I don't know nothin' about birth and no babies

“Well, that was a thing,” I recall saying after it was all over… or just beginning, depending on your point of view. My wife was holding our newborn, the doctors and nurses were running around doing… something, and I was remaining calm—because that’s what you’re suppose to do. In the days that followed, I’ve tried to form some description, some colorful narrative logically linking the melon in my wife’s stomach to the mini human poop-a-tronic we now possess--A description that could somehow compete with “a thing”.

But then I realized, “Ben, you’re being too ambitious. Start small—try fixing the Middle East or explaining gravity first. Also, stop talking to yourself.”

Some things are really just too big to fully grasp. Have you ever seen the "Double Rainbow Guy" on YouTube? That’s what happens when you over-think something. I mean, I’m certain there are some very self-actualized people out there that have it totally figured out; a logical path that starts with “Wow, my wife looks nice tonight” to “Wow, I’m a dad!” to “Wow, I’m a grandpa!” to “Wow, I’m dead!”. But I don’t want to wander around in the forest with a camcorder asking the Internet “what does it all mean????”. So, that leaves me in the precarious position of just not really knowing how this could all be possible.


OK, let’s take it from the top…


January’ish 2010:
“Wow honey, you look nice tonight…”


Fast forward 39 weeks:

“Ok, Mr. and Mrs. Davis, we’re all set in the OR. The C-Section should take about 40 minutes. We’re just going to do a quick ultrasound to make sure the baby is still breach and then…hmmm.”
“Sorry?”
“Well, I’m going to have another nurse take a look but I think the baby’s head is down!” That would have been nice to know before you went vein hunting with the IV and pumped my wife full of ephedrine when she passed out.


“Oh… Good… So now what?”
“Now you go home and wait! Congratulations!”


I’ll always remember this as my first experience being a parent--if you have a plan, expect something different to happen instead.


Fast forward another 10 days:
“Hello, this is Ben,’ I said answering my phone—an admittedly silly way to greet anyone who already likely knows who they’re calling.
“Hey, it’s me. I think my water broke.”


Fast forward another 14 hours:
“Ok Erica, it’s time push. Ben, grab her leg.”
“Her what? Do what?”
“I’m in some pain,” my wife chimed in below me while I tried to remember what a “leg” was.
“The epidural bag is empty. I’ll order a new one.” The nurse replied.


Fast forward 14 minutes:
“Where the f*ck is the Epidural bag!” my wife chimed in from below me.
“I got it!” said a new nurse entering the room. She did indeed have what appeared to be a fresh epidural IV bag in her hand which she confidently carried over to the locked plexi-glass wall container. “Oh! one of ya’ll got the key?” she questioned the room. The room did not respond.


I looked down at my wife now in obvious discomfort—my mind racing for something soothing to say and insanely the only thing my mind could generate was Patrick Swayze declaring ‘Pain don’t hurt!’ in his 1980’s classic, Roadhouse. I wisely kept the quote to myself though and in the intervening seconds which did their best to mimic hours, the “key situation” had been resolved. Painkiller was now once again flowing into Erica’s spine.


Fast forward 3 minutes:
“Here she is!” the resident announced. I had only looked away for a split second to see Erica’s face when all of the sudden, there she was--pregatron was no more.

To say doctors handle newborns with care would be a little overly generous: Ew?!?! Should you be....? Geez!  Really?!?! my mind raced as two nurses held my freshly liberated daughter in what looked like a terribly unnatural position before quickly moving her over to the baby station.


“She’s ok,” I said to Erica. I was, in fact, not at all sure she was “ok”. Although, I had done a shameful lack of research about this particular phase of things, I was instinctively certain that a blue baby was not the preferred state of affairs. The nurses did a great job of not seeming concerned about it while using a tube to suck goo out of her lungs and whacking the bottoms of her feet to get her attention. I waited for what seemed like forever as my “She’s Ok” hung in the air and gradually dissipated. What would Patrick Swayze say, I thought...


