The Birth Plan

Today, I’m troubled. We’re somewhere between 15 and 32 weeks along, but my wife has yet to develop a detailed and comprehensive birth plan. (The Birth Plan!, as it’s called in the prenatal dimension). I’m worried. This thing could happen any day now and she’s not prepared. But I’m gradually coming to accept this; in lieu of her birth plan, I’m going to go ahead and create my own.

For the unitiated, The Birth Plan is important because – let’s face it – the day of my first child’s birth is going to be a very special time that will hold a place in my heart for years to come; and like any other parent, I want to make sure I’ve let all those around me know my expectations so they can help make it as heartwarming and meaningful for me as possible. Here are my requirements:

1. No screaming or loud noises. I can’t explain to you how much I hate noise pollution. I need to be calm (to a zen-like degree, really) to fully appreciate this experience. If someone’s yelling, or groaning, or huffing and puffing – well, not only will that be extremely insensitive – but that sort of nonsense will distract me from the beauty of the experience. I don’t want to be distracted from the beauty of the experience.


2. Absolutely no blood or bodily fluids of any sort. I’m squeamish – I can’t help it, it’s just part of my composition. This could be my one and only chance to experience such a succinct transcendence of my mortality – the survival and triumphant prolonging of my genetic code . . . How can I be expected to fully appreciate it when it looks like there’s been a massacre in the place? There's a good reason gangland warfare and serene reflection don’t go hand in hand . . . and if I faint and miss the delivery, that’s really going to suck. Big time.


3. Unlimited supplies of humanely raised, pan-seared foie gras. Nothing says "Celebration!" like overfed fowl liver. I’m especially insistent on this point in particular. A selection of nice cheeses wouldn’t be a bad touch either. Moreover, if this thing lasts more than an hour or so, I know I'm going to get pretty hungry. I wonder if there's any way to relocate at the last minute, maybe to a nice restaurant, based on whatever I'm hungry for at the time. That's not a bad idea to include in my birth plan, but I'll have to give it some more thought.


4. Annual passes to Schlitterbahn. This is a moment we’ll each want to relive, over and over.

"Go West, and catalog all the flora and fauna."

That's roughly what Jefferson had to say to his henchmen Lewis and Clark. I paraphrased, but that's how I remember learning about the expedition in elementary school.

Which brings me to the key reason I didn’t like our first (and only) visit to the hospital. Even though the nurse who gave us a tour was a very nice and pleasant lady, and even though I might have been the only one to notice, there were a couple of gaffes on her part. First of all, she was explaining some kind of ointment or medication they smear all of the baby immediately after s/he’s born. That’s perfectly acceptable, of course. But in her explanation of this medical procedure, she said that it was b/c the baby is exposed to various “flora and fauna” as it escapes the human compost bin it has been living in for 9 or so months. “Flora and fauna”? Was the exotic language really necessary? Did she have to get 19th century on us? I’m all for manners and polite, educational discussion, but that just gave me some messed up imagery. Now, I’m (justifiably) concerned that my kid’s going to get attacked by antelope right as s/he’s being born, or at least stumble over some poisonous cactus on the way out. That would be awful. At this stage, we're just going to have to cross our fingers that Sacagawea shows up as our midwife, in which case it should be smooth sailing.

Point of concern number two. The nurse kept referring to our kid as “Baby.” Not “the baby” or “your baby,” but just “Baby”. "When Baby is born, Baby gets a security band wrapped around its wrist . . . when Baby is coming out, the umbilical chord could get wrapped around Baby's neck." There were other people on the tour, and it didn’t seem to affect them at all. As far as I’m concerned, though, this is seriously poor form on her part. Has she seen Dirty Dancing? I don’t know about the other parents who were on the tour, but Patrick Swayze is the last person I want to imagine my young, impressionable child in a relationship with. Not to mention that any references to movies with sub-plots involving abortion is just not appropriate for the Labor and Delivery area of a hospital. I guess I’m lucky she didn't make subtle allusions to Cider House Rules.

10/15/2008: Let's talk babies and daffodils.

