Key Match ups in the birth of our baby.

Apparently fifty percent of children are born when the moon is full. It's a statistic that scientists don't like to tell you because it proves that astrology was right all along or something like that. Anyhow, scientifically speaking, it is the moon's gravitational pull on the earth, as seen with the tides, that actually pulls the baby out of the uterus and into the world. Ergo; with Sunday being a full moon and our induction scheduled for 7:30 P.M., it's a race between man and nature. Moon and baby-inducing drugs. The moon is getting three points from the odds makers right now because man already walked all over its face a few decades ago. However, it would be a mistake to underestimate the moon, which has been screwing around with the oceans for a pretty long time, and despite its rather blank exterior, the moon has long been holding in animosity that it can't wait to unleash in this match up.

Key match up: Wife's uterus vs. the gravitational pull of the moon.

The moon has literally eons of experience in tugging babies out of women and turning regular folks into werewolves on this day. The moon has seen everything that a human being can throw at it.

However, the baby in my wife's uterus has put up an unprecedented defense, giving no sign of wanting to leave despite being overdue by nearly a week. We're expecting to see a camp stove and some baked beans in the next sonogram.

Advantage: Moon by a smidgen.

Key match up: Wife's anxiety over induction vs. the power of science

Science has a fairly short history of inducing women to give birth to babies. In fact, throughout most of human history women just had babies when they were good and ready. However, science has recently developed a way to make women give birth, and they are pretty excited about getting a chance to try it out. Science has given S a full ten days after her due date to take care of things before they have to step in and fix it.

Wife's anxiety over induction will probably be overcome, but the chances that she gives up the ghost entirely are pretty low. We expect a hard fought game between medical staff and wife as she pushes them to give her a low dosage of pitocin to try and keep the birth natural.


Advantage: The power of the Copernican world view and such.


Key match up: Natural birth vs. epidural etc.

If the wife doesn't have the baby by Sunday, at the moon's behest, the chances of her holding out against the intense blitz the hospital staff is going to come at her with is pretty low. They'll hit you from all angles, running a nine person multiple front against the weakened team of pregnant wife and mildly confused husband. This strategy is going to make it hard to hold out against key players like epidural, who, like the sirens in the Odyssey, lure you in to feeling good and then eat you alive, or at the very least prevent you from being able to move around.

If the wife wants to have a natural birth it is important that she focuses on spicy foods like she never has before. We're going to need to see an eggs smothered in tabasco breakfast followed by a bull of curried pumpkin soup for lunch and even the real salsa from Guapo's for dinner. This, combined with a bumpy car ride, followed by a long walk on the tow path are going to put her in prime position, with the help of the moon, and the conjugal visit trailer, to give a natural birth and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

Advantage: Tabasco.

Key Match Up: Husband's ability to remain conscious and fight with the medical staff over natural birthing measures vs. the overwhelming desire to feint at blood and cower in the face of clear authority.

While the husband has absolutely no fear that he can stay upright through the whole pregnancy, it has been recommended that he be stationed up around the head so as to keep his eyes unsullied. The husband has been known, when cornered and or tired, to lash out violently and have very strong opinions about how things should be done.

Though the husband claims that he'll be fine years of wussing out over a variety of blood and guts shows on television leave the outcome in doubt. Also, his fear of bossy nurses and figures of authority, tracing back to an almost pathologically shy childhood and still a surprisingly sensitive adult for someone who jokes around so much, make the chance that he screws up his role as natural birth facilitator pretty likely.

Advantage: Toss up. The bossy wife may pull through and help on this one.

Prediction based on flimsy evidence:

The baby will be born on Sunday morning at 11 A.M. If we're lucky, she'll look like the cute kid at the top of this blog.


Tomorrow we'll take a look at other key match ups like:

Baby vs. breast the case of latching.

Whether the husband is able to sleep at home after the baby is born vs. no way in hell will the wife allow this

Will reading nineteen books about pregnancy make the wife prepared vs. reading one book half-assedly make the husband more prepared

The days keep going by

I'd like to think I'm a mess that you'd wear with pride.



