Honestly, a stream of consciousness rant

I keep beating a dying, wheezing horse, but I have to point out that I'm a big fan of honesty. I love it. Cold, hard, brutal honesty. As much of it as I can get. I try to be supremely honest with myself and I don't tone it down much with other people. It has caused me a lot of relationship stress in the last decade, and I admit that the kind of honesty I dish out on people is not always kind or even accurate. Like everyone else, my evaluation of the world is colored by my perceptions and sometimes I get them wrong. The hardest lesson for me to learn was not when it is good to lie to someone, but rather, when you should simply shut up. I'm still working on that.

That's not to say that I'm perfect--nowhere near. I still delude myself and others in minor ways. I have trouble getting out of old habits, and I think, at some base level, it is in our nature, as human beings, to lie about things. When I catch myself telling some untruth, I usually reflect on it later to figure out why I said that I missed my train when, in fact, I just stayed for another pint because the conversation was good.

Now that I'm a parent, it seems like these issues have more weight. My own delusions will, invariably, be passed on to my kid in some form or another. And I'm surprised at how many people plan to lie to their kids for all kinds of reasons. Without calling too many people out on their issues, I'll just boil it down to this--this one important question that seems to come around, even in the middle of July:

Will you tell your kid about Santa Claus?

Christmas, as you may know, is a thorn in my side. I grew up with Christmas trees, presents, egg nog, sweaters, over the river and through the woods to grandmother's house we go, and, of course, Santa Claus. Santa was one of many mystical characters in my world, including the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny (who I always knew was a crock of shit), rock trolls, and the invisible rats that lived in my ears. Santa fulfilled a role--he brought presents that I knew my parents couldn't otherwise afford. He was the magical grandparent who deposited extra stuff on my bedroom floor before I got the pittance of obligatory gifts from my actual relatives. Santa kept me from bugging my parents for gifts throughout the year, because I had something to look forward to at the end. I even allowed the Santa myth to persist after I found my parents wrapping presents one night, when I was about 6, because I just wanted the magic to be there.

But now, as an adult, I've chosen to shed as many of those old superstitions and beliefs as possible, so I can see the world in the clearest light. I don't attribute kindness to miracles or suffering to demons. There are no angels or monsters left in my world, only the great span of humanity and nature, which provides enough drama for hundreds of Netflix originals. I still enjoy movies and games that touch on the fantastic, but that's why... they're games and fantasies. They're an escape. I like to escape reality into worlds where my own concerns can melt away and other concerns can take over. A world where everyone is basically like they are here, but there are vampires living in Louisiana? Sure. It works on some level. I like it. But when it comes to reality, I don't want my decision making process to be clouded by the possibility that an angel or a leprechaun might cross my path just when I need to cross it. I can't sit and wait for something to save me from the world. I have to do that myself.

There are arguments that such fantasies are good for children--their little brains can't comprehend all the weirdness and harshness of the world, so it's best to give some expedient answers like, "God made it that way," or "unicorns." But I'm not sure I have that power. I don't want my kid to distrust the things I say when they discover that, in fact, the rocks by the side of the road with the green shit dripping out of them are not rock troll eggs. I want my kid to have a colorful and interesting life. I want him to see magic and strangeness in the world, but I don't want him to count on it, or rely on it, or believe that it is reality. I want him to have a good separation between fantasy and reality. Two truths.

When I hear about bizarre problems or tragedies in the world, I actually turn on that fantastic part of my brain when I need it. I call it "the third rail." One one track, I have my perceptions of reality. On the second track is objective reality, or at least consensual reality that usually includes facts or perspectives that I'm not privy to. And the third track, the third rail, is the electric one that is full of strangeness and magic. There Be Dragons! A gas explosion that wipes out a neighborhood (and a graveyard!), probably vampires warring against each other. Thousands of blackbirds dropping out of the sky for no reason? Demonic sacrifices. Commercials for a new kind of energy drink? Definitely a conspiracy that proves Madison Avenue is a front for aliens who are raising us for food. And then I go back to reality, figure out if I have to call someone to see if they're okay, maybe check stock prices.

