6 hours sleep . . . . feels weird

After the nightmare shift this morning, handed the kid off to Katy, expecting that he would eat within an hour.  Wrote the last blog and took a nap.  Two hours, later, woke up and discovered that the kid had just eaten.  Parents woke up and took a shift.  Went back to sleep for another four hours.

Up now, feeling admittedly weird.  Haven't had that long of a successive sleep in a while.  It's been an hour here, two hour there, three if I'm lucky situation.  No idea on distribution.

Definitely considering the second story with more fervor now.  Going back to work and then dealing with this at night is going to be the next level of hell.

The one upside to newborns

Beer and PS4 at 3am ......

And the good news keeps rolling in .....

Ex-Washington Mayor Marion Barry dies http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-30166759

India tea workers kill boss over pay

Very rarely, you stumble across a truly good news story .........

India tea workers kill boss over pay http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-30167195

Doom II at Dan's Farm

Hopefully this year's hunt will be as eventful as the last. ...

The Rotting West

Funny, but the real decay isn't as overt as what these guys are posting.  The real decay is happening underneath the surface, like through-wall corrosion in piping, or termite-ridden wood.  You're just cruising along and all of a sudden, the whole thing suddenly, wonderfully, and catastrophically fails.  And then, only in retrospect, do you realize how corrupt the system truly was.

The Rotting West http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-30105541

This guy has it right

Newborns suck.

http://www.daddyfiles.com/hate-newborns/

Beyond the limit of darkness and light

Last night at around 3am, I hit a Kakashi moment as I took a step and immediately knew I was past my limit.  Cold sweat formed on my brow, and I knew that my body was about to give out.

Told Katy "I don't feel well," walked to the extra bedroom, pushed the stacks of washed laundry to the other side, and collapsed into a dream world.  As I faded out, my heartbeat seemed noticeably slower than the 51 bpm I measured the other night.

Babies don't sleep this good.  Trust me, I know.  I died.  And in four hours, I was born again.  Resurrected.

All worry had dissipated.  And what had replaced it was a sort of ... detachment.

From what I am still coming to understand.  

A poet after my own character

Dylan Thomas.

The edge of hell

Doctors orders - feed every three hours.

I am Jack's raging bile duct.

The true story of Parenthood - Part 2 - the long road home

Today is day 7.  It's the first time since my last post that I've had time to sit down and write.  But I would like to discuss the experience at the hospital after your bundle of joy has arrived and now will be placed next to you for every waking moment, unless you are the only bad parents (hint - we are) that are willing to send your newborn to the nursery in order to get some rest.

We'll start with that.  Apparently we were lodged in a "baby-friendly" hospital, which means that baby bunks with you all the time unless you ask otherwise.  Hint:  "Baby-friendly" is another term for breastfeeding concentration camp, run by the breastfeeding Nazis.  The nurses constantly remind you to wake up baby and put it to breast, whilst a cadre of lactation consultants roams the halls like the SS during the daytime, waltzing in to whichever room they want at whatever time they want and shoving the kids face into the mom's boob as if to smother it.  And when I say shove, I mean it.  If I were the little guy, I would be frightened to death of the flesh mountain that wakes me every two hours and insists on climbing down my throat.

Plenty more on the state of breastfeeding propaganda  to come.  That shit never stops.  In fact, a whole post will be dedicated to the bullshit of breastfeeding at a later date.  As far as I'm concerned, people who exclusively breastfeed should stop being hypocrites and go live in the jungle, using only rudimentary stone tools to slay their meals in the wild.   Or go to a hippie commune and grow all their own food, fully reject technology and stop bothering all of us normal people with their sanctimonious, fabricated bullshit.

Anyhoo, back to the hospital stay.  Be warned, when they say "baby-friendly," that means that it is absolutely parent unfriendly. A constant barrage of people coming in, so that during the two hours that you can get sleep, someone is knocking on your door every damn 10 minutes with some form or another.  I shit you not, we were complaining about it the second day and 5 people stopped by in 10 minutes.  I was wondering if this was some sort of sadistic stress chamber, and we were not lucky enough to be the control group.

And the care seemed vastly skewed to normal pregnancies.  Lactation consultants spewed their filth, suggesting positions that no sane person would recommend for someone with a C-section.  No rest, which is critical for recovering from MAJOR SURGERY. 