And then we heard her cry.... it was actually more of a strangled squeak. It reminded me of a sound I made once when a friend of mine in the 1st grade decided it would be funny to punch me directly in the solo-plexus when I wasn’t looking. But whatever--Erica and I both let out a relieved breath as Etta Lin Davis let out the first few breaths of her new life.




Fast Forward 2 Months:
What!?!?!?! Come on!!!! I said to myself as I examined the contents of Etta’s most recent diaper. I really thought I was going to hate changing diapers. But as it turns out, it’s our bonding time. I’m the only person for whom she peacefully submits when the Etta McPooStank Express arrives every 2 hours... that train is never late.


There are, in fact, a host of things that you simply adapt to; most notably, the lack of uninterrupted sleep.  I’ll will refrain from complaining about sleep or lack thereof as Erica is definitely absorbing the brunt of that particular adjustment.  Regardless, we are now being rewarded with small but growing indications that Etta knows we exist;  a tentative smile, a short giggle (typically followed by a wet diaper), a brief moment of eye contact...

As these fascinating changes increase in frequency, so do the questions in my own mind about her future and our new reality as parents.  There are so many questions: Will we go private school or public?  Will she play sports and/or play music? Will she like early Radiohead or late Radiohead?  Will we raise her Atheist or Agnostic?  There are so many forks in the road ahead of her and our time as parents for erecting signposts seems all the sudden very short.  No doubt that for her, it will seem even shorter.  In fact, not until she has her own kids will she understand how responsible we were for screwing her up or keeping her out of trouble long enough to be successful.  No pressure.


So, YouTube-Double-Complete-Rainbow-Guy, a Double Rainbow arises from two internal reflections of light rays exiting rain droplets at an angle of 50 degrees° rather than the 42°degrees for the red primary bow...


I eagerly await your response the the meaning of birth, babies and life in general.


==

B4 Baby

So we’re having a baby… tomorrow… at 1 o’clock.  Still trying to get my head around that. 

I won’t be diving into the prevailing wisdom or lack thereof regarding planned C-Sections.  My as of yet unborn, yet insufferably stubborn daughter refuses to assume the proper position.  Can’t blame her—I also hate being upside-down while in the dark and covered in goo.  So a few weeks ago, we applied for a birthday and got September 27^th… tomorrow… at 1 o’clock.

My wife has done an excellent job preparing for this day; devouring books, attending classes, ignoring me—honing all the maternal skills she’ll need in the coming days.  Me, I finally figured out how to get the car seat adapter into the stroller (it was a bitch).  I despise preparation—it makes me feel so… unspontaneous.  Granted, a baby has a different spectrum of cost/benefit as it relates to being unprepared.  But I’ve set my objectives very low.  All I want to accomplish is to not accidentally kill my baby—that’s all.  If she grows up to be president of the United States, well that’s just swell.  On inauguration day, I will look over at my wife as my baby girl strolls to the podium and remind her, “See, I told you I wouldn’t accidentally kill her” and “Do we have to pay taxes now?”

I will miss my wife being pregnant.  Over the last 9 months, I’ve developed a series of nicknames for her that I will lament including: Pregasaurus, Pregatron (pregnant robot from the future), and the Mayor of Pregopolis… this list goes on.  I’ve grown accustomed, to being replaced by Erica’s pregnancy pillow and having to flex my stomach muscles when pulling her off the couch.  I’ve grown fond of watching objects balanced on my wife’s belly move around as if by telekinesis.  I have involuntarily bonded with a pot belly.  Is this how people fall in love in Wisconsin?  But I digress…

In any case, people have told me that I can forget about anyone caring about my needs or feelings from this point forward.  But I really think people fail to understand how self-centered I am.  As soon as I see this baby, I will work on convincing her that this is really all about me—at which point I have no doubt she will literally poop all over the notion.  Speaking of poop, I consider myself fortunate to have so many close friends with young children who have not displayed the slightest hesitation in regaling me with poop and pee filled stories--usually over dinner.  As a result, I have been entirely desensitized. I can stare poo right in face and not blink.  I can eat food and think about fecal matter at the same time… Thank you dear friends for this advantageous gift!

