This is week 115 of The Life of Riley, a weekly post detailing my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment.

Sunday (Day 798): The False Zen of Parenthood

The nurse brought the baby in at 2:30 AM to feed. I had dropped her off at the nursery a little over an hour before, so we were not running on a lot of sleep. I swung my legs over my cot, put my elbows on my knees and ran my hands down my face. Even though it was dark in the room and I wasn’t awake enough to know what was going on, I knew exactly where I was. I stared at the floor and tried to keep my eyes open, groggily accepting whatever the nurse needed to do. Within an hour, the baby was back in the nursery and we went back to sleep. We both slept like rocks.

At 6:30 AM, #1GF! tried to wake me by whispering my name a few times. It didn’t work, so she whispered louder. Any kid who grew up with The Amityville Horror knows that if you hear loud whispering of unknown origin, you listen to that shit or the room fills up with flies. I sat bolt upright. I was bleary and suddenly on high alert. There was nothing in the room but an apologetic #1GF! looking down at me from her craftmatic hospital bed.

#1GF! wanted me to go to the nursery to get the baby because she missed her. I wasn’t about to stand between a new mother and her child, so I rubbed my face and made sure that I could speak rudimentary English before heading out to the nursery.

I wheeled the baby back to the room, and #1GF! was really excited to see her. I couldn’t do anything but smile. We both showered for the first time in a couple of days, and after the baby was fed, the room and its occupants were quiet, bright and clean. We finally felt a little bit human.

In my quiet time, I developed a hypothesis on parenthood. Sometimes people think that new parents act as if parenting is the only way to achieve life’s true meaning. It’s as if cranking out a child instantly made them self proclaimed zen masters who know what life is all about. I’m not going to apologize for the people who act that way. You know those people. Don’t act like you don’t.

What I’ve noticed is that being a parent doesn’t instantly turn you into a zen master, packed full of pithy wisdom and placid reassurance. What it actually does is force you to downgrade what it takes to make you happy. When showering feels like winning the lottery, it’s not too difficult to mistake a new parent’s attitude for a smug form of store bought zen.

We watched Myth Busters all morning for no other reason that we didn’t have the energy to flip through the channels to find something else. Thankfully, a work friend came by with her three kids to break up the marathon. The kids are all pretty young, and each of them sat in a chair and held the baby.

I was worried about the baby’s weak immune system with the kids, but they disinfected their hands, and I kept my mouth shut. It was hard to reassure my paranoid side that the kids weren’t going to lick the baby, and that even if they did, we were in a fucking hospital.

They stayed as long as you can entertain three young girls in a small hospital room, and my parents showed up with my sister not too long after. Just after they arrived, I suddenly found myself fighting off yawns and spending a lot of energy trying to stay awake. I think that I finally felt like #1GF! and the baby would be taken care of if I crashed, so my brain started shutting down services in preparation for a reboot.

#1GF!’s aunts showed up, and my parents headed out to make room. The baby decided that she needed to eat not too long after they arrived, so their visit was cut short.

The baby slept for a good portion of what was left of the day, and we took her on a couple of laps of the maternity ward just to get out of the room.

I was avoiding going to the cafeteria for another piece of pizza, so I ate part of #1GF!’s leftover dinner. I then ate three cupcakes to make up for the lack of food. It wasn’t the greatest or most nutritious idea that I’ve had, but my brain was running on a skeleton set of services, and happy to be eating anything but pizza.

After dinner, a lactation specialist came in and talked to us for a while. Yea, you heard me. A lactation specialist. I had no idea that breast feeding was such a complex process that you needed specialists to get it going, but it is. I guess if you do it wrong, you can end up with a cracked nipple or two. As a man, there are so many things that you don’t need to know. So, so many things. I’m fine with copious amounts of blood and gore, but putting words “cracked” and “nipple” side by side makes me wince.

After everyone was gone, it felt like a tornado had whipped through. #1GF! sighed and smiled. I turned to her. “It’s nice that people visit, but it’s great when it’s just the three of us,” I said.