S: Are you going to cry when the baby is born?

M: I don't see why not.

It's weird to sort of floating through life waiting for the next big thing to happen. I go to work; I process loans; I mail out books; but I'm not really all there. I keep waiting for the my cell phone to ring mid-afternoon and to briskly walk into the changing day streaked with blue. I'm waiting for the arrival of a new person to take up residence in the back of my mind.

Let's first lay blame at the feet of one lady from D.C. River Keepers who keeps calling me in the middle of the day to set up an appointment. Look, if it's between the hours of 8:30 and 5:30 P.M. don't call me unless it's an emergency or if you're having my baby. It's a pretty strict rule, I know, but I probably should have laid it down to Michele from River Keepers, so she wouldn't keep asking me if I'd like a rain garden appointment at 7 A.M. when I was thinking that I'd be rushing off to the hospital instead.

Honestly, I just really can't wait to be on the other side of this, so I can dispense my old school wisdom to the uninitiated. Gems like:

Get your sleep now.

They don't come with a manual.

Don't tell your wife she's looking bigger, tell her she's looking prettier.

Two words: Counter pressure.

Babies don't require much, just all of your attention.

Do you know how to change a diaper? Well, don't worry, you'll learn.

Most babies are made of an aluminium steel alloy and can be traded on the black market for some pretty amazing things.

If you have twins you're legally obligated to give on to the state as part of the most recent bail out package enacted by our socialist Congress.

Bring food to the hospital; both of you shouldn't have to suffer.

Babies, like cats, sometimes just need to be left alone to figure things out.

Singing to your wife's stomach can increase the babies IQ by at least 100 points as long as you do as you give them a strict diet of Elton John.



You know, the sort of stuff people don't always give you right off. I'll probably be putting the whole thing in book form, and I'll call it something like: Chicken Soup for little souls or something clever like that. I'll probably win an award, which will make my stubborn unborn daughter proud at some point later in her life, probably between the ages of six and nine. And when she does finally arrive into the world, blue and mushy, I'll send a tweet out there, don't worry.

Uh...Minus Four Days and counting

Probably the greatest thing about being a few days overdue to have this baby (minus how awesome this must be for Steph to get to hog the baby for another few days) is having people actually disappointed to see you.

P: Oh. Why are you still here?

M: Actually my wife had the baby, and your'e not going to believe this, the thing is crying all the time. It's like, what about my needs tiny little human being? What about my needs? Do you think I like changing diapers all day? I've got big things to do. Big things. And do you know what that new little human being said to me?

P: It's probably best you came in to work today.

Anyhow, there is nothing quite like the feeling of being unwanted to start off a work day in the right manner. The only better way to start a work day is to not start the damn thing at all because they call it work for a reason.

An aside that has very little to do with babies and much to do with me having bad knees that I hope are doing okay when our little bundle of mushy facedness arrives.

At the doctor's office for the second time in the past three months for a messed up knee.

D: Your ligaments are in good shape.

M: That's good.

D: And I don't think we need to do an MRI because last time it didn't turn out to be anything.

M: Okay, that's fine, but what the heck is going on with my knees? Why am I feeling something kind of pull and then having it be sore for two weeks.

D: You're getting old and you're still playing sports.

M: Oh. Is there anything you can give me for that?

I can only assume that when he said getting old he actually meant, "You are looking virulent and strong. You could probably father an entire Abrahamic Covenants worth of children. I admire your vigor and fine looking knees."

In other news, we still don't have a child. I'm now actively expecting S to never actually have this child. I don't sit at work wondering if she'll go into labor. I sit at work wondering when four thirty will roll around, so I can get the heck out of dodge. If this baby drags things on until Monday we'll be forced to miss Thanksgiving as well, and I'll already have something on my "List of ways in which you made our lives harder." It's a list that is a must have for any good parent. S is currently reading a book about attachment parenting, so I'm trying to counterbalance it by reading a book about detachment parenting.

Ex:

B: Crying.

S: That baby is crying?

M: What does it mean to cry really? How am I to bridge this nearly interminable gap between two distant souls and understand that I use a term like souls rat-

S: Change that baby!!!!

