Author: bperica

4,100 Pages of Harry Potter

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On July 16th, I read the last page of the Harry Potter books to London. It had taken me one year, two months, and four days to read that page and the previous 4,099 to her. Before May 12, 2014, I had never made an earnest attempt at even reading the first book. I had made more of an attempt at watching the movies, but had only made it through the first two and started and failed to finish the third movie on several occasions.

By the time I got to page 759 of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, I felt I was finishing more than a book, but a saga of both literature and life. The obvious saga, that of Harry Potter’s journey from Four Privet Drive to the climactic duel with Lord Voldemort, and the less obvious saga, of London’s journey from her 102nd day in the NICU (the day I started the first book) to her fourteenth month at home, and her seventeenth month of life.

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Beautiful artwork on all the covers of these increasingly heavy books.

When I cracked open Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone it was an act of therapy. I did not know if I would finish all the books. I did not know if I would be able to read all of them to London. However, as time went by, it became clearer and clearer to me that I would finish the books, that London would hear every page of these books, and that just because we got out of the NICU did not mean the reading of the books ceased to be therapeutic.

In the beginning, it was easy to find time to read Harry Potter to London. I would place her on a pillow in my lap and could read for as long as I like really, assuming she was oxygenating well and in a comfortable position. When she left the NICU, I read several times a day to her, while she was on the floor making cooing noises, while she was falling asleep, and while she was taking a feeding from her NG tube. Later on, I only read to her as she fell asleep for naps. And a little later on from that, she stopped falling asleep if I was by her side reading Harry Potter. This coincided with her ability to pull to a standing position, so she would stand inside her crib and reach out for the pages of the book and get frustrated that she couldn’t grab them.

Eventually, I had to start reading Harry Potter to her when she was in the living room playing with toys. By this last stage, I knew that my voice comforted her. I could read a whole chapter and sometimes two while she played. I may have pushed the limit on July 16, when I read the last sixty pages to her in one sitting as she drained all the fun out of one toy to the next until she was clearly wondering why I had been reading to her for so long without any breaks.

On more than one occasion during the last several days of reading Harry Potter I choked up because it would dawn on me that I am almost done with the books, or I would remember in a flash how far London has come over these 4,100 pages, so incredibly far as you may know.

I take great joy in knowing that I will be able to read these books once again to London when she is older and able to follow the plot. Perhaps I won’t read every word aloud to her. She might take over. That is fine with me. I know I will always be reading with London.

*Special thanks to my wife’s family who let me borrow all of their pristine, hard cover, first edition Harry Potter books.

12 Classics in 2015: The Stranger

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I enjoyed picking up another slim volume, knowing I would finish this next book in two or three sittings. The Stranger, by Albert Camus, is a study of the absurd arc of all lives. It focuses on one man, Meursault, who kills a man on the beach in the first part of the book. Meursault’s trial constitutes the second part of the book.

Meursault, to me, felt very little emotion other than his lust for Maria, his girlfriend and, possibly, future wife. And although I saw some justification of him shooting the man on the beach, Meursault seemed to hold none of the same justification. He seemed only to defend his atheistic beliefs, and nothing else. He is a sad figure, not because I am a believer and he is an atheist, but because he seems utterly defeated by the absurdity of life. He refuses to use religion or the legal system to comfort or free himself because he recognizes the futility in prolonging the truth: that we will be born, we will die, and then no longer matter. All of us.

Meursault is a Debbie Downer, but Camus channels his philosophy quite well through Meursault’s actions and words. Interestingly, Meursault becomes happiest when he gives up all hope of a life, long or short, and accepts that any path he goes down ends the same.

I certainly don’t see eye to eye with Camus on this. I recognize that life can indeed be absurd and it will yell at us again and again, “resistance is futile,” but resisting is one of the hardest and most rewarding parts of life. It amplifies everything, the valleys, the peaks, the springs, and the winters of our lives. I believe it makes for a richer life, which looks better to me than Meursault’s fate of a jail cell and decapitation.

12 Classics in 2015: The Jungle

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The Jungle is widely known as the book that turned the public’s gaze upon the meat industry. Months after the novel’s publication, the Food and Drug Act went into effect. The public was disturbed to find out that their chances of eating rotten and diseased food were quite good, as the condition of the slaughterhouses was revolting and what oversight existed at the time was a farce.