“Are you happy?” #1GF! asked with a bit of a worried expression.

I looked at her sitting in her hospital bed and smiled. “Unbelievably.”

Monday (Day 799): The Diaper Master Emerges

Tons of people came to visit in the morning, and one of #1GF!’s old friends visited in the afternoon. I never showered because there was only time for one of us to shower. #1GF! deserved it more.

We didn’t expect to be in the hospital more than a couple of days, so I had to go home and pick up some extra clothes and the baby car seat. When I walked out the sliding hospital doors, the hot and sticky air enveloped me like a bowl of warm pudding. The air was much thicker than that filtered, climate controlled hospital air that we had grown so used to.

It was weird to be at home after the last week in the hospital. The house was so much bigger than the hospital room, and so much quieter. There wasn’t a beep or a bustle. I was in the house for under ten minutes, but the house already was starting to feel lonely and empty. As someone who enjoys sitting alone and writing all day, it was strange to think that the house suddenly seemed too quiet.

I put away a few things, took in the mail, grabbed some clothes for the two of us, and grabbed the car seat. I thought about showering, but didn’t think it was fair that I should get to shower at home while #1GF! couldn’t. I locked up and drove to the hospital to get back to my new family. I already missed the two of them and realized how quickly my life was changing.

It was good that I didn’t shower at home because, thanks to the heat and humidity, I was soaked with sweat within ten minutes of being in the car. Once I got back to the hospital, I managed to take a quick shower in a lull between the multitude of doctors who were in and out of the room.

The waves of tests and checks eventually subsided, leaving us alone with the baby once again. We spent most of the time simply staring at her. Now, everyone knows that babies have no motor control, but you don’t know the extent of it until you have the opportunity to stare at a newborn for a while.

You want to see some Exorcist type shit? Watch a newborn’s eyes open suddenly and roll in opposite directions. It’s a perfectly normal thing for a newborn because their nervous system isn’t fully baked before they get out of the oven, but when their eyes suddenly pop open and start rolling, it is freaky. I couldn’t help but laugh, but #1GF! couldn’t watch it. She’d say something like “Oh geez” and turn away every time it happened.

Later, I hit my first baby milestone. I changed my first diaper. #1GF! was going to do it, and I told her to let me do it. “Are you sure?” she asked.

“I have to learn this stuff eventually, and it might as well be now.”

“Okay…” said #1GF! as she stepped aside.

“What do I do? Take the diaper off?”

#1GF! was patient. “Yes.”

“Now?”

“Yes, now.”

I unhooked the tape on the diaper. “Okay…whoa! Oh, geez. Oh, that can’t be good. Baby! don’t you know this is my first diaper?” The baby didn’t answer, so I turned to #1GF! “Do you have a wipey thing?” #1GF! pointed them out on the table. “Now I just…what? Wipe it off?”

“Yes.”

“It’s like tar.”

“Yep.”

“I need more of those wipey things. There’s no way that one is going to do the job.” The rest of the process went the same way, with me asking stupid questions every step of the way. I finally did it, though. And the baby looked just like it did before I got there. No scratches, dents, or voided warranties. I felt like I deserved some sort of unlock or bonus round, but I remembered that this was something that little girls learn when they’re still in diapers.

The rest of the day was a blur of visitors in and out of the room.

Tuesday (Day 800): Uptight Rides, Shotgun Shits, And Choking In the Dark

We were supposed to be discharged from the hospital, but a doctor came in and told us that the baby needed another test because she was jaundiced. Up until that point, everyone told us that her color was fine and that she was doing great. It was a big WTF? moment.

They took the baby to the nursery for some tests, and she came back a little while later with a small trail of dried blood on her tiny foot. I’m sure that she won’t remember the needle, but I felt bad for her. After that, a slew of doctors were in and out of the room checking the results.

