Bonnie and Snide

My daugther, Mina, was born happy and healthy on March 10, 2017. She's a 7 lb, 3oz, 20 inch ball of wonderment with large feet. This is the story of how she got here. Part III: Deliverance Adventist Medical Center in Southeast Portland is a funny little hospital. It's very small, old-fashioned, and low-key. When we toured it a few weeks before, the nurses kept apologizing for the mid-90s decor and the tiny tube televisions in every room. Although we didn't exactly plan it this way, (our insurance made the decision, thanks Boehner) this hospital seemed to fit our sensibilities perfectly. When we arrived, the kindly intake nurse took Adair into a room to check her dilation, and immediately eased our anxieties by letting us know that we would not be sent home, we had come to the hospital at the right time! They went ahead and checked us into the room in which Adair would deliver our daughter, and where we would be staying for at least the next few days. There wa...

You hear a lot about "instincts" when you are becoming a new father. The general consensus goes something like this:  "Mothers, they start to feel that connection with the baby as soon as they can feel her kicking and growing inside them. Fathers though, they have trouble connecting with an unborn child. Once they see her and hear her cry though, then those instincts kick in and the bonding is instantaneous." So, laboring under those assumptions while Adair was pregnant, I mostly felt like it was essentially my job to just wait. Let nature take its course, and I would be a bona fide father soon.  Occasionally I would get to feel her kick or squirm around inside Adair's tummy, which was a feeling I absolutely adored; but when people would ask me how I was feeling, he truth was, I didn't really know. My stock answer was "excited," which was true. I was super excited to be starting this next chapter in our lives. As for being excited to have an a...

My daugther, Mina, was born happy and healthy on March 10, 2017. She's a 7 lb, 3oz, 20 inch ball of wonderment with large feet. This is the story of how she got here. Part II: Thai Food and Restless Sleep I have mentioned on this blog previously that it's a big deal when you are pregnant that you don't overreact and head to the hospital too early. So, when Adair started having contractions, we knew that it could be a while, and that maybe if we were lucky, we might have a decent night's sleep. At this point, we did what all good Portlanders do when they are looking to kill some time: we got Thai food. Although Adair was harboring some mild concerns about eating spicy food mere hours away from the potential of accidental well-lit public poops in a hospital bed surrounded by kindly nurses and one lovely doctor, I was able to sway her with the reminder that she may not be able to have a solid meal for a while until this hootenanny was over and done with.  N...

My daugther, Mina, was born happy and healthy on March 10, 2017. She's a 7 lb, 3oz, 20 inch ball of wonderment with large feet. This is the story of how she got here. Part I: Conception It was around 12:30 a.m. on a Sunday, just after a friend's wedding... Ok just kidding. Part I: Contractions in the Car. Cartractions. Our baby's due date was Sunday, March 12th. I was hoping for March 13th because 3/13/17 is all prime numbers, and Daddy don't have a great track record of remembering people's birthdays. Also, I got stuck getting married on 8/16/14, without a lucky odd number to be found (spelling eventual doom for my marriage), so I figured I'd be luckier with my baby girl. Anyway, she was due on the 12th. As most of you know, due dates are hardly an exact science; and in addition, literally everyone  was telling us that most first-borns don't come until after their due date. Doctors, nurses, friends, coworkers, friendly coworkers, pries...

Or, Being Pregnant is Effing Crazy Or, Or, Being in the Womb in Even Crazier Today I held my wife's hand while a doctor hunted around inside her like a blind man looking for a nickel. This doc touched my baby's head. My baby, who is still like two weeks away from being born. Thirteen Marches from now, we will be celebrating my daughter becoming a teenager, with the subtle implication being that exactly thirteen years before, she became a human. The lesser known fact of that day will be that actually, thirteen years and two weeks before , an actual person fuckin shoved her around in there before she was even born to try and find her mom's cervix while she continued to gestate.  Jesus. And this isn't some awful emergency scenario or macabre medical malpractice going on, either. The baby is great, and the doctor is great. This little procedure is supposed to make sure Adair doesn't go too far past 40 weeks. So that mean's that it's this lady's j...