Day: September 16, 2004

In over two years of traveling for work, I drastically improved my packing skills. I used to be the guy who took three bags for a three day trip. By this time last year, I was almost always traveling with a backpack that could stow away underneath the seat in front of me and a small suitcase that could be put into the overhead storage compartments. I still generally took far too much stuff with me, but at least I wasn’t checking anything.
Trying to pack for a week-long trip that includes two weddings while remembering to bring everything we need for the baby is turning out to be a bit of a challenge. I have visions of us preparing to load up the car tomorrow morning, getting 2/3 of the items we’ve packed in, having no more room, and staring at the car with our hands on our hips wondering where we went so wrong. I’m sure we’ll figure something out. A few other thoughts put together while M. and I sat on the couch watching Barry Bonds go for home run #700 (Or rather while she took a three hour nap on my chest while I took cat naps in between Bonds ABs).
I LOVE the commercials for the ESPN movie Hu$tle about Pete Rose. Everyone looks like Pete always did, about seven years behind the fashion curve. Everyone looks just a little run down, like the actors in the second half of Boogie Nights, which seems perfect for what I imagine his life to be like. Casting and costuming aside, I still think it’s just another sign of how Disney has ruined ESPN by forcing more and more “entertainment” on us rather than focusing on being the best sports broadcaster in the world. We get overly hyped movies a couple times a year, senseless award shows, and far too many hours devoted to things like the X-Games, World’s Strongest Man, etc. rather than real sports. (I throw the X-Games in because it’s utterly ridiculous that ESPN includes highlights and results from the X-Games in Sportscenter and the crawl, yet ignore other extreme sports that ESPN doesn’t broadcast. If the Gravity Games, or whatever else there is out there are putting on almost exactly the same events and they don’t get coverage, that’s proof they are marketing opportunities and not real sports.) And I haven’t even gone on my traditional rant about Sportscenter sucking and the ubiquity of its “personalities”.
I’ve been seeing this commercial for Bank of America that talks about all their efforts to improve the technology on ATMs for several weeks. It always makes me think of the old SNL skit for the bank that provides change. When the BofA guy brags about carving six seconds out of a transaction, it makes me think of the line, “We’re not going to give you 20,000 nickels. Unless you want 20,000 nickels.” Of course, what the BofA guy doesn’t tell you is that by making ATMs do-it-alls, they can drastically cut back on the number of warm blooded individuals they hire, therefore cutting back on expenses. At the same time, they’ll increase user fees to cover the cost of all this R&D and implementation of the super advanced ATMs.
The third commercial that’s caught my attention is the one for the Freedom Tower coins. Have you seen this one? “Silver dollar coins” (that aren’t legal tender) that show the old New York skyline on one side, and the approximation of the NYC skyline after the Freedom Tower is built on the other. Alone, that’s ok. However, the big selling point is that each coin contains a tiny amount of silver that was actually recovered from Ground Zero! That’s right, you can own a piece of one of the world’s biggest mass graveyards! Why don’t they just throw in some dust, clothing scraps, and unidentified body parts also recovered from Ground Zero while they’re at it? I’m all for honoring those who lost their lives that day, but for people to make a buck off a rather ghoulish element of that day is reprehensible.
Via iTunes, I watched the video for Morrissey’s latest single “First of the Gang to Die” over the weekend. It’s not a bad song, although I liked the first single “Irish Blood, English Heart” much more. The video did make me laugh, though. It’s one of those performance videos that mix hundreds of shots taken at a recent Moz concert. I particularly enjoyed the crowd shots, in which it was nearly impossible to find a female face. I just found that interesting, that’s all.
One last note, a week ago Friday I was flipping around and found old Beavis and Butthead episodes on MTV2. Highly entertaining! I’ve become quite a fan of The Family Guy and occasionally watch South Park. It’s amazing how primitive B&B look in relation to those two animated shows. Also, later in the night, The Thanksgiving Orphans episode of Cheers was on TV Land. Always an exciting time in the B. household when I can catch that!
We’re off to KC in the morning. I should have Internet access through the week, so will be posting as time allows. I may have to bust out the phone blog number again, too. We’ll see some of you soon.

One of the funniest things anyone said to me before I became a father came from the mother of one of S.’s best friends. In her unique way of offering to help us, she casually mentioned that she would be happy to come “sit in the waiting room with me” while S. was in the delivery room. What is this, 1950? We laughed a lot about that.
One of the areas of potential danger for a prospective father is the dreaded passing out in the delivery room. From speaking to other people who have been through the process, it seems to be a combination of all the stress inherent to childbirth, the conditions unique to each birth, and then a healthy amount of concern after seeing your heavily sedated wife go through the most difficult process we humans can go through short of dying. That sounds about right for where I found myself around 7:30 AM July 25.