Loads of people are unable to turn off the third rail, and those people are conspiracy theorists and nutjobs. Those of us who can distinguish between fantasy and reality, but are fully aware of the possibilities that the third rail presents... that's where we get the most interesting people. One of the people who I think fits that category is the artist and activist Molly Crabapple. She's a painter and illustrator, burlesque madame, writer, and cultural critic. She was a kind of visual poet laureate for Occupy Wall Street and has been the loudest voice in my social stream (other than my friend Justin) regarding the latest government abuses of privacy, power, and Bradley Manning. When I look at her, I wonder why does she have such passion for defending someone like Bradley Manning? Manning is just some naive, conflicted kid who fell into the exact wrong profession, made some bad choices, and now is being crucified for it. Even if his punishment is minimal--15 or 20 years in prison, it's a nasty thing to suffer when you're his age. He's a baby. Why does Molly care so much? She's just an artist, a queen of weirdos and fringe elements that haunts lower Manhattan in vintage leather and lace. What the fuck is her problem?

And then I twitch, blink and look up, and realize that I've been ignoring the third rail. I've been eating the reality that I see and assuming it's the thing and not much else. I rationalize and justify a lot of things in the world and don't get angry about it, because the possible broader consequences (aliens, dragons, the end of the world) aren't in my vision. Molly's world cuts very close to the ideas of secret government conspiracies and hell and death, but she doesn't seem consumed by it. Instead, she kind of simmers with anger and disgust and disbelief, not quite sure why the world is acting so strangely. Why, she seems to ask, do we put our faith in our leaders, when they are so obviously full of shit? She wrote a great piece on the Bradley Manning verdict for the Guardian yesterday.

So my problem with honesty comes from dishonesty. I hate that so many forces in the world act dishonestly, actively misleading people to follow some agenda. A friend posted an article about the hypocrisy of some FOX news faceporter, who stated in the article that journalists' first obligation is to seek the truth, and the only way you can find truth is if you're Christian. Nevermind the religious statement, the first clause kills me. Journalism is supposed to be about truth, right? I'm not so sure. Going back thousands of years, almost all news reporting has been about someone's perspective or agenda of some kind or another. I mean, the BBC basically caused the Falkland Islands war, right? And didn't Horace Greely cajole and push the US into the Spanish American war? Who even remembers that? Anyway, journalism's great ideal seems to be something that is hung up next to news desks all over the world, and then the editors turn around and drink infants' blood with their fat, rich friends and make sure that black people all look like criminals on the front page.

And now, I'm looking at the world and seeing all this shit and wondering why I've been so quiet about it. Certainly, working for the government gives me a specific perspective, and being financially comfortable helps. Now that I have a kid, clearly I have different priorities than angry blog rants (or do I? can I finish this rant between the kid's feeding times?), and I just don't have the time or energy to go marching in the streets, but I found myself back where I was about ten years ago, when I decided to take a run at law school. I was sitting around at a bar with my old man and some of the local drunks, and George W. Bush flew into an aircraft carrier, claiming "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED." W was so full of shit then and you could see by his expression that even he knew it. One of the barflies said, "Man, that is bullshit. I can't believe they get away with this kind of bullshit! Someone should do something about that." I smirked and said, "Why don't you do something about it, rather than sit around and complain in some bar?" And then I thought, "Why don't I do something about it?" I thought long and hard and figured that if I wanted to change the world, I needed to know how it worked. Law is the rulebook for society, so I need to know law. And if I want to change the government, I need to get inside, so I can affect it directly. So here I am.

In the last five years, I can't say I've done a lot to change the government. I've managed to make some minor changes in my office in New York to streamline our processes and make sure that we're following the law, and I found that it is impressively hard to change things. I think that's what happened to our president. When Obama was elected the first time, we all believed that he would change the goddamned world. And then Guantanamo Bay stayed open. Congress stymied him at every turn. Political realities and selfishness won out over the ideals. Then we argued about health care and never really went back. Then Bradley Manning leaked a video of soldiers laughing as they shot up a few reporters and innocent civilians, and you wonder why no one knew about it. I could see it back then. I think, one day, after the inauguration, Obama sat down with those guys who really run the government in a room with no windows and he learned all of the shit that only the President knows. And it sucked. It sucked hard. He had to immediately come to terms with the fact that the world, the objective reality, is so fucked up that even the swell of idealism and support he rode in on wouldn't even scratch it. There's a big, evil world out there that our government is trying to protect the American people against, and they have to do some truly horrible shit to achieve that. So, faced with the reality of it, Obama caved a little. Then a lot. It became easier to just maintain the system and keep the evil at bay than to try to break open the system and shine some light on it. If the American people really knew that our soldiers were laughing about driving over corpses with a tank, would they support our troops quite as much? Holy shit, I doubt it.