Around midmorning, a lady came in to drop off a breast pump. She had such an amusing personality that it wasn’t uncomfortable at all, even for a guy who didn’t want to know the littlest detail about that sort of thing. I found out that even though women aren’t supposed to drink when they’re breastfeeding, some mothers drink, and then dump the milk. She referred to it as the “pump and dump”. All kinds of people have babies, but after the wait that we had, we couldn’t imagine needing that information.

The woman also told us that she had owned a Hyundai, and #1GF! and her discussed the not so fine points of below-budget cars. The woman also mentioned that she once owned a BMW. We said that the breast pump business must be going well. She waved it off. “Everyone should own a BMW,” she said. “so that they know that they don’t need to own a BMW.” I smiled. That was pretty good.

By noon, we got the word that that the baby wasn’t jaundiced. She was absolutely fine. #1GF! and I showered, and were finally cleared to be discharged from the hospital.

I brought presents and luggage down to the car, and brought up the baby seat. I got into the elevator, with a couple who had tattoos on the sides of their necks.

“Congratulations,” the woman said.

I smiled. “Thanks.”

“Is it your first?”

I looked at them through half open eyes and smirked. “Is it obvious?”

They smiled. “Sort of,” said the guy in a quiet voice before looking quickly away.

“Everyone looks that way,” said the woman. “We have two.”

“The first is always the hardest,” said the guy as the elevator eased into the maternity floor.

“Good luck,” said the woman.

“Thanks,” I said smiling at the two of them.

When I got back to the room, #1GF! was going through her bag to find the perfect outfit for the baby to wear home from the hospital. Oddly, we had only packed enough clothes for a couple of days, but #1GF! was poring over a week’s worth of baby outfits. I laughed at the outfit fixation, but after what #1GF! had gone through, I didn’t mention it. I just let her go. She was cleared to make every moment momentous, if she chose to. She earned it.

Eventually, #1GF! settled on a little green dress, matching socks, and a little pair of bloomer pants with a bee on the butt. We loaded the baby into the car seat, and it looked like we bought a car seat that was too big. Even with an infant head restraint, the baby’s head flopped to the side. We had to bolster the cushioning with a burp cloth just to keep her head upright. We made one final sweep of the room for any belongings and buckled the baby in. “Ready?” I asked.

“Not really,” said #1GF! with a look of nervous excitement.

“I smiled and picked up the baby seat, loaded with our lovely parting gift. #1GF! grabbed the rest of the flowers, and we thanked all the nurses as we walked out of the ward into the shiny, off-white hallway.

It was still humid enough that I could feel the thickness in the air as I ran out to get the truck. I pulled up to the exit and we all climbed in. I was in the front, and the ladies were in back. “You ready?” I asked.

“As ready as we’re going to get,” said #1GF!.

As we pulled out of the parking lot, Judas Priest’s “You Got Another Thing Coming” came on the radio. I told the baby that this was classic metal, and it was something that she would be getting used to over the years. I changed the station and Shannon’s “Let the music Play” came on. “Daddy likes metal, honey, but he used to breakdance, too. It was a long time ago.”

#1GF! broke in. “You did the robot in the kitchen last week.”

“I’m glad your brain is too small to remember any of this, honey.”

I changed the channel and U2’s “Beautiful Day” came on. While I’m not a fan of the song, I left it on. It was one of those rare times in life when anything that came on the radio seemed to have more meaning than it actually did. “This is so weird, isn’t it?” I asked.

“Completely,” said #1GF! from the back seat.

“I feel like we’re hauling a tanker full of nitroglycerin.” I looked down. “I’m not even doing the speed limit.”

“I keep feeling like someone is going to pull us over and return her to her rightful owner.”

We went home, and around dinner time, I went to pick up some groceries and prescriptions. I had to sign something to get pain pills for #1GF!, and they quizzed me on my address to get some prenatal vitamins. I understand trying to keep people from scamming pain pills, but is there really a big enough problem with dudes getting all jacked up on prenatal vitamins that you have to quiz people? Really? Is a little extra iron going to cause a real societal problem? I grabbed a couple of treats for #1GF! (like Twizzlers, M&M’s, and chips) on the way out because she’s been in a hospital bed for a week.