This was a positive reaction from the public, but Upton Sinclair did not mean to turn the people’s fervor toward the meat industry alone. Sinclair’s primary protestations regarded the labor conditions and complete lack of workers’ rights. Indeed, that is what struck me about the book. Sure, the descriptions of the making of sausage with scraps of meat and innards from the floor and the drains, and the tubercular cows passing right by the “screener”, are disturbing. But the human suffering detailed in the book is far more painful to endure. It lasts from shortly after the first chapter to the very last (357th) page.

The book’s main character is Jurgis Rudkus. You get the impression that the lion’s share of his life is lived out on these pages. What life Jurgis does have plays out like a train wreck. You see everything coming before he does. Blow after blow Jurgis is dealt with no means to protect himself or to save his family from abject poverty. My heart ached for Jurgis and every member of his family and for all those wasting away in Packingtown, the meat-packing area of Chicago.

I am thankful that workers’ rights are a thing now. No one spoke of them in The Jungle until the very last pages of the book, which is a screed in support of Socialism, one of Sinclair’s great causes.

The struggle of the working class is still very real. More than once I thought of fast-food workers, who are campaigning for greater pay because of the poverty they are forced into by trying to support a family on the current minimum wage, and I recognized that they are a group of people who would be at the heart of The Jungle if it were written today. Sinclair would be pleased to know that these workers don’t have to work 7-5:30 Monday thru Saturday just to keep their job, but many still work those hours because one job is not enough. A second is needed to scrape by.

The Jungle is a serious book with an intensely dark and sad narrative, but also a book with a surprising appeal to the reader to read just one more page. I found it enticing, even though with every new page Jurgis encountered his next setback or you could make out the train wreck on the horizon a little better. Out of the six classic books I have read this year, The Jungle has surprised me the most with its novel subject matter and its desperate plea for help from the immigrant masses who are still growing, tending, picking, and packing our food.

Parents on the NICU and their PTSD

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Over a month ago, I read and posted about an article in the New York Times about 22 weeks gestational age being the new definition of viability (for some doctors). In the sidebar I noticed another article under “related.” Its title: For Parents on NICU, Trauma May Last. As soon as I was done reading about the viability of 22 weekers I clicked over and read about PTSD in NICU parents, which I had blogged about once already.

I have not read a more accurate article about parents dealing with the NICU. The first parent’s story is more stressful and scary than ours was. For example, I never got to the point where I was sleeping with my shoes on, but on more than one occasion I expected the hospital to call with horrible news. And I was and can still be easy to anger as a direct result from our NICU experience. I mentioned that back in October as well.

This NY Times article was first published in 2009, citing a new (for then) study about PTSD in NICU parents:

A new study from Stanford University School of Medicine, published in the journal Psychosomatics, followed 18 such parents, both men and women. After four months, three had diagnoses of P.T.S.D. and seven were considered at high risk for the disorder.

In another study, researchers from Duke University interviewed parents six months after their baby’s due date and scored them on three post-traumatic stress symptoms: avoidance, hyperarousal, and flashbacks or nightmares. Of the 30 parents, 29 had two or three of the symptoms, and 16 had all three.

One of the NICU parents quoted in the article hits the nail on the head:

“The NICU was very much like a war zone, with the alarms, the noises, and death and sickness,” Ms. Roscoe said. “You don’t know who’s going to die and who will go home healthy.”

I haven’t said it better myself. As a parent, even after months in the NICU, I would find myself wondering if we were ever going to make it out whole, meaning all three of us. Perhaps the most revealing statistic shared in the article is this:

The Stanford study found that although none of the fathers experienced acute stress symptoms while their child was in the NICU, they actually had higher rates of post-traumatic stress than the mothers when they were followed up later. “At four months, 33 percent of fathers and 9 percent of mothers had P.T.S.D.,” Dr. Shaw said.

It’s easy to picture stoic fathers in the NICU, but what most of them are really doing is repressing so much intense fear and anguish that once the drawn-out trauma of their child’s NICU stay is over they burst. I was stoic from time to time, but I certainly was not afraid to show emotion during London’s stay in the hospital. Crying in front of nurses was not something I was above. This helped.

One NICU survivor shares this in the NYT article:

In her book, Ms. Forman wrote: “From the moment my twins were born, I saw potential for tragedy wherever I turned. It would be years before I stopped thinking that way.”