I feel like I should have something deeply philosophical to say at this point—an observation on the metaphysical and biological confluence of forces and chance that in roughly sixteen hours will graduate me from son to father, from independent to ‘depended upon’, from husband & wife to family… But I got nothin’.  Well, that’s not entirely true I suppose.  Yet, on the eve of this most momentously unique yet ubiquitous human experience, I struggle to put my feelings into words.    Thank god there’s football on tonight—the seasonal cure for thinking too hard.  Perhaps Al Michales will come up with something deep to say…

To my daughter; if one day you should google me out of boredom after I’ve grounded you for staying at the mall two hours later than you were supposed to an not answering your cell phone when I called, just know that there was a time when you were the most exciting thing that ever happened to us.  And if you insist on dating boys we don’t approve of, we will lock you in the basement forever.  

Recovery, Day 4

Modesty prevents me from detailing my most significant milestone today.  Let’s just say my connection to the Cook County Water & Sewage Treatment department has been restored.  While this was undeniable evidence of my progressing recovery, it is possible that I may have over-estimated my recuperation slightly.  Today, my fourth day of hanging out, I decided to try and be productive—nothing overly ambitious, just mounting a screen door.  The good news is, we have a perfectly mounted screen door now.  The bad news—I am utterly exhausted and my somewhat clear nasal passages have swollen and become an impassable pocket of goo once again. 

Well, lesson learned.  There’s a reason the doc told me to limit physical activity and it wasn’t because he thought I was too skinny and needed to curl up with a bag of potato chips on the couch for 7 days to plump up.

In other news, sleeping is still a bit of a challenge.  Although mouth breathing is a pastime enjoyed by lower order species and my old high school football team that used to pick on me, it does not lend itself to falling asleep.  The funny thing is that I can tell my body REALLY wants to breathe through my new nose.  In fact, usually within a few minutes of dosing off I’m awakened by the uncomfortable vibration of air being pulled across the stents still affixed to various parts of my inner face.  Unfortunately, this will be the situation until next Tuesday when they’re removed.    Until then, I’ll sleep as my face allows and keep the home improvement projects to a minimum.  

Under the Knife... Which is Actually a Drill

Let's play a game.  See if you can guess what the items pictured at the left are.  Leftover props from the filming of Saw VII, The Excavation! No.  Q-tips for Robots... Wrong again.  Things a trained professional jammed into my face intermittently between 7 and 9 am last Monday????  Bingo.  

Even to the most stoic among us, SURGERY is a daunting proposition.  Your mind automatically wanders to the  worst possible outcome--Blindness, spinal fluid infection, higher marginal tax rates, another season of Chuck...   You can drift into some truly dark places.  However, with a little education and some preparation, you can keep your thoughts positive AND forget Chuck ever happened.  Oh, and having a decent doctor helps. 

In preparation for the pending hollowing-out of my face, I read a lot blogs, talked to my doctor quite a bit,  and was amazed by how many I know personally who have had the surgery.  It seems to be a about as common as having your tonsils out (which I haven't).  Of the people I know personally, none regretted the procedure and none complained too badly about the recovery.  On the other hand, in the blogger world, it seems like the only people that bothered to document their experience had the worst recoveries.  Well, not this Blog.  

Of course I don't remember any of the surgery--they use general anesthesia and a breathing tube to keep you blissfully oblivious to what is being done in the depths of your skull.  Pre-surgery was a snap with the one hiccup being that they kept handing me forms to sign with someone else's name on them.  Glenn Davis, where ever you are, I hope you got what you wanted.  

Next thing I knew I was in recovery and two hours later I was on my couch.

I have to say, at day two I feel pretty good.  Even Day one was not so bad--at least nothing a couple pills of Narco couldn't handle. I've slept well and even got a few solids down.  At this point (early Day Two) the pain is very manageable, drainage is minimal and I should have plenty of leftover Narco to sell the local neighborhood kids.  My throat is still sore from the breathing tube and I get tired very quickly and, without going into too much detail, my digestive functions do not appear to be all systems go yet.  Other than that, I can't complain.

