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.