The Hormones Are Off

During Kelly's pregnancy, I suspected that her hormones were getting to me. We'd read about sympathy weight gain and nausea. I'm pretty sure I got the latter. Whenever she was sick, I was too. Our appetites even matched most of the time. Luckily, she ate normally most of the pregnancy and actually lost interest in food several times.

Toward the end of the pregnancy, my appetite was shot. It got to the point where I was eating soup for lunch and snacking at dinner time. I constantly felt like there was a lump in my stomach. At night, I was constantly popping antacids. I even began to wonder if my acid reflux had caught up with me and maybe caused some sort of tumor or other damage.

After the birth, things changed so dramatically that I couldn't help noticing. That lump in my stomach is gone and I actually feel hungry now. I still have trouble trying to eat a large meal, but that's probably a good thing!

Diaper Changing With an Engineer

A perfect diaper change takes at least five minutes, and there's an 80% chance the diaper will leak anyway within an hour.

A half-assed diaper change takes 60 seconds, and it's nearly certain that the diaper will leak.

What's four minutes worth? Does it justify striving for that 20% chance of avoiding laundry?

24 hours in a day * 80% = 19.2 soiled outfits.

24 - 19.2 = 4.8 outfits saved.

4/60 minutes = 0.06667 = 6.67% of my time.

I'm going to have to wash something eventually, anyway. What's the difference?

Early Frustrations

Cole is five days old now, and we've already got a few complaints. Fortunately, none of these complaints have anything to do with our child. They're all about the child birthing experience.

1) Lactation consultants are heartless. Give me a lawyer over one of these demons any day. They tease you: offering solutions, but never actually following through. They want the mother to tough it out, so they offer false comfort until she can't stand to live anymore. I watched our nurse stare at Kelly blankly while she cried her eyes out. They told her she could try the pump, then told her it was too expensive.

2) Nobody understands the concept of a newborn. Cole's first doctor's visit was today. They wanted his insurance information. Well, I haven't got it yet! The kid doesn't even have a Social Security number yet. As soon as the bureaucracy craps one out, I'll get right on it.

3) Diapers are for shit, literally. This kid has leaked through every one of them. They say, "Pampers for boys and Huggies for girls." I'm pretty sure they're right.

4) Nursing diaries are for chumps. You're never going to be able to keep up on every feeding, bowel movement, and wet diaper. And, for all that effort the doctor will look at it for a second and say very little.

Birth Day Summary

I did all my blogging on Cole's birth on Subject to Change. Here's the rundown, in case you're a regular here:

We Have Wi-Fi: I discovered that I could blog from the hospital, and gave some tips on what to bring.

Will This Land Us in Jail? There were some very invasive questions on the birth certificate application.

Then, Kelly started labor.

She progressed quickly.

Really quickly!

Suddenly, he was here! With pictures, and audio.

After nine months, Kelly got to order a real meal.

Finally, we picked a name.

Longest Nine Months Ever

You'll never know what a waiting game pregnancy is until you've been there. I thought this past few months would all be just one big blur. Really, only the first few weeks were. Then we got a grip. We started to get a handle on just what we needed to do in order to be ready. Of course, it helps that Kelly's pregancy has been strictly by the book.

Kelly's due date has officially been changed, once again, to March 5th. That's tomorrow, by the way.

We're taking this date and running with it. Kelly and I are both agreed that we've waited long enough for this kid to get here. He hasn't been moving a lot lately and we're tired of worrying. Kelly is visiting her doctor in the morning and we plan to tell her that we want to induce.

The way I'm seeing it, I'm tired of needing some fancy doctor to tell me how my kid is doing. I want him out where I can see him. After two late night trips to the hospital, I'm starting to feel like hospitals and car salesmen have something in common: they want to get you for as many extras as possible.

And, of course, once the baby is out all of the pregnancy issues Kelly is having will go away rather quickly. The sooner we can get this part over with, the better, as far as we're both concerned.

My family was asking me if I'm ready. I've been ready since the day we found out. That isn't to say that I haven't had a lot to worry about, and lots of things to get done. I'm just not the type to agonize over things that are beyond my control. So, instead of focusing on the worrisome aspects of finding out that there's a baby coming, I immediately started thinking about all the fun stuff I'm going to do with my kid. I'm all set to drag him to Disney movies against his will, and to feed him all of my favorite foods until he pukes. I like a lot of foods, so I'm also expecting to be cleaning up a lot of puke.