Spoiler Alert: It Wasn't a Velociraptor

So it's been about eight weeks since my last post.  A lot has gone on since mid-November.  Namely, Thanksgiving, my birthday, the mistaken prophecy of the Mayans, and, in efforts to not bury the lead, our daughter was born.

Much to my chagrin, she was not a velociraptor.  But she's rather cute, so I think we'll keep her.

For those not familiar with the interweb reference:



What actually was the result of labor after 9 months of a rather difficult pregnancy was far less dangerous but much, much more adorable:

Not a velociraptor

Em gave birth at the Birthing Center in Bryn Mawr -- a midwifery practice where they only do natural birth.  In other words: no epidurals.

For the males of the species who may be reading this, those two words may have little impact for you.  For anyone who has witnessed a natural birth and/or delivered a baby under those circumstances, I'm quite certain you clenched your nether-regions just now.

The recounting of the story from my shoddy second-hand perspective is a sorry substitute from getting it straight from the source, but seeing as whatever hormonal cocktail the body releases in the mother's endocrine system post-delivery seems to have a total amnesiac effect on the mother regarding what she just went through, I'll have to do my best.

Em started laboring around 3:00 PM on Friday the 21st.  At least, that's when she told me that she was feeling pretty regular contractions.  You have to realize that I'd been hovering over her for the past two weeks and every time she'd wince, I was ready to load us all into the car.  

The contractions were steadily increasing in duration and intensity, but she took the midwives advice and tried to distract herself with other activities until they became too intense to ignore.  

She actually cooked herself some pancakes and vacuumed a bit before she had to sit down.  We played video games until she had to put the controller down and hold her belly.  She called the midwife and described the pain and they told her to go take a shower and give them a call in another hour.  Hopefully by that point the contractions would be closer together and lasting for a longer period of time.

At 10:00 PM (seven hours after the "pre-labor" contractions had started) we got in the car and headed for the Birth Center.  Ruby (our noble basset hound) was under the watchful care of two of our friends and the cats were well stocked with food and drink, so there was nothing to focus on aside from getting this baby out.

But first, we stopped at Wawa.

Now, before anyone strings me up for being an insensitive bastard husband, the Birth Center tells you to bring a "victory" meal with you so that when labor is over, Mom can get something to eat.  The entire pregnancy Em's been craving an Italian hoagie.  And as pregnant women are supposed to avoid cold lunch meats, it's been off the menu for the past 9 months.  

It being after 10:00 PM, the only place I could think of to stop for one was Wawa.  So, while Em was writhing in her seat, I went in an picked up a Shorti.

If our baby is going to be born and raised in Delco, she might as well get used to it early.

Mission accomplished, we made it the rest of the way to the Birth Center.  The nurse on duty opened the door for us and led us to the green suite.

At this point the midwife came in to assess the situation.  Em was still under the impression that she wasn't really going to give birth yet and that they might send us back home, but after checking under the hood, it looked like we were in business -- she was 3 centimeters along and this was going to happen.

Now, as of this point Em's been awake for about 13 hours.  She tried to nap at home but the contractions kept her awake.  Already tired, she's in for another 18 hours of labor.

By 2:00 AM, the contractions were right on top of each other, but she was no where near fully dilated, so the midwife gave her something to help her sleep.  We dozed until 6:00 AM and within a few minutes of waking back up, the contractions started back up again.  The next nine hours were the part of the movie that they'd montage so that the summary of contractions, back rubs and bath tub soaks could be compiled into a pithy 3 minute segment while "Disco Inferno" played in the background.

Would that the same could have been said of that time.  By the end of it, Em was totally exhausted and we all were the worse for wear.  The Shorti has been consumed hours ago.  But by 3:30 things were in order for Em to start pushing.  

It's not like movies make it out to be.  There's definitely an intensity and some primal noises that happen -- but maybe everyone's birth experience is different.  By the time Em was ready to push, she was so exhausted that she was falling asleep between each contraction.  She would push for a minute, sleep for a minute or two and then right back at it.