This is probably what I struggle with the most now. It’s beyond worrying, it’s an all-consuming conviction that something horrible is going to happen. Prior to my trip to DC, I had a really hard time shaking the feeling that I wasn’t going to see my family again, I wasn’t going to make it back from DC, or maybe I was never going to make it there in the first place. Before the NICU, I was not wired to think this way, but now a part of me is. The other part is fighting for balance. Like Ms. Forman, maybe it will be years before hope and the safety I knew become my heading once again.

That Wasn’t So Bad

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A view of Roxborough Park as we flew over Littleton yesterday.

We just got back from our first plane trip with London. Going into the weekend getaway in California, I was not that nervous about London’s behavior on the plane. I was mostly concerned with the technicalities of traveling with a stroller and our decision to lug her Radian RXT booster seat with us (this seat weighs 40 lbs, maybe more). I spent more time looking up travel tips last weekend than writing any blogs, hence the complete lack of posts for a week or so.

Flying truly has become more of a hassle in the post-9/11 days. Then you throw a baby in the mix and my head hurts. One tip that we followed, that probably most parents follow, is to arrive at the airport earlier than you would if you were flying sans baby. This is a great decision if you stress out over having to rush through everything at the airport like I do. I actually enjoy being able to be as slow as I want once I arrive at the airport. I feel less stressed and I am way more prepared if anything goes wrong, like if baby has a blowout, or if I forget to lock the stroller wheels in place and she goes rolling off toward security by herself.

I would rather be over prepared for something like flying with a baby. And I think I was, because it seemed almost easier. If it weren’t for having to sit on the plane with a baby in your lap, flying with a baby would be easier than flying without one, based on our sole experience. At both airports we checked bags at the curb, immediately freeing ourselves of some tremendous weight and time waiting in line. At security, we were selected for the fast line, and at DIA for the TSA Precheck line. We didn’t have to stand in the stupid X-ray machine either. Maybe we looked absolutely clueless the entire time because we just seemed to be given preferential treatment wherever we walked. Little did everyone know that I spent a week studying for this like it was a final.

The part about traveling with a baby that is a drag is the actual plane ride itself. Even if your baby is very well behaved, like mine, you can’t really relax while holding him or her. One thing I love about flying is turning my phone off, being disconnected from the world for a few hours, and really getting into a book or reading a magazine from cover to cover. That won’t be an option for quite a few years, but I’ll get it back. In the meantime, I feel like a slightly more accomplished parent now that I have run the TSA gauntlet with London in tow and have not lost her or slowed any other traveler down due to a lack of preparedness.

Thinking About DC

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Photos from DC…and some thoughts about the trip.

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Previously shared on Instagram, but this is in Georgetown, where you can show up at a bar and order an IPA with 8% ABV and get served a session IPA and then get a shrug from the bartender when you point that out. We stayed for one drink and tipped poorly. Shouldn’t have tipped at all. Our next round of beers was at a hotel bar just out of frame to the left. It was swanky as hell inside. Luckily, there were a few tables outside where I wasn’t too embarrassed about the drips of sweat falling off my nose into my beer as I was drinking it. That’s an exaggeration, but God, the humidity. I don’t miss it. Second bar, much better. Third bar, best.

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The staggering loss of life could not be displayed in a more powerful way than in the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The font is small. The names are many. And the high-polished shine of the stone draws the eye. It is beautiful and somber and the quietest place I visited all weekend.

 

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 Lucky for me, the Washington Monument was no longer covered in scaffolding, but the Capitol building was. Washington, DC seems like one of those places with so many attractions, whether it be a museum or a giant patch of grass on the mall, that one of them is always under construction. For all the famous speeches given on the steps behind me, Glenn Beck’s restoring “honor” speech excluded, when standing here I thought first of the scene in Forrest Gump when Forrest is reunited with Jenny. Just watch the scene here. It’s awesome. So was this view.

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The Shake Shack. Last time I stood in line for one of these burgers it was 2009 and I was in line for an hour and a half. Since then, Shake Shack has gone public and has many more locations. Thank you, Jesus. I stood in line two minutes for this burger and it met the expectations I have held for the last six years. Come to Denver!

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To get Bryce and the Washington Monument in the same image, one has to turn the iPhone on its side and use the pano feature.

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Loved standing next to the Washington Monument. I would not have loved it if an earthquake struck when I was by its side. I couldn’t help but think about that, nor how scary it must have been to work on this thing during the mid to late 19th century. Chances are, it’s not as deadly as working in Qatar for the next World Cup, but it has to be close.