I pulled into our driveway, and the neighborhood kids stood on their bikes, each with one foot on the ground, watching me pull in. A few scattered into their houses to sound the alarm that we were home with a baby. It wasn’t long before there were a bunch of little girls and their parents crowded around our front gate. I dropped the groceries on the counter and wrapped up the baby to take outside. I opened the front door and said “TAH DAH!” to the folks at the fence, as if I were performing some sort of magic trick. They all fawned over her. It was pretty cool. #1GF! joined me outside soon after.

We stayed out for a few minutes, and then went back in, leaving the kids to return to playing on a warm summer evening. I put the groceries away, and sat on the couch holding the baby. #1GF! fell into a much-needed sleep.

I went in to handle a diaper change, and quickly realized that the baby had stepped up her game. The innocuous little poop that I changed in the hospital lured me into thinking that baby poop would be tar-like, but relatively easy to clean up. I didn’t know that meconium was a short-lived phenomenon.

The baby had moved on to unbelievably explosive poops that left clothes, beds, and everything within a three foot radius as collateral damage. I’m not exaggerating. The pooping power of a newborn is astounding. It’s like they’re putting everything they have into the one thing they really know how to do, and the result is a shotgun loaded with poop. It’s called commitment, folks. We could all probably learn a lesson here.

Once sheets, bumper, and my clothes were thrown into the wash, the evening turned to feedings and sitting on the couch. #1GF! went in to nap for a couple of hours, and I watched the baby sleep. By early evening, we were both exhausted. “Do you think we should put her to bed?” #1GF! asked.

“I don’t know,” I said with a tone that was was above nervous, but below panic. “Who’ll watch her? What if something happens? I’m not sure she knows what she’s doing, yet. I mean, I’ve been wearing these shorts longer than she’s been breathing air.” I paused and tried to calm down.

Even though I knew that people do go to sleep when they have babies, I didn’t know how. There were no nurses to make sure that the baby was breathing or wake us when she was ready to feed. We were on our own and we were exhausted. We put her into a pack and play at the end of our bed, and lay there in the dark listening to her breathe.

Just as we were drifting off, we heard a strange noise coming from the pack and play. We sprang out of bed like the sheets were on fire to find the baby violently swinging her head from side to side. We grabbed her and picked her up. She was trying to get out some spit up that was keeping her from breathing.

The first time we try to put her to bed on her own, and she chokes on vomit. Our hearts were pounding. We kept the baby up for a while because we were freaked out that she’d choke to death on her own vomit while we left her unguarded. Babies and rock stars don’t have big enough brains to keep them from choking on vomit, but babies will naturally swing their heads from side to side to get the liquid out of their mouths.

I eventually went in for a sleep shift, and #1GF! was up with cluster feeding. Cluster feeding is another term that a single man rarely needs to know about. You don’t know what cluster feeding is? Oh, it’s just another word for fun.

Cluster feeding is when the baby cries every hour and eats every hour. The mother barely gets a break. By the time the feeding and burping is done, the next feeding starts. This can go on for a day. I wanted to be supportive of #1GF! and going through the same sleep deprivation, but she reminded me that in the pregnancy class, they recommended sleeping in shifts whenever possible so that at least one person has their wits about them.

The blur of crying and feeding went straight through to the next morning, and it was an all inclusive blur. While I was making dinner, my parents called to see how we were doing, and the call suddenly dropped. The problem wasn’t on my end, so I continued making dinner and waited for the call back. Within five minutes, I had completely forgotten that the call occurred.

The first week of taking care of a newborn has an interesting effect on the seemingly normal human brain. You’re lucid one minute, and completely wiped out the next. Yet, there weren’t any negative feelings. Feeding, changing, and burping are just things that needed to be done. No matter what time of the day or night, this was what we had been looking for all these years. It’s hard to be negative when you get what you want, even if it’s more difficult than you expected.