I won't go into the more gory details for the most squeamish of readers out there but I will let you know this -- helping in the delivery is (as the midwifes are fond of saying) an "earthy" process.  There will be all manner of amniotic business going down.  But when you are the one to actually help pull your baby into this world, the whole thing makes instant sense. 

And for the tough guys out there -- don't think you won't cry.  The minute you see your little one safely in the arms of your baby's mama, Niagara Falls, Frankie Angel...

Pro Tip: when grabbing your baby for the first time please note that he or she will be as difficult to grab as a greased pig.  Seriously.  The midwife told me to help grab her and I couldn't get a good grip.  I suggest a good under the armpits maneuver if you can manage it.

I can't sing the praises of our midwife / nurse team.  They were a dynamic duo and the perfect pairing for what Em needed to get her through the process.  Our midwife was a spritely, pixie type with a Skrillex haircut.

(Not our midwife.  Skrillex)

Our RN was a wonderful Delco raised girl who had a great sense of humor and a no-nonsense attitude.  When Em thought she'd never get through the process, Jen was there to set her straight.  And given the super-human strength a woman seems to develop mid-delivery, the fact that Jen repeatedly encouraged Em to squeeze her hand along with mine through the contractions, was a testament to both her steadfastness and her tolerance for pain.

So, by 4:44 our baby girl, Lily Noel, was born.  Em was elated.  I thought for certain that she'd fall asleep instantly, but she started holding court.  She didn't stop talking for half an hour while the midwife delivered the placenta and made sure everything was all right.  There was a joy in her eyes unlike anything I've ever seen on anyone's face.  And when you see this little person who looks a whole lot like the best of the two of you, it's hard to believe that everything you went through actually happened at all.

By the end of the night we'd made all the calls and let everyone know Lily was born -- all 9 lbs. 14 ounces of her.  And then it was just the three of us.  At the Birth Center you have to stay a minimum of four hours and a maximum of twelve.  As Lily was born at 4:44 PM and Em's labor had been long and exhausting, they wanted us to stay the night there to keep an eye on both Mama and baby.  

Em's appetite was back after having not eaten anything in almost 24 hours, so I made another Wawa run.  

It took everything within my power to not announce to anyone who would listen that I was a new dad.  Being the closest Wawa to the Birthing Center, I'm sure I wouldn't be the first to do so, but I hardly think the guy assembling a series of Shortis behind the counter would have been impressed.

But I was on top of the world.  I couldn't be happier that the Mayans were mistaken.

A Picture (Book) is Worth a Thousand Words

And just like that, it's November.

Yikes.

Both of Em's baby showers are over and done (and a HUGE thank you to all the lovely ladies who did so much to make the events special) and now it's a waiting game.

Cuteness Level: Extreme

Luckily, we got a lot of books as gifts.  We registered for a few, but the very clever invite asked people to bring a children's book in lieu of a card.  Being a bibliophile, I was thrilled to begin to build out the baby's bookcase in advance of her arrival.

Ermagerd! Kids Berks!

It got me thinking about the children's books that were read to me as a kid -- and those that made regular circulation without my request.

Hands down, without a doubt, my number one contender for best picture book of all time is Where the Wild Things Are.  Max's misadventures and the pictures that Sendak created are easily one of the biggest influences on my creativity.  I used to have terrible nightmares as a kid, and there was something empowering about the way Max rules over all the wild things.  Big, scary monsters were nothing for Max to contend with, and when things got a bit dicey (and by dicey, I mean that they were looking to eat him) he left in his private boat and came home.  To where dinner was waiting for him.

Yes.  These are all mine.  And the one to the right is
my original copy from when i was a kid.

The stories that were read to me, without my asking, were slightly different in nature.  I can remember two in particular.

One was a book about a house and its non-human inhabitants who get sick of the people not cleaning up after themselves.  So all the anthropomorphic items in the house (I can remember one particularly pissed off tube of toothpaste) get up and leave one by one until, finally, the house sprouts legs and takes off down the street because it doesn't want to be lived in by people who don't take care of it.

