Mar
9
I was watching last week’s episode of The Office where Jim and Pam have their baby—oh, uh, SPOILER, if you haven’t watched The Office in a couple years you should know Jim and Pam finally got together—and both JB and I agreed it was oddly stressful to revisit the hospital setting with the tiny crying newborn and and the worrisome feeding processes and remember what it was like to be brand new parents, wondering just what the fuck we were doing.
It made me anxious to watch it, but afterwards I felt flooded with all this happy nostalgia. I can remember that feeling of not wanting to leave the hospital, especially after Riley was born. JB was eager to get back to the comforts of our house but man, I was scared to go home. At the hospital we had all kinds of experts checking on the baby, making sure everyone was doing okay, and even taking him to be fed if JB was gone and I needed to sleep. A steady stream of friendly nurses were a button-push away from bringing me ice water, pain meds, and extra diapers.
Everyone says hospital food is awful and I suppose it was, but I have fond memories of the trays of food and a blessed cup of coffee on the second morning. A delicious pushup popsicle a few hours after surgery. A cookie that I gave to JB, reaching over the warm bundle that was snuggled against my side.
I loved the big comfy bed that could be adjusted to suit my needs. It was crisp and white and even when the sheets got all bloody and had to be changed out from under me it felt like this clean, safe, sterile place to be holding a baby. I could crank it into this Barcalounger shape and nestle my child in my lap while holding a book off to the side.
I dozed a lot, especially the first time around when I was recovering from that awful magnesium and since the UW is a teaching hospital it felt like I had a new nurse every time I opened my eyes. They were all nice.
After my second C-section I got unbearably itchy from the morphine and they gave me an IV of Benadryl. I remember lying there feeling an instant whoosh of that glassy-eyed allergy medicine feeling, while Dylan squirmed and gritched nearby and they cleaned him and put a knit hat on him—the one with the little tied-off piece of yarn—and wrapped him like a burrito in that teal-and-pink blanket and the anesthesiologist came by to check on me and there was this bustle of professional good-natured activity in the room and I just felt like we were so cared for.
When Riley was born an older nurse caught us trying to wake him up to feed him and she twinkled her eyes at JB and joked kindly that one of the rules of caring for a baby is that you never wake them up. (We woke him up anyway.)
One of my all-time favorite memories is from when after Dylan was born and we were in the recovery floor and a nurse checked on him and decided his temperature was a little low. She picked him up out of the bassinet and unwrapped him, then told me to open my gown. She firmly tucked his bare little body against my skin, put a blanket around us both, and left us be. The room was quiet and I dozed in and out, just looking at his tiny perfect face, while outside I could hear the murmurs and bleeps of a busy nursing station. All those people ready to help us if need be. It was like being in a pocket, or cupped in someone’s hand.
Poor Jim and Pam had the grouchy nurse, the shared room, the hasty exit thanks to an ungenerous HMO policy. I know a lot of people have unpleasant hospital ordeals, and hate the idea of intervention. I didn’t plan on having surgical births either, but I couldn’t have asked for better treatment. It’s funny, it took a TV show to make me realize how wonderful my birth experiences really were.
Mar
7
I find it hard to write about Riley these days and so I don’t as much as I used to. I’m sure someone with better data visualization skills than what I possess could create a diagram charting your typical blogger-who-is-also-a-parent (see how I dodged that mommy bullet?) and see the downward trend of child-related writings as their kids get older. You start thinking about privacy, I suppose, but for me the issue is really more about my own writing abilities, and how he is becoming more complicated than these dashed-off words can represent.
Babies are simple, if baffling, creatures; toddlers are delicious pint-sized savages who tend to go through similar stages. Riley’s such a little kid and a giant hulking BOY, all at once, and it seems like an oddly fragile, impossible-to-capture age. I wish I could do a better job, if only for my own memories. It’s awful, isn’t it, to think of all the things that will eventually be lost to time—the way they pronounce certain words, the exact crescent of their fingernails against small, grimy hands.
I haven’t thought of him in terms of milestones for quite a while—I suppose I thought the big Firsts were all behind us. But this weekend I took him to his first soccer practice, and oh. Oh, you guys. I thought I was going to burst into ridiculous, humiliating tears, there on the side of the YMCA gym court. My boy, my boy, looking so grown up. His first team sport. Ah, I don’t know, something about those baggy shorts and the real no-shit coach and the way he ran like he was trying to get somewhere instead of the pinwheeling garage-sale physical chaos that usually happens when little kids run—it just knocked me over. I was so goddamned proud of him, and so overwhelmed by how fast the time has gone.
He did really well, too. There was some hesitation when we first got there—his unsure, reluctant toe-scuffings sort of broke my heart, as I know that new-group feeling all too well—but once things got going he had a blast.
Soccer! My god, I can hardly believe it. I mean, really.
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