So the government apparently has the same fear that I do, about Santa Claus. If the American people find out the truth, will they trust the government a little less? Isn't it better to keep things secret, maybe spin the truth a certain way so that people don't worry so much? Maybe I should let my kid think there's a Santa Claus out there so he doesn't worry about my relative earning power? Maybe the objective love of God that people are taught to feel is there so they can carry on in life even after their parents, their spouses, and children all let them down. Maybe I'm a rotten bastard for telling people they just have to toughen up and see the world more clearly, and that praying won't cause a bag of money to fall in your lap. Maybe those delusions are good for us. So far, I haven't really bought it.

A week or so ago, I was sitting on the couch, playing Civilization V on my laptop while Wolf rested on my chest after he had a big meal. While he was sitting there, I reached the level in my game where my civilization developed the atomic bomb. It was nearing the end of the game and I just needed to conquer one or two of my neighbors, one of which was the city-state of Brussels. In a round or two, I built a shitload of atom bombs, and I bombed the shit out of Brussels. In the game, the only thing you really see is a massive orange mushroom cloud appear over your target city, and then the land around it is orange and black and ruined. Also, the civilian population of the target city is reduced. When I was done, I felt a little uneasy. I was at the point in the game where I could have marched my guys in, smash Brussels's army, and take over the city without much difficulty. The bomb wasn't necessary. Why did I do that? Was I bored? Impatient? Was it right for me, after conquering most of the world with my conventional army, to just bomb the shit out of innocent civilians? I turned off the game, put my kid to bed, and thought about it.

Yes, it's just a computer game. The little digital people aren't real. No more real than a video poker card or an alien that I liquefy in Mass Effect. But the game is set in a universe that is not far removed from our own Earth and the rules that we follow here are mostly tracked there. The game teaches you to use diplomacy and science to win, not just force of arms. And yes, you can win the game by just killing and conquering all of your enemies, but that's an equal challenge to founding the United Nations and getting all the other societies to like you enough, or to institute a bunch of progressive social policies. I think that my playing style reflects in some way my real-life decision making, or it should. So was it OK for me to nuke civilians? No, I don't think it was. I reloaded the game from a point before the nuclear holocaust and finished it a different way. I kept my bombs, but I didn't use them. That seemed smarter.

I think, when my kid is old enough, I will teach him that it is wrong to nuke fake civilizations. Everyone should be trying to find better ways to solve their problems than using a hammer, or a bomb. There are always ways to get around a problem or to reach a goal that don't require that you sacrifice your ethics and ideals. Obama could have stayed the course and actually aimed for more transparency. People like Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden wouldn't have to exist if our leaders were more forthcoming, and insisted that our military and our police and our other officials acted in a better way for a greater purpose. I don't think we necessarily have to get our hands dirty to have a safe and successful American dream. I think that we could do better.

PS: I started another Civilization V game and won it with SCIENCE. I did have to take out one of my neighbors, a belligerent, expansionist, double-dealing king of Siam, but after that, it was all peaceful. I'm not sure if I should have let Napoleon conquer the rest of the known world, because he was kind of a shit, but at least I managed to avoid killing folks after that initial round of fighting off bullies.

MERDE

Hear ye, hear ye! The Wolf has made it for over a week in the real world. We are continuously marveling at how he has changed in the last few weeks. The kid will be a full month old by the end of next week and he's gone from looking like a strange, gangly, hairless cat, to a fat little baby. Even the doctors and nurses think he's just a small, full-term baby.

He's starting to interact a lot more, and he is specifically responding to our voices and everything. He smiles when he's comfortable, usually after a burp or a poop, or when we mess with his feet. I love messing with his feet. He's starting to voice his discomfort, also. He was so quiet when he was born, and in the hospital he only had one or two freakouts when we were around, but now he's starting to let us know when he's hungry or gassy or tired. As I type this, he's in the other room, grunting and squawking. When he does that, I just listen for a minute, see if he calms down, and go back to whatever I was doing. He's done, so he was probably just pooping.

Poop is the main thing right now. Many years ago, when helping my then-girlfriend move across the country, she had a long conversation with her mother, over the phone, about why her cat wasn't pooping. My girlfriend's cat, Harry, was once kind of my cat. He was, rather, a cat that lived in the same apartment as me and my friend, Tony, and had been inherited from one of Tony's ex girlfriends. Harry was old, and somewhat neurotic. Harry was raised around stoners in a house full of stoners in Kent, Ohio. I got the sense that Harry's feeding schedule was non-existent, as he had the habit of bolting his food as fast as he could until he would throw it all back up. The poor bastard just never trusted that there would be more food in the future, so he had to pack it in for the winter. And the winter would be long, cold, and full of pot haze. We worked on Harry's eating disorders in the best, healthiest way we could think of: by scaring the shit out of him. We would fill up the cat food dish, allow him to eat for about 30 seconds, and then scare the shit out of him, so he'd have to run away. Then we'd spend the rest of the day going through some version of that scenario throughout the week. He eventually got it about 80% of the time. And rightfully so, as we rescued him from the stoners, my girlfriend rescued him from us.