Wednesday (Day 801): Owning A Bugatti In A Bad Neigborhood

#1GF! slept in the morning, and I sat on the couch keeping an eye on the baby. I was slowly realizing that newborns don’t do much. They sleep, eat and poop and are completely immune to big goofs who are sitting on the couch next to them, dying to entertain them.

By 10AM, both #1GF! and I were up. #1GF! started laundry, and I tried to reconstruct the last few days in my notes. The baby was feeding and sleeping, and we were taking shifts watching her. I’ve never watched so much TV. I sat watching Old School, a movie that seemed to be written just to shove 80’s references into.

A neighbor came by to give us some clothes, and we got a congratulatory fruit bouquet in the mail that was in a giant ceramic duck. It was nice looking enough not to eat, but I overcame that impulse pretty quickly by forever preserving an image of it in my camera phone.

I went in to hone my diaper changing skills, and the baby shit while I was changing her. It was like a hot shotgun blast of wet poop. She got the crib, the sheets, the bumper, and her dad with a single shot. I thought that it was about time to set up a blast shield like they have on aircraft carriers to protect the enlisted people from the jet engines. I rigged up a changing table pad to the side of her crib and practiced ducking behind it.

Out of nowhere, I got a call about a job that I had applied for back in May. I had gone through six interviews three months ago, and they were still trying to put the job together. I told them that I was indeed still interested.

I made dinner, cleaned up the dishes, and did a little laundry. I thought about sending out an announcement about the baby via e-mail or through Facebook, but I was tired and more interested in hanging out with my two ladies than turning on the time trap connected to my monitor. Our family was already sending announcements to each other, and our close friends knew, so I thought that would suffice for the time being. We were still trying to find our rhythm as parents, and I wasn’t ready to deal with the outside world just yet.

At night, I sang to the baby about whatever was going on in the room, and it made #1GF! laugh. I know that babies need to be talked to and assured, but I think it’s hard to talk to a baby at first. They don’t understand you, so it’s sort of like openly talking to yourself. Singing to them about whatever’s going on in the room, well, that makes things a whole lot easier.

I found myself just staring at the baby and snapping off pictures every time a gas bubble changed her expression. I ran out of space on our camera, which has never happened before.

After the pictures, I sat analyzing what having a baby is like, to see if I could explain it in terms that I might’ve understood before I had a child. I’ve never understood what being a parent is or why people go to see other people’s newborns when the babies can’t really do anything amusing. It was never in my realm of experience.

Everyone gets all philosophical and says it’s life-changing, and they’re right. It sort of is. You don’t come out of that hospital the way you went in. Some of your ego drains out, and remains in that delivery room, mixed in with all that blood and amniotic fluid.

If I could jump in a time machine and go back to meet my younger, single self, I would do two things. First, I would tell him that parenthood is more fun than I’ve ever had, and that he should go up to the third floor and introduce himself to #1GF! a good ten years early. Then, I would explain parenthood to him like this: “You know that feeling when you buy a new car?”

He would just stare at me because he never owned a new car. He would also stare at me with one eyebrow up, and wonder why the hell this old bearded guy was trying to explain parenthood to him, and how this guy could look so much like him.

“Ok, imagine you won a Bugatti Veyron in a contest. You take take it home and park that 253 mph, thousand horsepower, one point seven million dollar beauty in your driveway.” His eyebrows drop because he can hear the bass tubes thumping by his living room window at all hours, along with an occasional gunshot.

“Right. You’re getting it now. It’s unique, beautiful, and impossible to replace, and you need to keep it safe. That’s going to be tough, but you’ll figure out a way. Okay, now, imagine that the car alarm goes off all the time for apparently no reason. It happens as often during the day as it does at night. You have no idea if it’s an internal or external problem, and it sometimes can take you four or five hours to get the alarm to shut off, because all the instructions are in French, a language that you didn’t think was as useful as Latin in high school.”