I won't really know how I'm breathing until next week when the doc removes the stents buried somewhere up my nose and vacuums out all the post-surgical crud.  But I'm very hopeful.  For anybody thinking of doing this, I already highly recommend it.  Even if my breathing is only 30% better, it will have been worth it especially if it reduces my tendency to get sick.  Not to mention I get those cool mustache dressings and a whole heap of undeserved  sympathy.  Speaking of which, I'm going to go swallow some sympathy in pill form and try to sleep.

ciao

It pays to read the Label

It was like any other morning. That is to say, I was groggy from lack of sound sleep and my nose and sinuses were filled with an unlikely quantity of goo. Thus far, my morning routine had consisted of some combination of Prilosec, Ashmanex, Nasinex, Astelin, Antibiotic, Codine and Clarinex. The latest addition to my personal pharmaceutical cornucopia was Prednisone, an oral steroid and the last best hope of a drug induced recovery from this never-ending sinus infection.

Prednisone is a funny thing. My Ear Nose Throat doc described it to me by saying “I tell ya, if anybody ever read the warning labels on this stuff, no one would take it! But you’ll probably be fine”. ‘Fine’ might be a stretch… My first day on Prednisone I felt like my brain was sweating and I could not stop chewing on my tongue. However, I gradually grew accustomed to the anxiety producing effects and for the first time in months, my face felt modestly normal—at least from the inside. The other funny thing about Prednisone is that the prescription called for taking six of the tiny white pills each morning—all at once. Why not 1 big white pill? You got me.

On this otherwise average morning after my perfectly normal ablutions, I snatched a bottle of antibiotic off the shelf next to my bathroom mirror, swallowed a pill that could make a horse choke and quickly reached for the afore mentioned steroid shotgun chaser. I measured out six pills and looked in the bottle, thinking to myself “Man, it sure doesn’t look like there are enough pills in here to last another 2 weeks,” Well, whatever.

The next 5-6 hours were later relayed to me by several work colleagues and my mostly forgiving wife. The account that follows is accumulated from their stories…

Apparently I am "not good” in the morning. My wife, however, sees it as an ideal time to discuss the issues of the day. Anything from the Iranian Nuclear crisis to why Aunt so-and-so won’t talk to cousin blah blah blah anymore. Despite that, on mornings when I am particularly “Not GOOD”, Erica has developed a sense of when to let it ride and simply allow National Public Radio to carry the conversation on my behalf during the 9 mile trek into the city. This had all the appearances of such a morning—at least for the first 5 miles. Miles six through nine however took a slightly unusual turn. In fact, it was the unusual turning at random; combined with the not stopping unless commanded to “STOP!”; and the not staying awake at stop lights that caused Erica to wonder if something was “Less Good” about me than usual. However, it seemed a reasonable assumption at the time that I was just being an ass.

“Being an Ass” can take many forms and although I am not proud of it, I cannot deny that I am a master of all of them—a regular and rare Ass-a-morph. Once such personification of ‘assedness’ is accentuating a behavior that seems to irritate my beloved, beautiful, and currently 7 month pregnant wife—whatever that behavior might be. This is usually done as a self-defense mechanism against nagging. But it can also be done for fun.

In any case, that was the diagnosis as Mrs. Davis pierced her disdain to kiss me goodbye shortly after forcing me to re-park the car so that it could even sort of be considered within the confines of a single parking spot.

It was a short walk to the office and I headed straight to the kitchen to get my normal morning coffee. I ran into my colleague Chris and said something along the lines of “Coffee…” either to declare out loud the only cogent thought currently in my head or to seek confirmation that the brown substance in my cup was indeed coffee.

I sat down at my desk with my brown substance and promptly closed my eyes. It’s unclear how long they were closed but I estimate about half an hour at which point my head popped up as if compelled by the god of continued employment and I looked across the 6 foot gap between my seat and my nearest co-worker… who was staring at me. “Tough night?” she inquired. “Sleepy” I responded.

Something told me I needed to go to the bathroom—not the normal something, just a generalized sense that a bathroom is where I would like to be right now. However, that something lost its hold on my momentum about mid way down the vacant hallway. I don’t know how long I stood there leaning against the wall before another colleague noticed me. “Are you ok?” she inquired. “Sleepy”, I responded through pinpoint pupils. It was about this time she must have noticed the unnatural pale yellow tone my skin had adopted.