I wish I could remember the name of it (Google couldn't help me this time), not so much because I'd want to purchase it all over again, but because I'd love to see what psychological scarring it caused.  How messed up is that?  Scaring a kid into cleaning the house because it might up and leave if you don't? 

In all fairness, it really didn't work.  I usually pushed all my toys and dirty clothes under the bed and then made my bed really well.  This (in my memory) worked for some time, before I started running out of clothes and my dad had to look under the bed to find them.

Because sharing bread would be Socialism.

The second book was The Little Red Hen.  If you've never heard the story, here's the CliffsNotes version: little hen does all the work preparing a loaf of bread.  She asks for help from Sleepy Cat, Lazy Dog and Noisy Duck and none of them want to lift a finger (or paw or wing).  Now, one might ask (and rightfully so) why are you befriending people whose nicknames are "Sleepy," "Lazy," and "Noisy" and then expecting them to do anything, but apparently the good people at Golden Books have decided that is beside the point.  In the end, the Little Red Hen makes a kick-ass loaf of bread and her schmuck friends all want to eat it, but she won't share because they didn't help out.

And the moral of the story is "Hold a Grudge because Lazy People Don't Deserve Your Charity."

Or something like that.  In fact, I'm pretty sure that The Little Red Hen might be mandatory indoctrination reading for future members of the Republican Party.  The Hen is red, after all.

I'm sure that there is a much clearer message inherent in The Little Red Hen but whatever it is, it's lost on me.    So, sorry about that one, Dad -- whatever morality you were trying to bake into your son got lost in translation.

I've got about six weeks to kill between now and Baby's arrival.  I'll probably use it to catch up on my reading.

Paid Maternity Leave -- Y U NO GIVE?

Today, I kick off with a graphic:

I saw this article back in May on thinkprogress.org and it rattled around in my brainspace for the past few months:

Paid_Maternity_Leave_by_Country

Here's the tl;dr version:

Now, I'm not saying we should run full force down the path of our crunchy neighbors to the north, but it is curious that Pakistan, South Africa and Mexico give mothers at least three months of paid leave.  And that's the lowest end of the spectrum.

Under FMLA (Family and Medical Leave Act), American women have their jobs protected for 12 weeks.  But FMLA only provides you with the time off and indicates that your position will still be there when you get back -- it does not stipulate that your employer must pay you during your absence.  Additionally, FMLA doesn't apply to any employer with less than 50 employees.  So if a woman works for a small company, that puts the employer in a bind, so they are free to backfill that pregnant employee if they so choose.

It's crazy to me that we tolerate this.  How are we so sadly lagging behind other developed countries in recognizing the importance of a mother's time with her child?  This isn't just crunchy-granola-breath-hippie-liberal-arts-major talk.

It's SCIENCE!, SCIENCE!!, SCIENCE!!!

Some highlights from the articles:

• Physical contact with infants keeps them calmer and helps encourage brain development.
• It also lowers stress (cortisol levels) in the mother and staves off depression.
• It allows mothers the opportunity to breast feed which has been shown to:
• Increase a child's overall health
• Increase a child's IQ
• Reduce a mother's risks for hypertension and diabetes
• And it allows mother and baby time to bond.  

How is this not important enough to gripe about? 

In 2010, Pew Research reported that about 18% of U.S. women will not give birth during their lifetimes.  Which means that 82% will.  If 50.8% of our population is female and 4 out of 5 of them are birthing a child...

That's a lot of ladies who probably would like to spend time with their babies.  

Just saying.

Rock-a-bye Baby

I've heard people refer to sleeping soundly as "sleeping like a baby."  This has got to be one of the most egregious misuses of a simile in our language today.  Unless they actually mean that they woke up every two hours, messed in their pants and threw up a little on themselves, the simile is inaccurate.