He looks at me like I’m souring the deal, and stubs his cigarette out between his boot and the stoop. “Oh, and imagine the thing takes specialized fuel from one gas station, and spits oil out of both ends. Randomly. Explosively. And completely without warning.”

One of his eyebrows is up. “That all sounds like a pain, but it seems like a small price to pay for owning a Bugatti.”

“Yes,” I say to him. “it is.”

Thursday (Day 802): It Turns Nerves Into Fuses

#1GF! and I both showered in the morning. How human of us. Because we left the hospital a half day early, they sent a visiting nurse to check on the baby. The baby gained five ounces in two days, and was jaundice free. She was right on track to being the well-adjusted, nobel prize winning supermodel that we, as parents know she is destined to be.

My parents dropped by and brought Italian cookies. One of #1GF!’s friends called, and I was forced to admit that I had no idea what day it was.

I turned on the PC for the first time and made a quick announcement on Facebook that I was a baby daddy. I checked my e-mail and found that I had been rejected by five of the nine literary agents that I queried. Stephen King used to stick his rejections on a nail hanging above his desk, and that’s what I intended to do. I ran out of ink after the printing three. I quickly tired of the virtual world and got back to my new little family.

We had to use the nose sucker for the first time because babies have no idea how to blow their noses. Try getting a tube up a babies nose when they’re throwing a fit. And you have to do it several times in a row to get the boogers out of there. It’s worse than trying to get a long headshot multiple times in a row in a video game.

We had leftovers for dinner and the baby threw a fit. She was cluster feeding again, and crying for hours at a time. A little crying isn’t easy to deal with, but it’s not catastrophic. You can’t hear a person two feet away, and can’t concentrate enough to figure out what they’re asking you. It’s sort of like having to be somewhere when your car won’t start. You can either freak out, or you can troubleshoot.

Cars boil down to gas, air, or spark. With a newborn, it’s either intake, sleep, or exhaust. You try to feed her, you try to lay her down, you check the diaper, or you try to get a burp up. And the issues can change without warning. You can change a diaper, and while you’re getting a burp up, the diaper ends up dirty again, but you don’t check it because you just changed her ten minutes ago. Or you just fed her, check the diaper, and waste a mess of time trying to get a burp out of her. All the while, she just wants food because she’s in a cluster feed. It’s like troubleshooting a mutating virus.

After an hour or two of screaming, you can’t function as well. Your nerves crinkle and spark from the constant wail, and it eventually sets fire to your troubleshooting chart. At that point, you take five minutes and hand the baby off to your partner. Then you sit for a half hour and pretend not to hear the crying in the background. And when your significant other hits their breaking point, you go back and start over.

With two relatively mature people (well, I said relatively) working a colicky baby for four or five hours can leave a new parent jangled and exhausted. I have new respect for parents who do it all on their own. And, sadly, even though you don’t want to admit it, you get a grim understanding of how a small subset of mothers can snap and throw their children out the window. You can’t condone or justify it, but a small, dark corner of your brain can understand how it could happen.

Friday (Day 803): The Mystery Of The Italian Macaroon

I made breakfast for #1GF!, and then we went to the doctor to get #1GF!’s staples out. I sat in the waiting room with the baby, and kept her from crying by rocking her car seat back and forth on my knees. It was a tentative quiet.

Once the staples were out, we went to Babies R Us to stock up on baby supplies, and then to Staples for ink for my printer. I was still thinking that I’d print out all the rejections to get myself used to them. I ran into the local hardware megastore for cleaner, and then we stopped into the grocery store. #1GF! sat in the car keeping the baby from freaking out as I rushed around picking up things we needed.

It was good for both of us to be out of the house, but a little scary because we were traveling with a crybomb with a broken timer. And we had zero training with the bomb squad. We were just learning to deal with the baby’s freakouts at home, but being in public added a whole new element to the pressure.

