a whole new life

how do i begin expressing that everything everyone says about parenthood is true, even though in such utterly different ways than described? words fail where biological imperatives catch hard. maybe i'll find time to discuss the details some day.

last sunday (T-4):

baby room ready, pictures hung, p.m. dinner mission, good project work, raging against pinching nerves

last monday (T-3):

coffee and database design, early morning document hunting with some success

a long day in the office, mostly spent in meetings making sure nobody screws anything up; "if you want something done right" is an unfortunate truism when there are limited number of hours in the day

monty python fluxx is the best fluxx. and exploding kittens is brilliant!

discovering jim norton: contextually inadequate and a bit of american degenerate

last tuesday (T-2):

struggling out of bed to arrange the circumcision and try to get other stuff done while reassuring gd at the same time (not so successfully)

getting good work done and a much clearer picture of the system
a good run but only having energy for half of it...
having to resync with my manager after disappointing him with my apparent "general disdain"

big circumcision questions with no right answers, historical circumcision is a lot less off the top

shopping, dinner, sherlock, having to step in to defend gd from an old "enlightened" friend who'd turned mega-creep, circumcision freak out and heavy research

wednesday (T-1):

feeling shitty waking up, chatting with my sister and my mom, managing to pay taxes over the phone, getting emotional over mike's post about nightlight

it's highly motivating promising my managers that there'll be something to present at the end of a sprint and delivering something more elegant and more powerful than they ever expected. i sat down on the last remaining part's design for a bit and then hammered out an implementation i'm proud of, then documented everything as extensively and redundantly as i could in the hope that nobody will mess it up while i'm away.

the sheer, giddy insanity of leaving the office and being officially on paternity leave; the raw excitement of expecting our son to be in my arms in less than twelve hours, laughing at my mom posting enthusiastically on facebook

thursday (THE DAY):

a long, unhappy morning with a terrified gd
freaking cold and exhausted and waiting for a long time
separation for preparation and panicking that they'd only call me after the procedure, but entering the operating room just in time to say hi to my mind-bogglingly beautiful baby and hold his mom's hand and cut the umbilical cord and escort him back to the recovery room and hold him skin-to-skin forever until gd arrived and she got the latching thing going and after another forever being moved to our room and getting settled and suffering minor separation anxiety while out getting myself lunch which was the only real food i would eat all day and getting through to the evening with him being ultra-zen and after a severe miscommunication with my mom leaving for the airport after she'd already picked up her baggage with a taxi driver who didn't know english but we managed in my broken french in spite of the fact that i was so tired i couldn't think in any language and picked up my mom and took her to godmother's where i had a bagel and a horrible experience trying to organize emergency food for gd in ndg at 11pm then struggling to find a taxi to return to the hospital to a hungry gd and a hungry child that we'd underfed

friday:

because until 2am nobody had bothered to explain feeding schedules to us and all that was discovered because he was having trouble breathing and although that stress was overcome fairly quickly time wise it felt like ages as both gd and i were perpetually on the edge of collapse and eventually when he calmed down we tried to sleep but the other newborn in our room wouldn't stop squealing and screaming until morning so we kept jumping up to check on ours...

i haven't been tired to the point of hallucination in a long time and knowing that you're making stupid decisions while you're making them when it's your child who needs you is overwhelmingly distressing. the relief i felt when gd finally breastfed him successfully after two turns cup feeding made me cry like our baby hasn't because he's so freakishly strong and relaxed

showering, picking up granny, our first hour and a half of actual sleep, relaxing until 9pm emergency mommy feeding with no solution failed subway followed by a medication mess and almost discharging ourselves early

saturday:

but sleeping eventually which was much easier with nobody sharing the room and with a couple of cup feedings the first of which i was way too tired for and then a much better morning with gd walking around and my sleeping on the bed and her brother and a friend visiting along with my mom and sorting out an acceptable lunch and lots of feeding and loving and registration and then a sudden breakdown due to bad beds and trying to leave earlier and a question of identifying fleas / bedbugs / gnats / just dry skin while rushing home with a giant, fluffy frog to shower and return with the car seat and there's nothing like trying to read an instruction manual for installing and operating a car seat when your wife needs to get home as soon as possible but although it took a while the experience of setting it up in the taxi was surprisingly simple and coming home was an incredible change eating well for the first time in days

sunday:

not knowing why he's crying is tough stuff to deal with, granny time is more mommy-and-daddy-sleep-like-a-baby time, and after three nights as a parent who's blessed *knocks wood* with a peaceful, healthy child my disgust at women not getting paid maternity leave has turned to rage: we don't live in villages anymore, learning baby steps is hard, hard work and god help you if you don't have helpful people available. suddenly overheating inexplicably (just like his dad?) and gd's recovery complications (allergic reaction to bandaging glue) and an argument exacerbated by an upstairs neighbour antagonizing us

yesterday:

trouble waking up in the middle of the night, early morning formula feeding and him making it clearer and clearer that he needs the real thing
the surrealistic experience of registering my son's birth and the bureaucratically stupid details of putting in for paternal leave
from sofa negligence to misreading bedsprings to getting some quality sleep in and figuring out how to double-team him while we're both half-asleep

this morning:

sleeping, feeding and installing windows 10 at 5am (more time spent protecting my privacy than installing)