I'm pretty excited to learn more from this book!!

Tonight I read a book to the obstinant little girl trying to coax her out int the world to hear more of its ilk. S claims that she's gong to end up illiterate because I have a tendency to just ignore the words and make up the plot as I go along. I think it's going to wind up with her being extremely creative, and we all know how useful that skill has turned out to be for me.

S: Can I get you to help me hang this mirror?

M: Do you want the poem to be in free verse or iambic pentameter.

S: Just hand me screw.

M: That's what-

S: Grow up.


Other things:

M: You know, after seven years I think I've finally figured out both of our love languages. My love language is being left alone, and your love language is bossing me around.

One day

Only a little part of me is going to miss those days, and I'm sure that on some rainy afternoons I'll stare out the window and recall them fondly. "But these three cubic feet of blood and bone and meat are all I love and know."



Let's communicate right now through the vehicle of music.



But wait, none of these songs are about babies? Are you merely mourning the loss of some idyllic youth that you never had? That's an unfair question. A better answer would be that I'm moody and sometimes that mood is sad. Sad, of course, like most words, doesn't exactly communicate what I'm feeling. And I wish that you could sit here next to me and we could slide through the thin skins we've stretched over so much bone. And I look forward to holding a little girl who demands nothing from me, except all my attention, who won't wander away at the wrong moment, but will just be rocked slowly in my arms while the music plays soft and low and the moment becomes something more than ephemeral.




Okay, enough time has passed. It's time for the show to get on the road. Is that the saying? I'm not sure. I think I'll probably know when I'm finally a dad. We're roughly two hours away from it finally being okay to have this baby. Note: a number of folks have been treating me as though the due date is the actual date our baby will be born, and while we'd like that to be the case only five percent of women, according to S, who has read like thirty books about pregnancy, actually give birth on their due date. Ie: We could be talking about zeros tomorrow night people.

I'm through being excited. I'm just tired of S hogging the baby all to herself for the past nine months. Unquestionably, it is time to share!

Day 3/2

I had no earthly clue that this song played in Ice Age, a movie I originally detested but later grew to love as I got old. Incidentally this reminds me of the movie "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," which I thought was amazing when I saw it in the greatest movie theater in the history of movie theaters with laughing and clapping. As it turns out, without the greatest movie theater ever it's kind of a trite little piece of crap movie. I guess what I'm saying is that under the right circumstances I can see why people riot, all it takes is the right sort of crowd and I'd be tossing a trash can through windows and looting stores. Parenting 101.



I'm not sure I've been keeping an accurate tab on how many days it is until S has the little one, mainly because I've never really known the due date. Anyhow, it's sort of a semantics of counting type thing, so I'm going to go with three/two days counting popularized in the ancient culture of the Inca in what is now Peru. The Incas...I can't wait to come out with that comprehensive made up history I've been working on for the last five minutes, New York times best seller list here I...sigh.

In the evening we sit in the bathroom in the dark. The light from the hallway makes a geometric shape of light on the floor. And while you lie in the water, half-submerged, I spin a lighter between my fingers and speculate about the color of her eyes. It's decided, after a time, that I'd prefer them to be blue. "Certainly," you say, "though if we have enough we're bound to have one with your brown eyes." I tell you that I expect her to be bald and you smile.

Time passes, the water cools, and you listen to me talk to you about the pain in my knee. It is discovered during our brief my brief psychoanalytic session that I am sad, not because of the pain in my knee, but because I wanted everything to be perfect for her arrival. "I don't want to be gimping around the hospital room," I say. You remind me that nothing in the world will ever be perfect. "Nonsense," I say, "what about this right here. The dying wick of the candle, the water hung round you like silk, and the two of us talking about the way we'd like things to be. Doesn't this remind me of when we were young and first falling in love, how we'd pretend that things were going to be different for us." I didn't say any of that of course, but I could tell that you understood from the way you kept so still in that universe of sound.

Post Number 365!!!! Four Days

We're almost there Ingrid.