Anyway, while we were driving across the country, the cat wouldn't poop. My girlfriend would sit and stare at him and pet him and soothe him and put him in the box, but for four days, he wouldn't poop. He didn't seem to be in distress, so I didn't care. She cared, and she called her mom. And they talked about the cat's lack of pooping for about half an hour. After a long day of driving and other stress, I couldn't take it and kind of blew up on her about it. She broke up with me about a month later, as the long-distance thing wasn't going to work and she ended up marrying the guy she dumped me for and the cat, he survived a few more happy years in the desert. So the poop wasn't a problem.

But now, now all I seem to talk about with my wife is poop, farting, and sharting. I ask Carly at least three or four times a day whether the Wolf has pooped. I announce to her when he poops, and I often describe the color and consistency. We recently started giving him vitamins in his milk, and his poop has changed. Now, it resembles almost completely mustard and vegemite. We laugh when he farts or poops, especially when we're cradling his butt with our hands. He's kind of a fan of the clean canvas... whenever we put a fresh diaper on him he invariably farts or shits it up within moments. Sometimes, I squeeze him a little to make him go. It's hilarious. A few days ago, he had a blow-out and shat down his leg onto my red "Communist Party" shirt from Threadless.com. After I washed it, I was wearing it again and he threw up on it. I guess he doesn't get that kind of ironic play on words. Or he thinks it's not as funny as I think it is. Everyone's a critic.

The one thing I feel bad about is the dogs. I've really been screwing up their schedule. They used to go out more or less like clockwork, morning, evening, night. Three times a day. Sometimes, if the dogs were chill, we'd skip the late night walk and they'd lay around like lazy lobsters. But now, I take them out when I remember. Usually around 8 or 10 AM, and again sometime at night. Last night it was about 3AM. They're due now.

I'm going back to work this week, so the routine's going to change. I just figure that we'll get through it. For now, I'm just going to enjoy Pablo Shreiber with a porn stash humming the Ride of the Valkyries while he tears up a prison bunk on Orange is the New Black. Hilarious.

A few anecdotes

ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED! About a week ago, while changing the Wolf's diaper in the NICU, the bandage on his foot--placed there after taking blood for testing--came off, and he started bleeding all over the place. When I put my cold, cold hands on his tiny body, Wolfie starts to kick around and do some kung fu moves with his arms and legs, so he got blood on his blankets, on his butt, on the inside of his isolette incubator thing, and all over my hands. I HAVE WASHED MY HANDS IN THE BLOOD OF AN INFANT!

Baby Houdini. The kid has an extraordinary ability to get out of things. He hates restrictions. When he was in the hospital, and they put him under these special lights to help his body process bilirubin (a kind of bile that builds up in your skin and causes jaundice), and the nurses would put these foam goggles on him, to protect his eyes. He would, within minutes, tear off the goggles, requiring constant replacement and adjustment. One of his only freak outs in the hospital was when Nurse Ratchet put the goggles on too tight, and he screamed bloody murder until I came in there and loosened them. Of course, he tore them off in a few seconds. In his bassinet, he is always getting out of his swaddle. No matter how tight I wrap him up, within an hour he's freed his arms and is laying, splayed out like a martyr, about 90 degrees turned from how I left him. I'm waiting for the day we find him two states away, having stolen our car. I expect that by November.

Day One

We just completed the first 24-hour period of having a kid on our own. Wolf was released from the hospital at 10:28AM yesterday, exactly two weeks (to the minute) after he entered it. The first two weeks of having a baby were like starting a new, boring job for us. He was in the NICU the whole time, secured in his little plastic box in the corner, taken care of by many highly-trained nurses for 2/3 of the day. We would get up, get coffee, and head to the hospital around 8AM every morning, feed him throughout the day and hang around the family area, and then, around 4PM, we'd head home. For the most part, it was like when I started my government job 5 years ago, and no one knew what to do with me, where I was going to sit, or anything. I just sat around a lot, staring at the internet, and every few hours there was a burst of activity. We ate a lot of muffins and crap from the coffee shop, we waited for a lot of slow, dangerous elevators, and grazed leftovers from our baby shower throughout the day, but for the most part it wasn't too exciting. Very little laundry to do.