We made it home without incident, and I put away the groceries, cleaned the bathroom, mowed the lawn, and swept the walk. I showered, and went back out to pick up some Purel and mail some bills. As a bonus, I picked up Big Dig ice cream, which I never find anywhere.

When I got home, the baby barfed all over a pair of my shorts for the first time. Even though she was on her back in my arms, she managed to barf in a fountain-like arc that didn’t touch her, but went all over me. Disney couldn’t have made that barf jump better with the aid of thousands of dollars of pumps and computer technology.

One of #1GF’s friend’s daughters baked a coffee cake and sent it over to us. It was a really thoughtful thing to do, especially for a college student. I don’t think I was as thoughtful at her age, but then, I was a boy, and a bit of a punk.

I swept and vacuumed the house and then made coconut macaroons because one of #1GF!’s friends was bringing #1GF!’s mother over. I knew that #1GF!’s mother liked macaroons (“Italian macaroons” she calls them), so I thought I was doing a good deed. I found out later that coconut macaroons are not the kind she liked. She liked “Italian macaroons”, which I had never heard of. I only knew of coconut and almond. I made a mental note to look up Italian macaroons later.

By 9PM, our company was gone, everything was cleaned up, and the baby was fed. I sat the baby on the couch and sang to her about how much I was enjoying the chicken thigh I was eating without her screaming. She seemed as entertained as a one week old child can seem.

I looked on the internet and my Italian cookie book for a recipe for Italian macaroons, but couldn’t find a description of what #1GF!’s mother was talking about. There are coconut macaroons, and almond macaroons. I had to assume that what #1GF!’s mother was calling Italian macaroons must’ve been almond macaroons. I made a note to make those for her next time. Little did I know that this would become more of a process than I imagined.

When everything quieted down, we gave the baby her first bath. Okay, technically the nurses gave her a number of baths, but that was in some secret baby bathing laundry in the hospital. We would just send her out for cleaning, and she would come back squeaky clean and smelling like a baby. This was her first bath given by her parents.

We missed the bath tutorial at the hospital, and #1GF! was nervous about the prospect. #1GF! really, really didn’t want the baby to cry. I thought that she’d be fine. And she was. She got through it better than her parents did.

How many new parents does it take to bathe a baby? Two. And in the end, I’m not sure the baby was really all that clean. Although, she didn’t start off all that dirty either.

The baby was relaxed after her bath, and I tried to comb her hair. I never had a doll (boys have action figures, which have helmets instead of hair), so there is only two ways I know how to comb hair: 80’s middle bullet part, and traditional side part. I opted for side part, and thought I did a pretty good job.

#1GF! leaned into the baby. “Oh, isn’t that cute. Daddy made your hair look just like his.”

I thought I did a good job considering there wasn’t a lot of hair to work with. “Now, hold on. How could I have done her hair differently?”

#1GF! took the tiny baby brush away from me and styled the baby’s hair into a faux hawk. I protested having my kid look like a hipster pseudo punk, but a man like me doesn’t have the necessary armaments to fight on the battlegrounds of fashion and style.

We put the baby to bed, and even though it was only 9:30, we went to bed, too. After a short time with a newborn, you realize that you sleep when the baby sleeps.

I woke up later, and #1GF! was gone. I squinted at the clock and got out of bed. #1GF! was on the couch with the baby. “Man can you believe it’s 11:30 already?” I asked. #1GF! laughed and pointed to the clock on the cable box. It was 4:30AM.

Saturday (Day 804): No Need For Hooks Or Hacksaws

I got up and had a piece of coffee cake for breakfast. Want to do something nice for someone who has a baby? Forget flowers. They’re useless and hard to carry out of the hospital. Wait until they get home and send food. Coffee cake tastes so much better when someone else makes it.

After that coffee cake, the day blended into a molten mass of changing, feeding, and bad TV. The baby didn’t sleep at all, and was fussy all day. There are only so many made up songs that you can sing about your environment before you run out of material.