Filling a mug that gets way too hot and always burns your hand way too full of apple cider.

M: I know this is a bad idea. (Closes the microwave door)
S: You do realize we’re going to have a child any day now?
M: Give me some credit. I know this isn’t going to turn out well.
S: I’m not sure that I should give you credit for that.
(Minutes later)
M: Crap, I spilled it all over the stove. I kind of saw that one coming.
S: You’re going to make a good day, but you’re still going to be yourself aren’t you.
M: Probably.

For the more visually inclined a conversation about electrocution and toasters:




And, as we bear down on the due date. Listen, I'm taking these doctors at their word. I assume that they didn't just create this due date out of thin air. If my child is not born on the due date I am going to be pissed. I think that's reasonable. I mean, are you telling me we can walk on the moon, maybe?, but we can't predict what day a child is going to born? That's why I'm calling an astrologist to help us predict a more accurate day. I think modern medical science really got off track when it went away from palm reading.

Tonight, in honor of our soon to be baby, we watched a movie called babies, that was about babies. As it turns out children do just fun eating rocks. The prospect of raising the lil gal on a strict diet of dirt and rocks has me recalculating that whole, you'll spend a million dollars raising a child from age 5-9 or whatever the heck it is now. Guess what, crazy statistic, we're feeding this child rocks. I don't know how much of a savings it will be since I'm not sure how much rocks cost to buy in bulk.

Honestly, the main thing you learn from watching this movie is that kids need constant stimulation and baby yoga and lots of intricate toys to turn out well-adjusted and happy. Minus all of these amenities children are pretty much miserable and asking if they can get a Nintendo, and your'e thinking, really? I had an NES when I was like seven and look at me now? Okay, it's cute, I said it. Enough already.

M: Is there anything we can do that doesn't involve you talking about how much your belly itches and then asking me to look at your feet?

S: Is that not fun for you?

M: The luster is starting to wear off.

So yeah, one day closer to welcoming this little girl into the welcoming arms of the world. Well, the world.

Five days...

Let's get Ryan Adams and Adam Duritz together and see what chicanery comes about.


This morning, as I was lying in bed, barely swimming up from beneath the tendrils of sleep, I began to consider a child. I didn't do it in an abstract way, moving through what a weekend might look like. I thought about having a child as a physical entity in my arms, a screaming little entity who is almost entirely dependent on S and I for everything. I did what I imagine most sane people have already done months before, I panicked. I started counting the ways in which I would probably end up failing this little baby: diapers, swaddling, general knowledge of what a cry means.

I'm kind of torn between the part of myself that says, "Hey idiot, people have been doing this for thousands of years. You're not exactly reinventing the wheel." And the other part of me that says, "Panic!!!" Or "Sure, but none of those people was me. If I'd been around for a few thousand years I probably wouldn't be so panicked."

Here's what I know about babies.

1) They scream during diaper changes right off the bat. This will be extremely hard for me because I'll want her to be perfect for those judgmental nurses. Also, I'll want her to change her own diaper and stop being such a leech on mom and dad.

2) Babies like to be swaddled. I don't know how to swaddle. At what point in my life did I think I'd be having an internal discourse about my ability to swaddle? Answer: never.

3) I'm probably going to have issues around meconium.

Some other things I'm hoping for:

1) That the baby pops out and says immediately, "I hope you've gotten caught up on your sleep just because I'd like to hear it from someone a bit cuter for once.

2) That the next person who has anything to say about parenthood that isn't positive, to me or S falls off a steep cliff...into a bevy of soft mattresses. I just want a little scare.

3) That our baby, upon arrival in the nursery compliments the fine craftsmanship that went into putting together a room full of paisley. Also, I hope at some point she can explain to me where paisley came from.

4) That sharks do not ever take over the world. I don't like sharks and neither should you.

5) That when the baby is crying in the middle of the night I remember that everything in life passes quickly, and that there will be a day when I miss waking up to that little girl and can't believe how old she's gotten.

Six days....