But now, we have him on our own. The nurses loaded us up with all the swag we could carry, from thermometers to bottles to wipes. I'm happy that at least some of it is in biohazard bags. We organized as much of our baby shit as we could, stuffing diapers and onesies into the dresser/changing table we acquired over a year ago, when we still thought the first pregnancy was viable, and sat down with him on the couch, marveling that he was finally here.

The dogs played their roles: Sophie was aloof, giving Wolf a quick sniff and then looking at us with that "Oh bother, another puppy," glare. Bear wanted to stick his nose up Wolf's butt. Of course.

We fed the kid, changed him, and swaddled him up in a new outfit and some blankets, and put him to bed. That was easy. Carly hooked up to the breast pump, I did some dishes, and it was all we could do to not go into his room and stare at him every few minutes. But we did anyway. Three hours later: repeat. Three hours later: repeat.

It was a little confusing in the wee hours of the day. I stayed up for the kid's midnight feeding. Carly tumbled out of bed around 2:30 or so for the late night one. And at 6am, we were both up to do the work, but Carly really wasn't into it, so I took the kid so she could pass out on the couch. After the kid was tucked in, I crashed back on the bed.

I imagine the next two weeks are going to be a little bit of a haze as we sort out when day and night are, who is going to take which shift, and how to divide duties like laundry and dishes and so on. So far, so good. Back to shoveling food in my face as fast as I can before I have to heat up another bottle.

Gitmo

Carly is home from the hospital, now, and that has been its own kind of stress. Until further notice, the Wolf will remain in the hospital. He isn't allowed to leave until he gains some weight and can prove that he is able to survive out of the box. Carly has been a trooper, dealing with the separation and her guts and everything quite well, but sometimes it gets the better of her and she has to excuse herself to cry it out.

One of the bizarre things about our kid is that he is way more developed than most 33-week premies. First of all, he's LONG. Almost 19 inches. He's one of the biggest 33-week kids they've ever had in the NICU. Next, he has been bottle-feeding and breastfeeding since day one. He managed the whole latch-and-suck mechanism by day 3, and the nurses are flabbergasted. He's not supposed to even have the capability to learn that until week 35 or so. There are other things that are probably just coincidences, but he just seems like he's got his shit together. So it can be a little confusing when he fails to hit some mark.

As I mentioned, his number 1 goal right now is to gain weight. And he's not really doing that, even though we've been increasing his food intake daily. It's only been a few days, but he should have had a steadier gain than the stop-start he's been showing. Today, one of the nurses told us that if he doesn't gain weight, they'll have to put him on a feeding tube. Especially if he manages to down the whole huge meals they're giving him, now.

What? Wait... if he downs a bottle every 3 hours that is nearly twice what he was eating the day before, you say he'll have to go on a feeding tube? That sounds backwards. But yeah, that's how it goes.

You see, the kid spends a lot of energy just sucking down milk. Working his jaws and neck and throat and everything requires a lot of energy he just doesn't have. So by eating more, he uses more energy. A feeding tube would fix some of that by reducing the amount of energy he expends just gathering food. So it's weird.

The measure is whether or not he gains weight. And less-measurable is the amount of energy he uses to eat. So, for that, we time how long it takes for him to drain a bottle, and whether he's able to keep it all down. This morning, it didn't look good. The room was too warm and it was a struggle for him to drink his breakfast in even 40 minutes. But by his afternoon feedings, he was a pro, slurping away at the bottle and smacking his lips, waiting for more, in about 15 minutes. Hopefully, his overnight meals will stack up, and tomorrow he'll be a fat toad of a baby.

Or, rather, he'll gain an ounce or two and keep it up every day. That's all I hope for at this point. Fat babies.

LiLo and the Wolf Part 2

And so the Wolf was born at 10:28 AM, on the 2nd of July, 2013. That makes him a Cancer by Western astrology standards, and I think the Moon is involved somewhere. For the Chinese horoscope, he's a Black Water Snake, which a supervisor of mine suggested that instead of "snake," this be the year of the cobra, "because cobra is cool." So he's a Black Water Cobra. He shares his birthday with Hermann Hesse, Thurgood Marshall, Larry David, and Lindsay Lohan.

