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What do we do When we Get Home?

On certain days, like recently when LTD turned 14 months, The Mommy and I will reminisce about earlier moments from our parenthood journey. I was laughing about our last childbirth/Lamaze class. Our instructor was a mother of two, had been an ob/gyn nurse for over 20 years and was very nice. The class was great because she wanted us to practice the Lamaze breathing and lessons at home allowing her to teach more and us not to have watch each other breathing heavily. The Mommy and I learned a lot each class because our instructor was cool, experienced and realistic. She answered all our questions and gave us the straight poop about what to expect (pun intended).

At the last class, we finished up our lessons quickly and she opened the floor to questions. Everyone blew past childbirth and peppered her with questions about what to do when we go the kid home. We are talking rapid-fire crazy detail questions about every possible situation we could ever experience with a baby under our care for the first time. In fact, it didn’t take long for all the questions to become the one big question that was on all our minds, how do we not kill the kid and ourselves? Thankfully, our patient instructor talked us all down from the ledge. She calmly went through what would likely happen during the first few days. The one piece of advice that The Mommy and I found particularly helpful was her instruction to not have the baby sleep in the same room as us right from the jump. She told us that we simply would not be able to sleep because we would be startled awake every time the newborn made any one of the millions of newborn noises they make. Now that we are over a year in it really was funny to think about that last class and how crazy we must have sounded.

The Name’s Dalton

16 September, 2013 Proud Dad Reply

“All you have to do is follow three simple rules. One, never underestimate your opponent. Expect the unexpected. Two, take it outside. Never start anything inside the bar unless it’s absolutely necessary. And three, be nice.” – Dalton

roadhouse We interrupt Product Review Wednesday to pay respects to Patrick Swayze who passed away on September 14, 2009. Mr. Swayze holds a special place for The Mommy and me. You may be thinking that Dirty Dancing is a favorite of The Mommys, while Red Dawn occupies the same spot for me and you wouldn’t be wrong. However, thoughts of Mr. Swayze always bring back warm memories because LTD spent his last hours inside The Mommy watching Road House through osmosis. Let me tell you what happened.

At midnight on a Sunday in March, The Soon To Be Mommy and I raced to the hospital for the second time that day. This time we both knew we would not be sent home, but what we didn’t know was that everybody in New York was having a baby at the same time and at the same hospital. The Soon To Be Mommy is in serious active labor and do we spend that time in a nice comfortable bed, no of course not, we spend it in a small, smelly waiting room. The Soon To Be Mommy is experiencing the aptly named labor pains and I need to keep her focused on something else. The small waiting room TV must help us. It’s three am on AMC and what do you think they are showing? Road House, baby, Road House. We are able to watch the movie start to finish before we finally get a room and we have Mr. Swayze to thank for The Mommy not using any medication at all during labor because as Dalton says, “Pain don’t hurt.”

“…That’s Where The Doctor Cut Off Your Tail”

16 July, 2013 Proud Dad Reply

dimple Picture this. The Mommy and I have been parents for all of 30 minutes when the hospital pediatrician examines our new baby and tells us that he looks fine, but…and you know when new parents hear the word ‘but’ they begin to freak out. The doctor said LTD had a Sacral Dimple, to which we responded in nervous tones, “what pray tell is a Sacral Dimple?” He directed us to look at our newborn’s butt crack and said check out the line above it. I’ll give him that it did (and still does) look like a dimple in the area around his tailbone. The doctor said that they would do a neonatal ultrasound in order to confirm that everything was good. With that, we basically put the thought out of our minds as sleep depredation took over. The next day the Tech came and wheeled the little guy off to get scanned. This was one of those situations were you really have no idea what is going on, so you have conversations with your spouse that begin, “I’m sure everything will be fine.” or “The Doctor said it was routine, let’s not worry.” But of course that is all bull plop because when your kid is one day old and they take him away to be scanned, you do everything but not worry. However, after what seemed like an eternity they finally came in with the test results and told us that everything down there was indeed normal and no cause for concern. Later, when The Mommy’s OB/GYN came in to visit and see the baby, she told us that what they were scanning for was to make sure there was no spinal defect or development problem in the region. She added that she understood why we were freaked and wished they would have taken a more measured approach with us, but since it’s a busy big city hospital she wasn’t going to hold her breath for a behavioral change anytime soon. Four months later, LTD’s dimple is still going strong and I can’t wait to tell him, when he asks about it, that it looks like that, “cause that is where the doctor cut off your tail.”