For those who enjoy lists about books that were good:

Against my better judgment I'm considering making it a goal to work my way through the combined list by the end of 2010, so I'll be ready for the next ten years. Chances this will actually happen are verging somewhere just above zero. And, one more essay by someone who didn't exactly love the wildly inappropriate review B.R. Myers gave to Freedom in the Atlantic.


Dance music that doesn't suck.



According to my mother I've been excited about being a parent since I was three years old. She claims, claims, that I used a truck to drive my older sister's dolls around the house occasionally crashing them into the walls, which clearly shows a boyish lust for mayhem. However, according to my mother, I was merely giving all of the dolls a ride in my truck, and it was probably, my insertion, an early onset of me being a little remiss in attending to the details, and perhaps, as well, an early sign that I was unable to calculate angles and turns as they related to the corners of walls. Like most things in life, I've no earthly clue if this is true.

I seem to remember, lord only knows how many years ago, making some sort of claim that I wanted to be a young father. And though I'd like to credit that moment when I was still a pre-teen or young teenager, and I hope we're not interpreting it the wrong way, I merely meant I would be excited to have kids one day not impregnate someone at fifteen, as proof that I've always wanted this to happen, I also remember saying hundreds of times to Steph that I didn't want children, that I thought I'd always be too selfish. It's really a matter of deciding which of those memories to indulge and impose as true.

After college I spent three years doing child care work for kids aged 3-10. In many ways, I loved it. Working with children allowed me to indulge my own inner child, and now I was big enough to win at any game that I wanted, minus connect four against a five year old recently immigrated child from China named George who is probably going to end up as a world champion, and the ability to make a connection with kids. You see, the great things about kids is that they'll say things like, "You're my best friend," hell, they'll tug on your arm and insist that you come play with them. When was the last time you had someone literally begging for your company? In fact, in a lot of ways I remember those long sunny afternoons in Santa Barbara, CA quite fondly. And if I allow myself to step through the thin veil of memory and into the scene, I watch myself tossing a basketball back and forth with a little blond haired girl who is telling me what it feels like to be left alone. I remember wishing that I could one day have a daughter like her.

Or, I could remember that miserable year spent in Ann Arbor, Michigan, caring for rabid snot nosed kids while listening to inestimably annoying thick Michigan accents. I can remember sleeping in my car during my lunch break, shivering with a full coat on, dreading a return to ABC's and bowls of crackers and cheese. And again, you see, you can stand at the crossroads of two memories and decide, which of the two paths that diverge you will take, realizing that you have taken them both.

Years from now I'm fairly certain that I'll be looking back, God willing, at the life of a child nearly grown up, and I'll long for the days when I was not yet packing for college or buying cars. I'll long for the days before I'd even changed a diaper, when I was still waiting in the dark for everything to change all at once.

Eight Days

When your wife is going to have a baby in eight days people tend to ask you crazy shi- like, "Are you nervous?" To which I respond, without fail, "what the hell do I have to be nervous about? Have you seen a video of labor, that shi- is intense. I don't think I'm nervous at all, but if I was..." at this point my interlocutor generally turns away in what can be called mild disgust or disdain. Sometimes I have to ask them to clarify which of the two they are trying to display.

Anyhow, just to head off any further questions, I am way too uninformed to be nervous about this thing. The closest I've come to taking care of an infant is playing dolls with a few little girls back in the day when I used to teach pre-school. I'm pretty sure the dolls are just like quieter and creepier versions of babies. I've not changed a diaper in my life. I have stood by at least a handful of times while others did it and secretly critiqued them for not doing it correctly. By correctly I mean, extraordinarily quickly. As far as I'm concerned you're just trying to get in and get out without getting peed on. I pretty much use that as a motto for most things in my life.

When you're eight days from having a kid it's almost like being months from having a kid. I mean, you've gradually been accumulating things for the past few months, but, in general, until you have the kid the whole ordeal is a supposition, a philosophical consideration. However, a baby crying at 2 A.M. or pooping twelve times a day isn't as much a philosophical consideration so much as a concrete fact. However, until that concrete fact is a living and breathing ball of baby it's hard to imagine what it will be like when things are different. I realize that most human beings in history have on one or the other side of this equation, but it doesn't make it any more explicable to me. I've never had to give a baby a bath in the kitchen sink. Apparently this will become old hat.