All I was aware of, after he started shouting his arrival into the world, was that the doctors wanted me to look at him and say something. I said, "well, he has lungs. That's good." And then, I just wanted to get back to Carly, because her guts were quite literally out of her, and she probably needed me to comfort her. The kid was the doctors' problem. Carly is still mine. So I moved around the machinery and sat down, and rubbed Carly's forehead. I told her, "he's alive, he's blue, he's moving around, and he has balls like a bison." She laughed, and then complained that she had weird pain in her armpit. Then the doctors needed me to come with them. When I got up, I could see straight down the hole in Carly's stomach into the bottom of her pelvis. It reminded me of the song, "Turning Japanese." Give it a listen. You'll get it.

I followed them down the hall with the Wolf resting on something that looked like a french fry warmer. They were explaining things to me that I just kind of know, now, but I don't remember them specifically telling me anything. Except the bracelet. I had to keep that on, even in the shower. They led me to the NICU where the kid would be holed up and showed me the basic procedures. Scrub up every day, use the antiseptic gel every time I touch something grody, like my mobile phone. To quote Justin, "Well, obviously phones are gross. I play chess while I'm pooping." Then there wasn't anything for me to do, and staring at the little blue baby didn't seem too important while Carly's guts were out, so I asked if I could go back to her. No, they told me, she'll be in the OR for at least 15 minutes, and then they will move her to recovery. Go out to the waiting room and make some phone calls. OK, I did that.

I called all the primaries: parents (now grandparents!), my sister, and work. After a while, the guards came over and asked me to take off my scrubs, because, well, they didn't want people thinking I was a doctor, just sitting around looking freaked out and picking my nose. So I ditched the scrubs in a trash can, nearly forgetting to remove my wedding ring from one of the pockets. When did I take that off? Oh, who the fuck knows. Then I went to find Carly.

When I found her, she was just out of her mind on painkillers and shivering on the gurney in the recovery area. Every few minutes a nurse would come by and poke at the monitors and machines and we'd hear about them prepping a room for her. I talked to her a bit, ate what I could that was left of my breakfast (a cup of fruit--the chocolate chip muffin didn't seem as appetizing now), and then I told her I would go and check on the baby.

It had only been an hour, but he had already changed dramatically. He was pink now, not blue, and he stretched out. He was laboring to breathe, but it was obvious that it was a brand new thing for him, and he was doing quite well. The measurements came to reality, finally--he was 4 lbs and 7 oz, and he was 19 inches long. That seems long. Yes, the nurses indicated that he's a long one for 33 weeks. My cousin Kate later confirmed that her twins were born around full term, each of them 2 pounds heavier than Wolf, and the same length. We are still wondering how big he might have gotten if he grew to full term.

Around this time we started to get details of Wolf's last minutes in the womb. When Carly got her epidural, her contractions just went through the roof. She went from having steady, moderately strong and painful contractions to serious, major PUSH NOW, MOTHERFUCKER! CHARLIE'S IN THE BUSHES! contractions, instantly. Essentially, she'd been controlling the pressure and holding it back. Without pain meds, she could probably have dragged labor out for a bit. But with the release of control of her lower half, suddenly her uterus turned into a discontinued ride at Geauga Lake, the kind that would make everyone sick and break collarbones. Wolf, at that point, was too little to survive that, and was basically being compressed to death. And then, it turns out, the umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck. So he was basically fucked if they didn't get him out of there right away. I can remember the look on the faces of a few of the nurses and the one anesthesiologist that was in the OR, because she was standing right next to me when I was comforting Carly. It was one of those, "Oh, shit..." looks. The kind of looks that even the seasoned veterans rarely see, like, this-entire-thing-is-fucked-and-I-don't-know-if-I-can-deal-with-a-homicidal-maniac-if-that's-what-this-poor-bastard-who-is-about-to-lose-his-child-turns-out-to-be. Luckily, it didn't come to that.

And that's what we're repeating, over and over. We were extremely lucky. Like, so lucky it's hard to brag about it. Wolf was in the NICU next to some really rough cases, babies that were born at 24 or 25 weeks, barely the size of a kitten or a baked potato, kids whose parents didn't talk, and when they did talk, they used short sentences. We were very very close to being like that. If I hadn't been running late on Tuesday morning, if I left for work on time, I don't think I'd be writing this right now. I'd probably be sedated in a jail cell after having destroyed several city blocks with my bare hands. I will say it again, we have been very lucky.

Carly was put into a comfy room right next to the nurses' station down the hall from NICU. Around midnight that night, they gave her permission to get up and walk around, so we shuffled down to Wolf's crib to hang out, and it was the first time she really got to see him and touch his feet. It was awesome to see them together, but Carly was exhausted and needed to sleep. The next morning, she got to hold him and feed him with a bottle. Since then, it's just been steady improvements. The kid is forming up, eating like a Black Water Snake confronted by a swarm of drugged up mice after a bachelor party, and stretching out his arms, legs, and lungs.