Food - terrible.  Nursing staff - hit or miss.  Lactation consultants - worthless.  Doctors - well, actually pretty good, when they bother to show up.    Which was never. 

Things were so bad that we decided to pack up and head home on the second day after my wife's C-section.  Hoping that the lack of a constant stream of people knocking on our door would improve our sleeping situation (HA-more to come!).

And so, two days after having her innards removed and stuffed back into her like a sausage-filled teddy bear, my wife left the hospital with a prescription for Motrin.

Low pulse

Not only am I outside the average range.  Apparently I am outside the total range for my age group.

Always knew I was special.  Should probably check back with the doc....

The true story of parenthood - Arrival

The pamphlets had it all wrong.  They are all titled "A Joyous Parenthood," or "Magical Beginnings," or other such trite nonsense.  There's nothing magical about it.  A stroll around your local hospital's maternity ward will convince you that absolutely any hoodrat can have a kid.

 

Ah yes, let's begin with the beginning.  Some people can just have a kid.  Things work out naturally.  But for those of us that need to take extra steps, they take something fun like sex and turn it into work.  A prescribed regimen.  Take something that is supposed to be spontaneous and free, and turn into a strict diet.  Oh yeah, that'll help.

 

Regardless of how it happens, when you do get pregnant, there's the constant worrying.  Holy crap.  Does the baby have X.  Does it have Y.  What's the heart rate.  How many weeks are we? 40 weeks of wondering just what the hell is going on and a slew of medical professionals to shrug their shoulders and say:  Meh!  Answer questions vaguely, with no less than three undistinguishable alternatives and shy away from giving advice.  Really simple shit, too.  Such as:  Should my son's penis be as big as his head?  No answer.  I guess that's day one of medical school.

 

Worry worry worry worry worry.  For 40 weeks.  Pretty much sums up getting to term for me.

 

And then the day comes.  Or more likely, it doesn't and they have to make the day come.  Come on in and get drugged up to force that little guy out like a giant turd on a slip and slide.  My wife rebukes me for comparing the little one to a giant turd, but after 3 hours of solid screaming, I am somewhat reluctant to change my assessment. 

 

Back to the inducement.  Get the drugs going to move things along.  Nothing happens.  Get more drugs to move things along.  Nothing happens.  Up the dosage.  Now we're contracting.  Up the dosage.  Yeah, up to 4.5 cm.  Keep that shit running for a few hours!  Get an epidural.  Stall at 5cm.  Up the dosage for a few hours.  Still stalled.  Almost kill my kid by turning the wife from the left to the right.  Are you FUCKING KIDDING ME? THAT'S ALL IT TAKES?!?!?! Time to hit you with the emergency C section at 1;00a.m., when you're too tired and deranged from a nightmarish deathmarch through labor to know just what the hell you are signing up for.

 

Scrub up and go into the ER, where your wife is tied to the bed, crucify-style.  Stand behind the barrier at her head with the anesthesiologist, who is deeply involved in whatever novel he's reading.  Smell the burning flesh as they start to cut the little guy out.  Hear the slopping sounds as they do whatever the hell they're doing on the other side of the sheet.  See your wife start to shake uncontrollably as her body reacts to the shock of what she can't feels from the boobs down.  Dr. Reader, our anesthesiologist, hops up and says you'll be a dad soon, have a look.

 

For those of you who run into this situation.  DO NOT STAND UP. There's not much except a Chinese buffet gone horribly, horribly wrong that can prepare you for what you are about to see.  DAMMIT, WHY DID YOU STAND UP?!?!  Bloody mess of a baby flies out, Lion King hold by the doctor, clamps come in and they chop him off and send him to the side table.  And all I can think is:  Is that a vagina on the table?

 

Hard to track from watching your new kid and wondering if he's OK vs. seeing your wife disassembled on the table.  Of course I was happy to see the little guy.  How couldn't you be?  I was absolutely giddy.  But when they called out his weight at 8 lbs, 11.2 oz.  I can't help but think they could have figured out that he wouldn't fit with a simple ultrasound up front.

 

More later.  The little guy settled down from his 3 hour screamfest and will need food in 2 hours or less.  So, need to crash while I can.