I had been awake for about 24 hours at that point, which isn’t awful compared to what some go through. I was also quite hungry; I had been contemplating grabbing some breakfast around 6:30 when it seemed as though we had several more hours to wait. I slammed a beer right before we left for the hospital, ostensibly to calm my nerves, but I believe it had in fact compounded my feelings of hunger and weariness. Most of all, I was riding a huge wave of adrenaline which is always a recipe for disaster if you push it too long.
Jumping back a moment, as I said around 6:30 I was getting ready to head across the hall to grab some cereal. Although I knew I risked puking it all up if my eyes wandered too much during delivery, I felt I needed the energy boost since I had no idea how much longer we would be waiting. Several nurses came in to check on S., who had been dilated to 5 cm on the last check (Quick primer for the men out there who haven’t been through the process yet: 10 cm is the magic number. S. had been steadily if slowly progressing throughout the night.). Coincidentally, the OB came in for one last check before he went on his morning rounds. “Wow, you’re up to an easy 7 cm,” he said. The pace seemed to be picking up. He said he’d be back shortly, but it shouldn’t be much longer.
Roughly 15 minutes later I noticed a lot of activity among the nurses. The comforting sound of the Little Girlfriend’s heartbeat on the monitor was becoming irregular. One of the nurses said, “I can’t find a heartbeat.” Another nurse flew out of the room to find the OB before he left the building. Bear in mind, I digested none of this at the time. Things were just happening so fast that no one took the time to turn around and tell dad what was up. The OB runs back in, checks S., and informs the room that she’s up to 9 cm as the nurses rocked her body from side to side trying to find a good reading on the baby’s heart. Alarms go off. People go running out of the room. S. is wheeled away. The OB turns around and says several things to me, none of which I can remember, excepting his final comment, “Someone will be in to get you,”. I was just out of it enough to have no idea what had just happened. Was this good, bad, very bad, or totally normal?
I had several minutes alone to contemplate before a nurse came in and helped me struggle into a jumpsuit, booties, cap, and surgical mask. She escorted me into the operating room where the medical team was preparing to preform an emergency C-section to get this baby that didn’t seem to be enjoying the ride out of her mother’s abdomen. I was seated on a stool by S.’s head. My rule all along was No Cutting, No Catching. I’m a bit squeamish when it comes to innards and blood and whatnot, so I pledged to do everything I could do to help S. as long as it involved remaining above her shoulders. Things were moving so rapidly that the team failed to get the surgical screen up before the docs started cutting. It took an immense amount of willpower to stay locked in on S.’s eyes and block out all the sounds and medical jargon that was floating around. I later learned that there was never any real danger, but at the time, I had no clue that was the case. I didn’t know if the baby was crashing, if S. was crashing, or what. Being the ER fan, I had about 20 nightmare scenarios shoot through my head before I told myself to cut it out and concentrate on S.’s hand that I was holding. Maybe five minutes, maybe an hour later, I hear screaming and I see my daughter’s little grayish-blue face pop up out of her mom’s stomach. She was making the same face S. makes when she’s sad, which I thought was pretty funny. At this point, I began a 15 minute process of continuous crying while managing to go about everything else as though nothing was the matter.
M. was fully extracted and taken over to the nurses for the initial tests and vaccinations. I eventually made my way over and held onto her bright pink ankles while she screamed and screamed. Never has a totally inconsolable child ever sounded so wonderful as she did. After about ten minutes with her I really started to notice the heat of the warming lamps. I noticed how I was re-breathing the same air inside the mask over and over. I noticed that I was a little queasy. I thought it might be a good time to go check on my wife. I slowly made my way back to the stool and sat down by S.. She asked what M. was like, and I found it difficult to get words out. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“I’m feeling a little lightheaded and queasy.”
She started waving at the nurses.
“What’s wrong, honey?”
“I’m fine,” she said as her stomach was stitched back together. “He’s feeling lightheaded and queasy, though.”
Three nurses picked my up by the arms and escorted me out of the room before I could protest. I kept thinking, “Don’t be the dad that passes out in the delivery room. Don’t be that guy!” As soon as they got me through the doors, they ripped off my mask, sat me in a chair, and slammed an ice cold towel on my neck. I weakly tried to explain myself as I wiped tears from my face, “I think I”m just really hungry. I get this way when my stomach is empty.” Almost before the words were out of my mouth I had a glass of orange juice and a package of crackers handed to me. This wasn’t so bad, after all! I quickly regained my bearings and was taken back to our room where S. and M. joined me a few moments later.
So it wasn’t really all that dramatic, although it certainly seemed that way at the time. When you spend almost eight hours watching a process unwind rather slowly and naturally, then suddenly see your wife go under the knife to get your baby out, I think you’re allowed to have a reaction. Later, I likened it to narrowly avoiding an accident. The adrenaline gets you through the moment, but later you get the shakes when you realize what happened. Once I saw my daughter was breathing and screaming like normal and my wife was in good shape as well, the shakes hit. Since any future kids we have will be born via C-section now, I just have to hope they’re scheduled and not stat so I can make sure I’ve got a full belly before they wheel us into the OR!