From here, my co-workers exhibited exemplary diligence in getting me seated in a chair as opposed to leaning on a hallway, calling an ambulance, calling my wife and dutifully watching over me why the EMTs arrived. The ride to the ER was uneventful and once there, I was handed off to an anxious better half and a concerned ER doctor.

“Do you know where you are?” The ER doctor who looked just a little bit too much like Stone Cold Steve Austin, asked me.

“The hospital”

“What day is it?”

“Tuesday..”

“Good—“

“2005.”

“Hmm. Ok, Cat Scan.”

According to my date sorted photo albums, in 2005 I went on a Chicago Boat tour, skied in Jackson Hole, photographed my friend Katie Todd’s band playing Summerfest, and played on an Ultimate Frisbee team call ‘GI Joes Mama’. It was an otherwise unremarkable year.

Over the next few hours I gradually regained the ability to think straight. By the third time I rolled over to ask Erica what happened before falling asleep again, I was more or less aware of what was going on and recalling more and more of Erica’s answers from minutes before. Around noon, the ER doctor walked in my room to check in on me. He said:

“Well, I’m not going to bullshit you” fine just don’t hit me. “We scanned your head and toxicology on your blood are inconclusive.” You could never take the title from Hulk Hogan—you could be the weak half of the Intercontinental tag team champions at best. “So, I’m happy to keep you here for observation or, if you’re feeling better, I can let you go. You two think about it while I go update your GP.”

“Ok,” I said. Then, turning to Erica, “Hi honey”.

“Hi, honey. The Doctor asked me about what drugs you take. I think he thinks you have a problem.”

“Well, clearly I DO have a problem”

“I told him about all the prescriptions you’re taking and that you use Ibuprofen when you play sports and the Ambien you have….”

“Ambien.”

Ambien is a hypnotic prescribed for the short-term treatment of insomnia. Ambien tablets are intended to be swallowed whole and are available in 5 mg and 10 mg strengths for oral administration. The medication works quickly – usually within 15 minutes – and has a short half-life of 2-3 hours. Ambien may cause blackouts or amnesia. Use of Ambien may impair driving skills with a resultant increased risk of accidents. When this happens, a person may not remember what has happened for several hours after taking the medicine. People who take too much Ambien may become excessively drowsy or even slip into a light coma. An overdose of Ambien may cause excessive sedation, pin-point pupils, depressed respiratory function, which may progress to coma and possibly death.

– The Internet.

The invisible light bulb above my head signaled that my powers of deduction had returned. And indeed, upon returning to the house a little later that afternoon, the theory was confirmed. Same orange bottle, same little white pills—very different result. I called my GP to let him know we figured it out. “Wow! That is a TON of Ambien,” he confirmed. I also succeeded in convincing Erica not to throw out everything in the medicine cabinet which was about as difficult as getting my GP to stop laughing. It took the rest of the day to feel normal—and once again, by normal I mean feeling like someone had recently punched me in the face and left their fist behind where my sinuses used to be. But I could think straight, so that was something. Erica was successful in dissuading me from driving to my Ultimate Frisbee game that evening despite my improved condition. So instead I accompanied her to the farmer’s market where a gentleman selling fresh farm salsa remarked: “Hey did they let you out just to come here and try this Salsa?”

“Huh?” I grunted dully before realizing I still had my hospital bracelet on plus the two band-aids covering the holes poked in me by the fine folks at Northwestern Hospital.

I was a little anxious about walking into the office the next morning. I sent an email to the whole firm before going to bed explaining what had happened and admitting that I had no memory of anything subsequent to leaving the house that morning. One thing was immediately evident when I entered the trading floor—the whole debacle had really freaked people out. It was nice, albeit mildly embarrassing to receive a few hugs and a fist pump in congratulations for managing not to kill myself.

So what can I say other than not all orange bottles from the pharmacy are created equal. Keep your medicine cabinet organized. Oh, and if you have trouble sleeping, 1 Ambien will do the trick.

Sweet dreams.