How odd are the sing-song lullabies we use to coax children to sleep?  The "Itsy-bitsy Spider" is particularly scary in my mind as what ungodly arachnid can survive drowning!?!?

Growing up I can remember my Grandmother singing "Rock-a-bye Baby" to me ... but it also could have been an episode of The Andy Griffith Show, so don't quote me on it.

Being a former English major, I figured it was high time to deconstruct the go-to lullaby to each of its lines and analyze what is really going on there.

Figure 1.1

"Rock-a-bye baby..." so far so good.  Baby is partaking in a nonsensical activity which we understand to be taking place in a cradle.

Figure 1.2

"...in the treetop./"  So, already we're in trouble.  Why anyone would place a child in a cradle in a tree is beyond me, but this is hardly a soothing scenario.  Wikipedia offers up that this may have something to do with a Native-American tradition of rocking babies to sleep in birch bark cradles that were hung from trees.  Even if this is true, it seems a far cry from a safe activity.

Figure 1.2

"When the wind blows, the cradle will rock./"  You ain't just whistling Dixie.    Generally, wind + object intended to move = movement.  So, in short -- while not an overwhelmingly amazing insight, this portion of the verse does prove important for future plot twists.

Figure 1.3

"When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall./" This seems like a rapid escalation in the course of the action.  One might assume a parent would be apt to place his or her child on a rather strong branch of a tree (were one to place a child in a tree in the first place) and so this wind must be rather on the strong side.  According to the Beaufort Scale, we're looking at a wind speed of somewhere between 62-74 mph.  And that's for "twigs and small branches" to be blown off the tree.  Someone is a derelict parent here.  I'm assuming somewhere around 50 mph one would probably remove the child from a tree.

Figure 1.4

"And down will come baby, cradle and all."  Well, at this point things really could hardly get worse.  One assumes that baby lacks the powers of levitation, thus the inevitable force of gravity will presumably pull all three elements-- bough, baby and cradle, downwards.  In fact, unless said tree were positioned directly above an alligator infested pond the situation could hardly get any worse.

This whole scenario is far from relaxing.  I don't care how soothing your voice is -- this is scary as all hell.  Thus, I posit another explanation to the purpose of this so-called nursery rhyme: to instill crippling fear in the child to encourage obedience.  

Hypothesis: babies cry for a variety of reasons, and by scaring them into submission, one may hope to curtail unnecessary crying by the implicit threat conveyed by the lullaby.  

What could be worse than being put in a tree that inevitably will break and cause grievous bodily harm and emotional distress?  I sure as hell would act right if my parents threatened to throw me out of a tree.

         

   

The Home Stretch

It's hard to believe that the 7th month is already upon us.

In the first trimester it was like we were continually headed uphill -- 12 weeks seemed like it would never come and we were continually itching to tell everyone that we were pregnant.  But time moved like molasses in winter and we were constantly finding creative ways to explain Em's continual aversion to foods.  She was sick non-stop.  I had to stop wearing cologne altogether and switch to the blandest deodorant that I could find.  She slept somewhat like a house cat and we would see each other for about an hour every day.  I would grill outside (weather permitting) and then eat by myself.

I had more than my fair share of hotdogs and baked beans for those three months.

Almost like a switch got flipped in her insides, the second trimester started and I got my wife back.  She was hungry without as much nausea, so I could cook in the house again.  She could stay awake past 8:30, so we could actually hang out when we got home from work.  We started actually doing stuff on weekends again and got to get out of the house and see friends again for more than an hour or two at a time.

Now we're in the home stretch and it's like an all new ball game.

If you've never experienced "nesting" firsthand or as a partner or spouse, let me describe it like this.

Everything you always ignored as being slightly annoying around the house becomes the most obnoxious and nagging thing ever.  Some women, apparently, only experience nesting in the last days or weeks before delivery.  Some have it plague them continuously throughout the pregnancy.  For us, it's been the most intense since we came into the last trimester.

And I say "us," because I have the same twitchy feeling whenever I'm being idle.  It hasn't been sympathy pains or hunger -- but this nesting thing makes me neurotic and feel the need to make sure everything is ready for this baby to come home.

