I’ve got to admit it’s getting better

Paul: Getting better, All the time.

John: It can’t get much worse.

Here I sit. Week 9. And things are looking up. The cockles of my heart, which are normally crusted over with barnacles and flotsam, are slowly warming to my kid.

Two big things have happened in the last couple of weeks that have made our life easier. First off, when he wakes up, and sees us, he smiles. Oh my god. I would never have dreamed a smile could make my day. But when this drooling blob of a crying thing normally stares at blank walls… and then one day he catches your eye, focuses at you, and you can watch the smile expand across his face… wow. That just is awesome. You can actually see his little brain work. He stares at you. He locks in. And then this grin just blossoms to a full fledged smile as it cleaves its way across his cute little face.

The other big thing is that when we set him down on his back now, he’s able to stomach… er, umm, he’s able to “back” it a bit better now. He’s not going to set any marathon records for “chilling” (by the way, the lowest ratest Olympic event on television)… but he at least can occasionally occupy himself by staring at who-knows-what for 10-15 minutes at a time. You wouldn’t think that’s a lot — but it feels like a world of difference. (Like at my old job, when it was 1:45pm, it felt like I had all the time in the world to get shit done for the day; then suddenly at 2:45pm, I was in panic mode because I only had a couple hours left. It’s all perception.)

Feeling free for the first time… being able to not have a baby on your chest (me) or boob (well, me kind of, but supposed to be my wife) is amazing. I can go upstairs and poo. She can take a quick shower. We can microwave ourselves a nutritious dinner and scarf it down at the same time. We can eat with two hands.

So, yeah. Things are getting better at week 9. He can hold his little head up for longer periods, before his neck caves and his big ol’ noggin’ slumps over to his shoulders. (It’s like watching a weight lifter give out on the last bench press.) He’s following us now with his eyes when we leave a room.

And I can make him laugh with funny sounds. (Well, sort of “laugh…” It’s more like he’s smiling, and he tries to breathe in at the same time and it’s likely more of a wheeze, but I prefer to categorize it as a laugh.)  He has this weird jingly-toy with a bunny head and dangly legs. It sounds and looks like a broken wind chime with the head of a possessed bunny. My wife hates it– but it captures his attention for hours…er, well… minutes. (Which feels like hours when he’s quiet and staring at it.) I’ve given it life, and made a voice for the toy: she’s a Spanish speaking old woman, I call her, “Senorita Conejita.”  (Miss Bunny, roughly translated) And she sounds like your high school Spanish teacher on LSD, “Hola mi hijo. Como estaaaaaas? Me llamo Senorita Conejita. Como te llamas? Me gusta ir ala bibliotecaaaaaa.”

Oh, and all of the above stuff I whined about: my wife has it 20x worse. She’s much tougher than I am. She rarely gets a break. I leave for work sometimes, or go on short business trips. I’m complaining about having to hang out with him for maybe a few hours a day, and she’s stuck with him for hours. So I know I’ve got it easy to begin with.

Love, Love Me Do

Today my  bundle of joy poop poop and crying and breasfeeding is seven weeks old. I’m not sure what is wrong with me because I’m not madly in love with him. He’s sort of a selfish jerk if you ask me.

People ask me, “Oh, when he came out, did your heart just melt? Did you immediately fall in love with him? Did you cry?” And the answers respectively are: No, No, and No. If he and my wife were in the way of a speeding bus and I could only save one of them… right now I’m leaning towards my wife. I might even make the same decision if it were between he and my Xbox 360.

Okay, I might be joking a little bit. Sure, I’m a sarcastic guy. I’ve got a healthy amount of irreverence about most anything. (9-11 jokes anyone? C’mon. 8 years later. It’s time.)  So I don’t know if I’ve somehow broken something in the part of me that is supposed to feel compassion for other living things. Because right now all I think about is dropping this kid off at a safe surrender site.

Joking. (Mostly.)

Actually, safe surrender site humor has been banned in my household. As has me swearing at our kid. Examples of ways in which I am no longer allowed to talk to my own son: Scenario #1; kid just fed on my wife’s teat for over an hour. “What the fuck do you want now? You just ate you stupid shit.”  Scenario #2: kid just fed on my wife’s teat for two hours and it is now 3:30am. “God damn, would you just fucking go to sleep. What the fuck is your problem?”

I try to explain that I wouldn’t do it if he was older and knew what I was saying. But she insists that it’s not a good habit to get into. She’s usually right about these kind of things. I always have to learn things the hard way. I’m like Homer J. Simpson in that respect. So I’ll probably listen to her.  (Ha, that implies I have a choice in the matter. I must listen to her.)

But my point being (yes, somewhere in there I had one)… that I’m just not in love with my baby yet. He started smiling a bit over the past week or so. I’m still not convinced he was squeezing out a good fart at the time. My wife says it was definitely a smile. This is starting to thaw the ice that is chipped around my Grinch-like heart.

Our pediatrician asked, “So, how’s it going?” And we gave him one of those looks that new parents give because you want to unload for an hour, and instead sort of give a half-hearted lie of, “Oh, good.”  He said, “It’s hard, huh?” Well, he should start smiling soon. I think babies smile around this time because if they didn’t, their parents would start sending them back.” SO TRUE. See, I’m not the only one making safe surrender site jokes. I wonder if my wife is going to make our doctor put a dollar in the safe-surrender-site/swearing/threatening-to-kill-our-baby jar.