I guess if a person caught me in the right mood I might admit to being a little bit nervous. I mean, babies are small and fragile things that shouldn't be dropped, but are really easy to carry as footballs. This seems like a danger. In general though, I am feeling as stated above, too ignorant about this whole process to be particularly nervous. Occasionally I get nervous about the myriad of decisions that are required in order to be a functioning adult, and I vaguely recall the awful intensity of being in my early teens, but these sorts of things are very far away for our little girl. I suppose in the upcoming weeks the best thing that we'll be able to offer her is just love and care, and we won't even worry what her political views are or whether she'll be the valedictorian in her class.

Although, in truth, the two are related, I'm guessing. When you lavish that much love and attention on something the expectations, not in a bad parent way, are probably lifted pretty damn high, in the same way that you wouldn't want someone to criticize anything that you've worked very hard to create. And let's not even touch the implications of the whole "create" thing, as nature vs. nurture always turns out to be nature w/ nurture.

I'm holding off on being nervous and excited because I think I'll have enough of that in my future. For the time being I'm going with that great old poet Thomas Gray ignorance is bliss.


Thomas Gray


To each his sufferings: all are men,
Condemned alike to groan;
The tender for another's pain,
The unfeeling for his own.
Yet ah! why should they know their fate?
Since sorrow never comes too late,
And happiness too swiftly flies.
Thought would destroy their paradise.
No more; where ignorance is bliss,
'Tis folly to be wise.

Nine Days

We're nine days away from lift off here in Washington, D.C. Unless the doctors are wrong, in which case, we may not even be having a little girl, I mean, it could be a triceratops or something. Think how popular that would make us? We'd probably be on the front of Time or Star magazine and maybe even have our own reality tv show about the rigors of raising a dinosaur in the modern world. And really, I think I'd only need about a season and a half to get my memoir published.

Our little one appears to be a highly advanced creature. Thus far, we feel like she's leaning towards soccer because she loves to kick S in the right side around where her ribs used to be. These solid kicks are probably way stronger than you're going to see from your average child. She's in like the top ten percentile for baby kicking ability, I'd guess, which is pretty much the same thing as the scientific method. Though, she's not really moving around a lot, so we're thinking that she'll probably just play goalie. This will lead to all of us eating some delicious orange slices at half time of her games, I'll be the coach, except maybe we'll get a boy to play on the team and copy the plot of the movie Ladybugs, which I haven't seen, which will turn out to be a "delicious" way to spend our time. I put it in quotes because I enjoy orange slices.

We're also pretty excited that she has her head so far down. This shows the sort of obedience that you want in any child, and provides further fodder for my whole, I want a girl child first because they're easier conjecture. Clearly, most children are still busy flipping around and stuff, but we've got a little ball of energy ready to shoot out into the world after nineteen hours of labor or something. Is labor hard? Don't ask me, I'll be talking with a prison guard in the waiting room. Mad Men anyone?

I've also begun to speak to S's belly during the evening in halting Spanish, so that she'll arrive in the world fully bilingual, capable of saying things like, Hello, and how's it going? but in Spanish. We're also hopeful that this speedy brain development will lead her to be on the cover of Star. When you get right down to it, the best reason to have a baby is to try and get briefly famous, so you can publish a memoir. Thomas Jefferson said that, and probably then a bunch of other neat stuff that should help his corpse get elected to the house.

I've also noticed that the little bundle of what the heck are we going to do with this tiny human being who cries and poops a lot, as we've lovingly taken to calling her, enjoys it when I raise my voice. This shows a good and willingness to listen to my commanding voice, which bodes well for the future when I'm giving her orders like, "You'll leave this house in that outfit when hell freezes over!" And then we'll probably sit down and have a nice talk about what a Christian actually considers hell, like whether we're meaning Dante's Inferno leveled hell or absence from God, or ice or whatever because that's the sort of thing seventeen year old girls like to do on a Friday night, I hope.