The life and times of an irrational father. One man, multiple personalities.
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A Grounding Conversation

March 26th, 2010 | Posted by Joe in big baby | c-section | Tyler - (10 Comments)

Baby picture of Tyler

“I fully believe that he is destined for great things.” – Dr. Michelle, about Tyler.

Sarah had an appointment with her lady-doctor last week. It had something to do with lady things. I don’t know what it was because I promptly jammed my fingers into my ears and shouted “Lalalalalalala, I can’t hear you,” when Sarah told me about the appointment. It has something to do with an annual checkup. I don’t know, because women and their “business” confuses me. Unbeknownst to me, I ended up having a short work day on the day of the appointment. When I called, Sarah said that her and Tyler were having a picnic lunch outside the doctor’s office before heading in. Since I was only a couple miles away, I decided to come by and surprise them.

And that is how it came to be that I went to the appointment with Sarah.

Her doctor also happens to be our nurse midwife. She was with us during our 50+ hours of labor. She guarded the door from the nurses so that Sarah and I could get some rest during the marathon of labor that Tyler put us through. She really was our advocate during the whole process. And she would have murdered Sarah if Tyler wasn’t with her at the appointment on this day. That ruled out me taking Tyler home, so my being there to occupy Tyler during the appointment was the most practical option.

Okay, now that we’ve got that out of the way…

In my eyes, Tyler’s birth was a scary, tiring, and draining experience. I say “scary” only because I’ve never been a dad before. I’m sure all (or most) men can relate. All said,it was a fairly positive experience that left us with a large, healthy, beautiful baby boy. When Sarah and I share our story with others, we discuss the hell we felt like we were going through, but keep it light-hearted, because of the end result. Sure, things didn’t go as planned. Yes, it all ended with a cesarean birth. But, it all ended with a birth. I’m well aware of all the elements in play that led to the birth. Tyler never “dropped” to start labor. He was, for a very short period, in distress. We induced. Tyler never got into a birthing position. We practiced our relaxation techniques. They upped the meds to keep labor going. Sarah’s body began giving up. Tyler was in distress for another short period. Sarah went in for a c-section. It’s a boy. The end.

Right?

While at the appointment with Sarah, we eventually began talking about Tyler’s birth. It turns out that things were a little more serious than all that. We know that we exhausted all other options before agreeing to the c-section. There was a period during the labor that I physically pushed, at the advice of our midwife, on Sarah’s belly from the side, to help get Tyler in a better birthing position. So, we left with a clear conscience that we made the right (and quite emotional) decision in abandoning our hopes for a natural birth.

Dr. Michelle told us that, if things would have progressed any differently, and we had a natural birth, things likely would have been dire. She told us that she would have had mere milliseconds… because the cord was wrapped around his neck three times. That “dot dot dot” above, between “milliseconds” and “because”, that was the pause that contained a million unspoken words, thoughts, and emotions.

I felt the lump expand in my throat in that short pause. Although we felt that everything was going wrong and against us, we had no idea how lucky we were, and are. We knew the cord was wrapped three times because the surgeon said so as he pulled Tyler out of Sarah’s midsection. We just never really gave it much thought, especially considering what was taking place. We were four seconds away from meeting our son!

“That’s why I fully believe he is destined for great things. There’s something very special about him,” she said.

It’s impossible for me to express the emotions that swirled. I squeezed Tyler in my arms, thinking how differently things could have ended up. I’ve got a little tyrant of a son, who eats sand, smears food on his face, and deliberately farts when we take his diaper off (yes, he really does).

And I would be an empty shell of a man if I didn’t have him. Fatherhood is the single, greatest achievement I never knew I wanted.

Super-baby

October 29th, 2008 | Posted by Joe in big baby | superhero | Tyler - (5 Comments)
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Tyler held onto his own bottle
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Tyler had his 4 month wellness checkup today. The purpose was to weigh him, measure him, and answer any questions that we had. Unfortunately, I had a pretty full day today and couldn’t make it. Instead, Sarah had to call me and update me on how it went when it was over with.

As of today, Tyler weighs 20 pounds and 10 ounces, and measures at 27.5 inches tall… or roughly the size of a 9-month old. Our family doctor actually asked Sarah how tall I was. Sarah told her that I’m 5 foot 10 (I’m 5 foot 11.5, for the record). I’m also a meager 165 pounds. This little son of mine is already 1/8 my weight, and 38% of my height. The doc simply said that we must have super genes.