(Quick tangent: A friend came over the other day, and I said, “You know, I empathize a little with Susan Smith now. I’m not saying what she did was acceptable. But I get her now.”  My joke was returned with looks of horror. Sigh. Note to self: no Susan Smith humor in mixed company. Luckily, my wife has developed the ability to tune out anything I say. She learned to do that back in college. She’s had years of experience.)

You know what bothers me the most about my whole, “I’m not head over heels for this kid” issue? It’s that deep down I know it reflects more on me. I’m the selfish jerk; not my kid. I mean, here I am saying, “This kid doesn’t do anything for me… ” See, there are those words: for me. The couple of times he’s smiled it’s been like a reward for me. But, does that mean I’m only starting to warm up to this kid because I’m getting feedback from him? Some sort of validation? That’s a little self-centered; only to the point where I’m getting something in this relationship do I find myself interested in the relationship. That’s kind of messed up. Yikes.

Lessons Learned since birth

Well, not my birth. Since Quinn’s birth…

I don’t remember where I heard this, but recently I’ve been fond of quoting the phrase, “I was a great parent until I became a parent.”

My wife and I went into this with intentions of using cloth diapers, not using a pacifier, etc. Well, we held out for a week on the cloth diapers, and a whopping three weeks on the pacifier.

On the cloth diaper front, we found that for our son who was under 8 pounds, we couldn’t get a solid fit. Plus, until he starts taking solid food, his poo is basically runny. And the cloth diapers — perhaps because of the way we were folding them or perhaps because of his size — were not doing a great job of keeping the liquid in. But we’re not ruling out cloth diapers. We still like the idea. So we’re planning to try again with diapers once he’s on solid food and a little bit bigger. Maybe after 6 months. (Plus, I swear… the diaper was SOOO huge when folded, we couldn’t get any onesies on him.)

As far as the binky — the American Academy of Pediatrics (or some such title) recommends not introducing a pacifier until 4 weeks. We made it to 3. So that’s not so bad. But, we were concerned about nipple confusion for breast feeding, and also having him become “addicted” to having a pacifier in his mouth for soothing himself to sleep. (We’d prefer to have him learn to sooth himself, which seems healthier.) But… at 4am when you just want the little stinker to shut up and go to sleep… the pacifier calls out to you. “Uuuuuuuse me! I can heeeeelp.”  I feel like an alcohol trying to resist the tempting allure of “just one beer.”

So yeah, at 4am I found myself shoving a pacifier in his mouth. God. It was sweet. He quieted right up, calmed down, and I was able to get some extra shut eye. I feel selfish, because I realize this isn’t done for his benefit, but rather my benefit. Which is kind of selfish of me. Like I said, I was a great parent until I became one.

Going into this, people would say to us, “Having a kid is the hardest thing you’ll ever do.” And it comes off as cliche, so I’m prone to ignoring advice like that. I would think, “C’mon. The hardest thing? I’ve road my bike from Seattle to Portland three times. That’s 200 miles. That’s pretty damn hard.” And I was also of the mindset that if this has been done billions of times before us, then we should be able glean a lot from the collective experience of all those births, and stand on the shoulders of giants so-to-speak. In theory, we should be able to be completely prepared. After all, we took all the classes. We bought everything we were supposed to buy. I spent countless hours investigating only the safest and best products that we truly needed. I didn’t buy anything unless I spent a good 30 minutes investigating it and reviewing and comparing it online.

Well, I’m here to echo the cliche, “It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done.” Not physically taxing; I’m not incredibly tired. It’s not mentally taxing; I feel alert enough. It’s just… fucking hard. Really fucking hard. I’m trying to put my finger on it… I think it’s hard because it’s the most selfless I’ve ever had to be. I can’t sleep when I want. I can’t just hop in the car and go to the store when I want. Everything I do has to be done in service of another being, and all of my wishes take a back seat to the needs of this little guy. I mean, I’m doing it. It’s not like I’m neglecting him. I think what’s hard about it is the fact that it’s hard to go from living a selfish lifestyle, cold turkey, to having to be completely selfless. I feel like my life has gone from the main plot of the sitcom, to the secondary story (usually some subplot about Karla or Coach or Cliff, used as filler in between the main plot between Sam and Diane.

Anyway, you don’t realize how hard it is until you have to coordinate your pooping schedule with your wife. A busy day for us is if we manage to all three go to the grocery store. That takes about 5 hours of preparation. (Got to feed him at this time, then get his nap, then feed when he wakes up, but change his diaper before he finishes feeding so he doesn’t wake up… etc.)

As materially prepared as we were… I wasn’t prepared for just the complete shift in my mental processing of “what a typical day is.”  It’s not “What would I like to do today?” Rather, it’s “What can I squeeze in when my kid is asleep?”  My concept of a schedule has gone out the window. We do things whenever we can. Not at a certain time. Clocks have no meaning it seems. Before, the day ended when we went to bed, and the next day began when we woke up. Now, days blur into nights as we’re up every couple of hours changing diapers, feeding, and soothing. These past 5 weeks haven’t felt like 35 individual days… just one reeeeeally long stream of diapers, feedings, sun going up, darkness, daylight… one really long day.