Now, I know babies won't notice all the niceties around the house when they get home.  They want a warm, soft bed, plenty of eats, and a clean diaper.

I think it's possibly one of the more awesome aspects of biological design that one gets so ecstatic and eager for the child to get here.  I feel like I'm ready for her to show up tomorrow (but totally don't -- because your bookcase isn't built yet) and I'm ready to start the next phase of our life together as a motley trio.

It's going to be strange being the only guy in a house of all female creatures.

...

So, this was not my funniest post.  Given the circumstances, I'd like to leave you with a moment of zen:

I could watch that all day.

Science, Math and Biology! Oh, my!

Disclaimer: I do not profess to be a statistician, mathematician nor a biologist.  I did, however, do really well in 9th grade biology, so everything that follows is probably pretty sound.  Just saying.

My dad said something that's been looping around in my head like the Mexican Hat Dance on repeat.

If you want to know what that experience is like, click the following link.  But don't say I didn't warn you:

Mariachi Mexican Hat Dance

Why suffer alone when you can take others down with you?

Anyway (You watched it, didn't you?  Despite my warnings.  I see how it's going to be between us.  *Sigh*) my dad said, "You know, you can't control how your kids are going to turn out."

My first and immediate response was something like this:

What a versatile visual.

I mean.  If everyone could control how their children turned out, we'd all be doctors and lawyers and other assorted well-compensated adults.  Rather than a bunch of hooligans.

Hooligans

But I digress.

I remember from Mr. Fetterman's 9th grade biology class, doing diagrams where you would show dominant and recessive genes from both the parents -- Punnett Squares was what they were called (and no -- before you laud me for my amazing memory, I just Googled "gene diagram for dominant and recessive" and it was my first search result.  I swear, we're going to be the first generation with worse memory functions than our parents) and they were a good pictorial representation of how genes play out and what the chances are of certain attributes showing up in the child.

I've got all sorts of things I can't stand about myself -- my inability to play Tchaikovsky as he intended, my struggle to break the four minute mile, the fact that I find it a physical impossibility to get my hand to the bottom of a Pringles container -- stuff like that.

There's also stuff I like about myself.  I'm far too humble and good looking to go into detail, but you get my drift.

My wife is the same way.  Sure -- 99.9% of her is practically perfect in every way

Despite popular opinion, I am not, in fact, married to Mary Poppins.

but even she (I'm sure) has a thing or two she wouldn't mind seeing skipping a generation.

So, being the science-minded academic that I am, I put together the following Punnett Square:

 Figure 1.1

The thing about a Punnett Square is that every quadrant has an equal chance of occurring.  So it's a 1 in 4 chance we'll have the most cherubic baby ever and it's just as likely that we could give Rosemary's baby a run for his money.

Child A is like winning the lottery.  She's well behaved and intelligent and smart and kind and pretty and self-motivated and all the things you would hope for your child to be.  Child D is the child your parents wished on you when you were bad.  "I hope you have one just like you" is actually an old Italian curse.

Odds are we're going to have one that's some mash-up of our best and worse qualities.  And, seeing as the both of us seem to have turned out relatively competent and self-sufficient, the odds are our child has more than a fighting chance at being a decent human being.

But this begs the question which I posed in a previous entry:

Where do a$$hole children come from?

And I think I've found my answer:

When demonspawns have babies with a normal person, the chart begins to look like this:

Figure 1.2

The chances of having a normal child remain constant, but the odds of a demonspawn are now 50%!  It's a flip of the coin, people!  This is why dads are so freaked out about their daughters dating hooligans!  It's a biological imperative to protect the species from self-destruction.

But even with the visual, if my exploits on SEPTA are any indicator, the tide is quickly turning, and more and more demonspawn are being born...thus, we must turn to science for the answer"

Figure 1.3

And this is why people should need a license to breed.  It's not my opinion.  It's science and math.  Just saying.