We're pregnant, and I'm overjoyed. I don't know about Jenny, but yesterday was one of my best days of being pregnant yet. We lounged around the house and basked in the bright, perfect elegance of our life to come. We daydreamed about how lovely our child would be. Isn’t it going to be great to be a parent? “Yes, indeed! Yes, indeed!” We exclaimed, over and over, in a trance-like state, nearly reaching ecstatic tears in our energetic and abundant happiness . . . to know that this little, harmless creature depends on you to meet its every need? How I can’t wait for him/her to see the light of day, this fair and sunny world with so much wonder and glee!

Proto-Socialism

Several weeks ago, I had the most meaningful experience of my adult life . . . I sunk my teeth into a flour-dusted ciabatta sandwich, lightly coated with dijon mustard but generously stuffed with soft-boiled eggs, prosciutto, caramelized onions, fig preserves, and a creamy, melted local cheese. I washed it down with a mango iced tea-lemonade mix garnished with mint. It made me reconsider my place in the world, my connection to the universe. Have I just taken a step in a dramatically different direction in life? Is my existential purpose profoundly altered? Do we have time for me to order another sandwich?

A couple weeks before that we had gone to the Austin Area Birthing Center. For some complicated feminine reasons that would bore you I'm sure, as they did me at the time, the midwife couldn't locate the kid's heartbeat with some glorified microphone she was rubbing around my wife's stomach, seconds after mysteriously coating it with gooey junk. This is called the Doppler device, and although we couldn't hear our baby's heartbeat with it, we did manage to forecast a frightful band of thunderstorms, with large hail and tornadic activity, heading south from Waco. (Naturally, I rushed out of the room and urged everyone to take cover if they knew what's good for them.)

So next, they had to roll in the high-tech machinery. I could feel the cancer cells in my brain multiplying as the midwife turned the thing on and the windows and walls went into a low-frequency buzz. Thankfully, she pointed the device away from me and directly at my unborn child. Doubly thankfully, we got this crystal clear image of our future Nobel laureate immersed in a gross biological liquid of some sort. It's going to really suck when they can broadcast these images in high-definition ("HD" -- I have to spell it out for all you earth freaks and stone-age losers. Suckers!).

But here's the really amusing thing . . . the little bugger, s/he's already plotting revolution. Isn't that so sweet?

Henry

Have you ever seen a cuter, more adorable expression? With any luck, our kid will come out with this sort of neck beard. Unless it's a girl, in which case I think I've seen some germane infomercials lately.

DIATRIBE: To our detriment, society has imposed the most cruel and impractical beard styles on men. If we could only, as a people, reinstitute the neck beard, that would be a huge break-through in civil liberties.

The Birth of a Revolution

Some say blogs are bourgeois, WAY too mainstream for smarmy sophisticates such as myself. But No! I have found my inspiration! In this revolutionary endeavor, I hope to radically and fundamentally alter the structure of global (universal!) society. Every man, woman, child in utero, extra-terrestrial creature shall breathe the fresh, life-giving air of "liberte, egalite, and another, more gender-neutral 'ite' than the French originally iterated." [Where do they put the accents on these confounded machines anyway?] I have my sights set on justice.

All the amateur psychologists will think "He's clearly doing this because he wants to deflect attention from his unborn child and attract more attention for himself." Well, if you briefly can ignore the fact that these naysayers clearly don't have their sights set on justice, I will point out that I'm wowed and humbled by their insight. To that end, I also would add that this a seminal moment: it is the very first time that I consciously (or maybe I should say "explicitly") superimpose my dreams onto the embryonic ambitions of my child. (At this point, I think most of his/her ambitions are ridiculously myopic and self-serving, so to be honest, s/he could really use some guidance and direction). Maybe someday s/he will become the Post-Marxist subversive I always wanted to be.

By the way, I haven't even published this first post yet, and I'm already getting lots and lots of fan mail, or as we Blogonauts of the Blogosphere say, "Comments." This isn't scientific, but so far, I'd have to say the most common question is, "Why is your blog pink?" . . . "Are you a woman? Are you expecting a girl?" -- those are some typical follow-up hypotheses.

The answer is simple yet mysterious and elusive: Because pink is a lighter shade of red. The answer is also "alluring" and "quixotic." Or if the answer isn't quixotic, surely something about this post must be quixotic. Maybe I just realized that chances to use vocabulary like "quixotic" are rare, like Indonesian leopard cubs, and you must seize them whenever possible.

Until next time . . . Toodles! :) :) :) XOXOXO