I showered at 6PM and it only cooled me down and destunk me for a half hour. It was broiling out.

My parents came by because they were in the neighborhood visiting friends. The baby fell asleep for the thirty minutes that they were there and changed back into a difficult-to-console mass of flailing arms and legs the minute that they were gone. I made dinner after they left and #1GF! and I ate in shifts, while waiting for the baby to calm down.

I’m not one to have salad with dinner, because to me, salad is as exciting as a glass of water. I sat eating a salad on my shift, and I actually found myself concentrating on eating it. I was sitting there thinking about what a great time I was having eating that salad.

You know why people like parenthood so much? No, it’s not the miracle of life. It’s like some sort of drug that breaks life down into the very basics, and filters out everything else. Sure, it does that by denying you the basics, but at least it’s not officially known to cause brain damage.

For example, ever been in the unfortunate situation where you somehow ended up with shit on your hand? You don’t care how it got on there, but you want it off yesterday. You can scrub that hand with hot water and bleach, and it never really feels clean. You find yourself treating that hand like a leper, or constantly wiping it on your shirt long after it’s clean. Hell, in the old days, if I even surmised that something on my hand was shit, I’d just look down at my hand and think, “Nah. Fuck it. I don’t need that hand anymore. Get me a hacksaw. I’m not walking around with a shit hand for the rest of my life. I’ll use a hook.”

Now, in my new post baby world, if there’s shit on my hand, I rarely get past the thought of “Is that shit?” before moving on to something else. Most of the time, I’m hoping it’s the baby’s. “Is that shit on my arm?” I look closer. “Huh. I think it is.” Then I think, “I should wash that off before I get near the baby.”

It’s only been eight days in the baby bubble.

I used to eat meals at six, noon and six. Now, meals come whenever the baby decides to sleep. If that’s an early bird, blue haired 4:00PM, or “I really should eat something before bed, yo quiero Taco Bell” 10PM meal, that’s the way it is. Time in the baby bubble is liquid. And everything blends.

And even though I have a lot of words at my disposal, none of them really describe it. Parenthood is unreal. And I love it.

What I Learned

• Parenting forces you to downgrade what it takes to make you happy.
• There is such thing as a lactation specialist and her whole job revolves around getting women to breast feed.
• Newborn’s eyes roll in different directions simultaneously.
• I can now change a diaper.
• Pump and dump is when a breast feeding mother drinks alcohol and uses a breast pump to dump the milk.
• #1GF! brought more outfits for her unborn child than herself.
• Pharmacies will quiz you over prenatal vitamins like there’s an epidemic of dudes trying to get jacked up on folic acid.
• First, babies poop meconium, which is thick and sticky like tar. You practically have to scrub it off.
• After meconium, babies shit like a shotgun, taking out anything in a three foot radius.
• Unlike rock stars, babies know to swing their heads to clear vomit.
• Choking in the dark is one of the scariest sounds I’ve heard.
• A new baby severely blurs time.
• Neborns don’t really do much in their first week.
• Fruit bouquets are better than floral ones.
• Talking to a baby is sort of weird at first because they don’t understand you or respond. It’s as close as you can get to talking to yourself without looking crazy.
• Parenthood changes a person.
• You have to suck boogers out of a baby’s nose. A lifetime of video games did nothing to improve my accuracy in getting a bulb up a baby’s tiny nostril.
• Troubleshooting why a baby is crying is like trying to contain a mutating virus.
• Two hours of crying causes nerves to crinkle and spark. Five will leave you jangled.
• Baby barf travels in tragectories that would make an engineer weep.
• #1GF!’s mom is not a fan of coconut macaroons.
• It takes two new parents to bathe a baby.
• Parenthood breaks life down to the vary basics and filters out everything else.
• Being a new parent means shit on your hand is more common than it ever should be, and you care about it less than you probably should.
• Parenthood is awesome.

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