take a somewhat more active role in the process. On the other hand, the mechanics of my position meant that my head was but a few feet and in a direct line of sight with ground zero. This was something I was decidedly ungrateful for.

I do not mean to suggest that by seeing what was happening to my wife it was worse than actually experiencing it. But believe me when I tell you I saw, smelled and heard unspeakable horrors that afternoon. There are reasons no man should be where I was. Years from now I’ll be cleaning out a clogged drain or hear the sound of a wet washcloth hit the floor and I’ll be transfixed by a flashback to that afternoon in November. This is the burden I now carry with me.

Adding to the surreal nature of this experience was the fact that my mother in law was located just a few feet away from me on my wife’s other leg. Although she had delivered two children of her own, she too was forever changed by the experience. Later she and I would recall that when the head appeared all squished from its tortured trip through the my wife’s birth canal we both silently worried the baby would be born a monstrously collapsed head. We simultaneously avoided eye contact with one another so as to hide our mutual but ultimately unfounded concern.

And then my daughter was born and everything was fine. Her head magically popped back into it’s correct shape, she cried, and after a few quick cleansing wipes and nasal aspirations she was given to Clara who held our daughter for the first time. It was an intense moment and even though it had been anticipated for the better part of a year, it was hard not get emotional. The moment was marred slightly by the fact my daughter relieved her bowels on her mother’s hospital gown whilst being held. Having recently seen indescribable amounts of bodily fluids being expelled from my wife I was personally not all that troubled to see some expelled on her.

Clara’s doctor (who had apparently shown up to deliver the baby) asked if I wanted to cut the cord. I did not. He insisted. I was not in the mood to argue and so I did the deed, separating the last remaining physical link between my daughter and her mother and no doubt instilling a deep separation anxiety that will require years of therapy for my daughter to correct. After that they took her over to a french-fry warmer where apparently a crack team of doctors, nurses, accountants, lawyers, and maybe even a priest or two quickly went to work doing whatever it is such a team was assembled to do. Someone in the delegation asked if I wanted to wager a guess as to the weight of my apparently very healthy child. I did not answer since as it happened I had just made a rather unfortunately timed head turn to see my wife deliver the placenta. I really didn’t need to see that. Returning to the moment, I said that the last we heard the baby was going to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 7 ponds 12 ounces, so we were thinking 8 pounds. All eyes were on the little LCD screen as first a “9” and then a “5” appeared. “Wow” the team said in unison.

The rest of that first day went by quickly. My brother and his wife drove in from north Dallas and while my time with them was limited, it was really good to see them and share the experiences to the day. When asked to describe what our new child looked like the only word that came to mind was “pissed”. She didn’t look innocent or angelic or peaceful. No, she looked angry. She kind of acted that way too. This remained the case for several days.

day 0

saturday - sunday: one final weekend

While I was thankful to have a week to decompress from work, I knew Clara was beginning to get a little anxious about evicting the roommate she had been carrying for the past nine months. While she was naturally a little concerned about the process by which this little person would be evicted, she was grateful to have a due date of the scheduled Tuesday induction. As for me, I was grateful to have a Halloween costume essentially given to me as a total no-brainer. While parents appreciated the costume I think most of the kids at the door on Saturday night were just confused.

Early Sunday morning Clara started feeling some contractions and I dutifully recorded them. They remained between 8 and 15 minutes apart and eventually went away. Clara was a little concerned because of their intensity: if this was “false labor” she was truly worried what the real thing would be like.

you never forget your first time

Over the past nine months I’ve described my thoughts and feelings about my wife’s pregnancy. At times it was a bit of a stretch. While trying to be as active as possible, at the end of the day my primary task was one of waiting for the day that eventually came on the second of November. In the week that has passed more has happened than in the entirety of the previous nine months. Every hour there has been something noteworthy that would easily eclipse even the most engaging of posts from February through October. The irony of the situation (and I’m finding fatherhood to be full of ironies) is that now that there is so much to talk about there is so little time to actually write about it.

Now that a rather busy week has gone by I am going to actively try and catch up and write about this rather memorable past week. Again, I’m doing this as much for myself as for anything else as I do not want to forget what it was like to experience this time. When asked to provide generalities about “what it was like”, my wife and I have struggled to find an appropriate analogy to describe the birth of our daughter. For me, the most accurate analogy is by no means appropriate. Having a child has been like loosing my virginity – I wondered about it for a really long time and when it finally happened I looked back on it and thought, “Hmm, that was different.” It’s not that it was better or worse necessarily, only different from what I had expected. And while both events occupy a hollowed place in my memory, the details of both blur with shocking rapidity. Perhaps it is because I want to remember each perfectly, or perhaps it is because I access and rewrite them too often. Either way, by writing down the details of the latter I can preserve a relatively fresh snapshot of what was.

Baby Poogie

November 2, 2009

3:43 PM

9 pounds, 5 ounces

21 1/4 inches