Tyler’s Height Tracker

Tyler’s Weight Tracker

This really ticked me off. I’ve spent most of my childhood and – so far – ALL of my adulthood believing that it was my destiny to become a super-hero. I’m 30 years old. With every day that passes, I am increasingly faced with the possibility that it simply isn’t going to happen. I’ve had days that I believed “The Matrix” was a movie about what I would become one day. Am I now supposed to believe that those movies were nothing more than a fictional story? I just don’t know if I can accept that. I’ve been practicing my “I know kung-fu” and “whoa” lines so that I’d get them right when the time came for me to spar with my mentor and jump from one rooftop to another, respectively.

Now I have to come to terms with the fact that I may not be destined to become a superhero and that my son may have gotten the gift that was meant for ME! It’s not fair. I never thought I’d be put in a position where I would have to live vicariously through my son. I’m going to have to throw him in front of a train so that I can watch HIM not get hurt. I’ll have to watch a bad guy shoot Tyler in the eyeball on a building rooftop to witness the bullet crumple and fall away from HIS stronger-than-steel retina. It should have been me. I have to admit, though, that it would be super cool to be able to say, “Tyler, fly me to Best Buy. I don’t feel like driving there today because I’m in a hurry.” Or “Tyler, use your x-ray vision and tell me how long the line is at Applebee’s.” Still, it wouldn’t be as awesome as doing those things myself, instead of having to use Tyler as my own personal aircraft.

How am I, as a seemingly normal person, supposed to raise a superhero? There’s a whole new level of “right and wrong” that I have to teach him. Anger management will also need to be addressed. I certainly don’t want Tyler to destroy an entire supermarket just because Sarah won’t buy him a squirtgun. And how do you discipline a child who could crush you with his bare hands? He could probably make me go insane just by thinking it.

My only solution, at this point, is to strap him to a table in my yet-to-be-built dungeon until I can fully understand his powers. I’m going to need to invest in some beakers, bubbly green liquids, and some swirly glass tubes. I’ll extract his DNA sequence using a highly scientific method of pricking his finger with a needle and putting a drop of blood on one of those glass slide things that scientists put under a microscope. I’ll cure his pain by the other highly scientific method of kissing the boo-boo and applying a Bob the Builder band-aid to the DNA extraction site. Then, using plans downloaded off the internet, I’ll construct a gamma-ray burst gun and a DNA re-sequencer to enhance the powers and introduce them to my genetic code.

I’m sure there’s something morally wrong with making one’s own son the human equivalent of a lab rat. But, I promise to offset that evilness by capturing at least 4 bank robbers, and 2 carjackers. For good measure, I’ll even save a cat from a tree and return Mr. Fluffles to the little old lady that accidentally let him out of the house.

Destiny…. here I come!!!

I was robbed yesterday!

September 4th, 2008 | Posted by Joe in big baby | memories - (1 Comments)
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Tyler, 10# 2oz, at birth
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Yesterday, I had to do a full hospital bed audit at one of my accounts in Indianapolis, Indiana. As such, I needed to go to every single department of said hospital. Among those departments were Labor & Delivery, Antepartum (pre-labor)
and the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. ICU for babies).

I also need you to know that I’ve got a not-so-great memory. I go through my entire blog every week or so and re-read the stories as if it were the first time. It’s a blessing and a curse, I guess.

So, I’m going room to room, knocking on doors, introducing myself and telling the patients why I’m there, and that I need to look at their bed for less than 2 seconds. EVERYBODY was 100% fine with it. I don’t really like doing it, because I hate disrupting people, especially while they’re at the hospital. It’s my job, though, so I trudge along. Most rooms are non-eventful. People just lying around, reading, watching TV, talking on the phone, sleeping, or eating. Occasionally, though, there’s activity going on. I love coming home and sharing some of these stories with Sarah. People share a lot of things when they don’t receive a lot of visitors, ya know? Well, there are HIPAA regulations that forbid the sharing of certain information. Mainly names, social security numbers, and afflictions. Basically, I can’t say names or anything else that would make someone say “I know exactly who you’re talking about.”

In the labor & delivery rooms, I was accompanied by a nurse tech. The LAST thing I wanted to do was go in a room and see a woman, spread-eagle, with her legs up in stirrups. I only actually went in one room, and even then, I got what I needed just by peeking under the curtain, so I didn’t even see the patient.