Carly has been working on getting her milk flowing, and it's a slow process at best. This morning, we went to a breastfeeding class, and she just couldn't take it--all the talk of holding your baby, how important it is to breastfeed, and then the video showing all these beautiful babies latching onto their mothers' beautiful nipples, she nearly ran from the room in tears. All the other new mothers in the room had their kids in their rooms with them. Ours was in one of those containers you get at the grocery store for a rotisserie chicken, down the hall. So she got pretty emotional.

Later that morning, we basically just insisted that she get the opportunity to hold Wolf and get some skin-to-skin time, and even try to breast feed. And, goddamn, it worked. That kid took to the boob just like his old man. It took a few fumbling tries at first, and then he was a natural. If anything, Carly needs more practice to keep up with him. The breastfeeding consultant lady was amazed... 33 week old kids aren't supposed to do that. They're usually still behind on development to get the whole clamp-and-suck thing, and she told us that Wolfie was doing better than his full-term, chubby counterparts. We're swelling with pride. After that first attempt at breastfeeding, Carly's boobs have become mythical objects. She's producing milk like some fabled goddess with antlers and the lower half of a fish or something. Well, you make it make sense in your head. I don't want to explain it to you.

I wanted to get all of this down while it was fresh, but I can already tell that the clarity of the memories is being fogged over a little, as the stress and turmoil of that first day are fading from view. I hope that we can tell Wolfie the story of his coming in a few years and he'll get it. He'll understand that it's a crazy world and how you get here is pretty important. The e-book of his life starts with a flickering Kindle load screen, and it's hard not to blink even though it's not really emitting any light.

I'm making Carly laugh and it's pulling at her stitches, so I should probably wrap this up. Pester me with questions, and check FB and G+ for pictures. There are plenty. Tomorrow, I'm going to stop in at work and see if I can arrange a few things, put my "out of the office" message up and retire to being a dad for a few weeks without worrying about anything else.

LiLo and the Wolf Part 1.

About two weeks ago, Carly discovered that she had some grody discharge coming from her hoo-hah. All the materials said that such a thing could be perfectly normal for someone in the early third trimester, or it could be a sign of DOOM. So, she calls the doctor and goes in for a checkup. She has a yeast infection, it turns out, and the doc gives her a tube of goop to set off the other goop and tells her to go home and have a nice day--wait, no, how about while you're here we just run a few ultrasounds? Yeah, okay, now you can go home.

The next day, she gets a phone call telling her that her cervix is slightly dilated and thinned out a bit, meaning, she's now high risk and should immediately go to bed rest. The cervicular problem is a sign of early progression that could lead to early labor, and while many many people never have problems with their pregnancies with this kind of advancement, the doctor says, best not risk it. Go to bed.

Carly was bummed. A textbook pregnancy up to that point, it kind of took the wind out of her sails. So, she begrudgingly decided to take to bed rest the next Monday, after she cleaned some stuff up at work. She tried to get the right to work from home, but her agency denied the request on some really obtuse technical grounds, so off she went. Bed rest, to her, was more like house arrest, and she took every opportunity to sneak out and get snacks when I wasn't looking. Not far--just across the street for Baked Doritos, but still.

We went to a childbirth class that next weekend, and had a great old time. The pediatrician who hosted the thing told us to try not to worry about it, relax, and listen to our doctors.

The following Sunday, Carly and I went for a walk around noon--just to get out of the house. It was hot and humid, but there was a good breeze, so it wasn't uncomfortable. But Carly was. We only went about 4 blocks, but she was straining and huffing, so we moseyed back home. Carly was having some mild contractions, but they went away after an hour or two after she re-hydrated and stretched out a little. I insisted that she really take the bed rest seriously at that point, and the next day, Monday, July 1, she did just that. I'm pretty sure she didn't get out of bed at all until I got home from work. Then she just moved to the couch while I made dinner and then we watched some Sopranos. Carly noted that the Wolf responded positively to the opening theme of the show, which is the Jersey montage to the sound of A3's "Woke Up This Morning," which I have been listening to since 1996 and NO, I did NOT discover it through this show like the rest of you. I complimented Wolf's taste in music and we laughed and went to bed.

On Tuesday morning, Carly woke up with some cramping and back pains. She usually does. But she usually just gets up, gets some water, takes a dump or two, and goes about her day. On Tuesday, she was showing signs of distress. I asked if she was having contractions, she said yes, "every 10 or 12 minutes." I told her to get some water and keep counting while I walk the dogs, and we'll see what happens. When I got back about 20 minutes later, she was fully clothed and put her hair up. She called the doctor and they told her to go to the hospital with the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU).

We got on the road and marveled at the lack of traffic, as we were going opposite the flow of commuters. We were fine until we got off the highway and got stuck behind some idiot who wanted to take a leisurely fucking drive in his goddamned fucking Hyundai on a Tuesday morning, going about 17mph in a 35 zone. IN JERSEY, FOR FUCK'S SAKE! 45 in a 35 is the legal limit. We know that. During the drive she was stressed out, and Carly grunted out that her contractions were closer to 5 or 6 minutes now.

We got to the hospital around 8:20 and they admitted Carly pretty quickly. I texted some people at work to let them know I was going to be out, and we waited a few minutes for a nurse to take us to an exam room. The nurse asked a bunch of questions about Carly's medical history and so on, and was soon joined by a resident. The resident asked the same questions all over again and then took a look at Carly, jamming a speculum up there and having a look-see. Immediately, the young doctor said, "you're not going home today, this is happening."

We were kind of confused by that statement. What was happening? Surely, you don't mean the baby is coming! It's way too early for that, don't you know? But then she said that Carly was 6cm dilated and ... well, that's all it took. She was in labor already.

Quickly, Carly was taken to a labor and delivery room and the nurses went through the same battery of questions. This was about 9:20. Carly was getting more uncomfortable and the contractions were getting worse and closer together, so she asked for an epidural. That was about 10:00AM. A NICU doctor came in to give us an idea of what to expect while the anesthesiologist got everything ready. He spoke in riddles, but basically told us that we had to worry about with a 33-week old baby.

1. Lungs. The kid's lungs won't be fully developed. So, he might need to be on some kind of a breathing machine or tubes to keep him going. He might need to be in a 100% oxygen environment, or he could be OK on normal oxygen. We'll see how it goes.

2. Infections. Babies' immune systems are already weak, but premature kids are even worse off. The body simply hasn't begun the process of learning how to fight off illness, so he'll be on some massive antibiotics from the minute he's born.

3. Weight. The kid hasn't started to build his fat layers, so he'll need to be kept warm. Any energy he spends keeping warm means he won't use it to build fat, and if he doesn't have some meat on him, he'll never survive in an open crib. So he needs to gain weight.

Then, the doctors tell me I have to leave while they do the epidural. I'm not sure why this happened, but I resolved to just listen to the doctors and do what I'm told. They told me to go get some food in the cafeteria and come back up in about half an hour. So I did.

In the cafeteria, I got a waffle, some sausage, a bowl of fruit, a muffin, a big bottle of water, and a big cup of coffee. I sat down and called Carly's mother and called my mom. I stuffed one big bite of waffle in my mouth and swallowed, then started to cut another piece off. Then my phone rang and there was a weird number. I answered it. It was Carly's voice. "Come up here, now." I said, "OK," and hung up. I looked sadly at my waffle and sausage, untouched, picked up my water and coffee and other easily movable foods, and went back upstairs to her room. That was 10:18 AM.

When I got there, there were about 8 doctors and nurses in the room. "I'm here!" I said, "What do you want me to do?" Carly waved me over, and the doctor said, "Dad's here? Good. Get him out of here and get scrubs on. The baby is crashing, we're going now." I looked at Carly, she was clearly in the middle of pushing and ... giving birth? She had an oxygen mask. What the fuck happened while I was gone? I went outside and a nurse frantically dug through cabinets and threw various disposable scrubs pieces at me. I methodically put them on. They told me to do it, I wasn't going to do it half-assed. While I was doing that, they rolled Carly into the operating room. As soon as I had my scrubs on, I followed. That was about 10:23.

I sat down in a chair next to Carly's head. She was bewildered. They were pulling on her, there was a sheet by her neck. "That really burns!" she said. I glanced over, they were pulling out her uterus. I squeezed her hand and said it will all be all right, it's going to be uncomfortable, but just breathe and hang on. I'll be there. A few seconds later, a doctor says, "I have an arm!" About 20 seconds later, I hear, "It's a boy!" and then silence.

One beat.

Two beats.

Three.

Then,

WWWAAAH! WAH! WAAAH!  WAAAHHH, AH, AH, WAH!

Carly and I both just erupted into tears. That was the best sound I'd heard all day. It was 10:28 AM.