In Antepartum (pre labor) I went in many rooms with extremely pregnant women. These are women that are, more or less, on bed rest. They were all very nice. I was in and out, so I didn’t make any small-talk. This department was non-eventful as well.

The NICU, on the other hand, really affected me. I’ve got just a couple things to share here. In one of the rooms, I knocked and introduced myself. There was a new father, a new mother, and a very new baby. I told them that I needed to look at their bed for about 2 seconds and then I’d leave them to their privacy. The father said, “Sure, no problem.” He seemed like a younger guy, mid to late 20′s. What caught me was that he was changing his baby’s diaper. So, BOOM, I started reminiscing. The first diaper I’ve EVER changed was Tyler’s diaper, at the hospital. It *appeared* that this may have been the first diaper this new father had ever changed. Don’t get me wrong though, everything I saw took place in a span of 2, maybe 3, seconds. I remembered how I was treating Tyler as if he were a very expensive, very fragile piece of fine china. He was doing the same thing. I almost wanted to give him some pointers. I don’t know what came over me… I would NEVER do something like that, but I really wanted to. He looked like he needed help!

For me, luck was on my side. A very very sweet nurse had come in the room while I was trying to figure out the logistics of diaper changing. I mean, I’ve got two hands. I need to remove a diaper, hold his feet, wipe him, and put on a new diaper. Have I mentioned that I’ve only got two hands? I was looking around the room for some type of jig, or harness, to assist in diaper changing – some type of third or fourth hand – but there was nothing. I was holding one foot with one hand and pulling the diaper off with the other. Tyler kicked his free leg and landed his foot right in that thick, tarry mess. They call it meconium, instead of “thick, tarry, black mess” for reasons unknown to me. The nurse saw that I was struggling and bestowed upon me the most ingenious technique known to man. Hold both feet with one hand. BRILLIANT!!! Why I couldn’t think of that myself, I don’t know. Nerves, maybe. It was shortly after this that I realized that Tyler is not as delicate and fragile as I originally thought. His bones aren’t going to snap if I grip his feet so that he can’t kick away (seriously, I worried about that).

I had to keep my mouth shut, though. It was not my place to try to explain all that to a total stranger. Maybe it would have been fine, but in my mind, it seems like an invasion of this man’s privacy. He’ll figure it out. We all have, right?

I loved having that memory.

Another thing that struck me, as I walked the NICU, was how lucky Sarah and I are to have had a healthy baby. Just about EVERY baby in the NICU was in what seemed like a plexiglass shell. Some had tubes and IVs hooked up to them, some were very, very underweight. A couple rooms couldn’t be entered without “gowning up” (putting on a head cap, gown, gloves, and face mask). I’m looking at these babies, and these families, and my heart sinks. It just doesn’t seem right that anybody should have to go through what these people were going through. I’ve read Mike and Heather’s story, and it’s very sad. VERY SAD. Being there, at the hospital, and seeing it. It hits you like a ton of bricks. Sarah and I had a tough labor. It was hard, painful, emotionally draining. We had to give up almost every bullet point on our birth plan due to unknown (at the time) circumstances. After the C-section, we had a healthy baby boy. Aside from a low blood sugar, he was perfect. His APGAR Score was a 9, for crying out loud. I mean, we were blessed, when it came down to it. I can’t even begin to imagine the pain that these people were feeling in there.

What has Tyler done to me??? Before Sarah was pregnant I never really processed that kind of stuff. I’ve been in NICUs before, no big deal. Sure, it was sad, but because I have to see this stuff every single day, I try to not let it affect me. Man, it affected me yesterday.

Lastly, I need to get to the subject of this post. I was robbed. Saying that I was robbed “yesterday” is slightly misleading. Let me explain. Of all the babies I saw, none of them were as large as Tyler was at birth. Some were premature, sure, but some were born right on time. I feel like I’ve been robbed of having a tiny baby. Tyler was in the 95th percentile of birth weight, meaning that of 100 babies, 94 would be smaller than Tyler. I see people holding their new baby, tiny little things. We needed to use both arms to hold Tyler. How the heck did Sarah and I produce a 10+ pound baby?

So, yeah… as blessed as we are to have a healthy baby, I can’t help but feel that I’ve missed something in not having a “normal” sized baby.