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I know I am in a special place when I am obliged to take a photo of the ground I stand on.

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Sadly, this is the best shot I got of the Capitol Rotunda. The ceiling has a protective drop cloth of sorts, which they call the donut, so it’s not much to look at. Loved the paintings in here. There was a senator giving some young guns a tour. If only I watched more C-SPAN, I would be able to tell you the name of that senator. He was old and white. Oops, that’s almost all of them.

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Best reading in DC. The Thomas Jefferson Memorial.

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As far as photographing the grounds of the White House, I couldn’t have asked for better late afternoon lighting than this. I want a yard like this and I don’t want to be involved at all in the care and maintenance of it.

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Again, the Washington Monument. It is just kind of always there. Liked the lighting on the monument better from this angle though, as we walked over to the White House, so I had to get a few more shots of it.

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I was totally unaware that planes were still allowed to fly this close to monuments, memorials, and other important buildings in DC. I was also unaware of how central Reagan International Airport is to DC. This flight path seems unavoidable. The plane I flew in on took this exact route, but at night. I had a window seat on the left and couldn’t have had a better view.

I had a great time in Washington, DC. I had incredible hosts, living so close enough to everything that we walked to the Capitol building in 15 minutes. Some memorable moments that do not live on in photographs: striking it rich at the local liquor store by finding Titan IPA from Great Divide Brewing Company, only to take it home, crack one open and get the distinct tasting notes of apple juice and then noticing it was bottled fifteen months ago. Beer returned and exchanged for a three-month old, local IPA. And then there was the ice cream truck rolling through the neighborhood on Sunday night at 9:30. My host turned to me and said, “Obviously, he’s not just selling ice cream.”

That First Goodbye

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As I mentioned a couple weeks ago on this blog, I had a trip to DC coming up. It was a birthday gift from Kate. Well, it was an awesome trip and I will share about some of it soon, but I want to write about the day I left for DC.

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A quick snap of London after saying goodbye at the airport.

I had been thinking for over a month about what it would be like to say goodbye to London at the airport. Since she was born almost sixteen months ago, I had never been more than an hour’s drive away from her. I had spent one night away from her, but that taking place in the same city. So, when we got to the airport I was saying goodbye to more than just London.

Since her instant, premature arrival, I have been tied to London like nothing before in my life. She took the breath out of me when I stood up and looked at her being pulled from her mom in the OR. Since then she has had it. I wished time and time again over those first ten months of oxygen support I could have given her more of my breath. Instead, I gave what I could, my constant attention, worry, and commitment to making her as happy as possible with meticulous mental note taking of her every need. For, 469 days, London had been within reach. Was I in control for one of them? No, but at least I was there. I knew I was saying goodbye to that streak, the first, long season of fatherhood.

When I arrived at the airport with my mom and London, I had to face the end of an era, so to speak. I had prepared myself and worried about it as much as possible. I still cried though. I leaned in to kiss her perfectly soft cheeks and could not leave without taking another picture of her. In that picture, she appears to be a little confused, possibly from my tears, but as beautiful as ever. I looked at it more than once while I was in DC. And more than once, I thought of our next hello.

12 Classics in 2015: The Old Man and the Sea

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Reading 12 classics in 2015 would be a lot easier if you could knock out each one of them during a flight, like I did this short book on the way home from DC. In order to read some of the longer books I have selected for this task, such as Moby Dick, Midnight’s Children, and The Executioner’s Song, I needed to select some very short works.

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2013. Cayucos, CA.

The Old Man and the Sea is a delightfully simple plot that I will not rehash here. A warning though, it being such a short book most of the plot will be revealed by merely writing a few paragraphs about it.

While I read this book I thought about chasing goals, the way we chase them, and the people we leave in our wake while we chase those goals. Once the old man, Santiago, commits to catching the giant marlin he has hooked, there is no turning back. However, along the way, on nearly every other page, the old man thinks of the young boy, his apprentice Manolin, who had fished with him in the past and regrets his decision to not take the young boy out with him this day.

Pride and the necessity to make a living pushes the old man out to sea, the catch seeming impossible for hours and then days, but finally the marlin weakens and starts circling the boat. At this point, the old man’s energy and hand strength is somewhat revived. He pulls the marlin in against all odds and lines up the eighteen feet of marlin next to his boat. What a prize! Bask now in the glory of your catch because it will be rotted, decayed, or poisoned by the time you expect to reap the bounty.

Indeed, by the time the old man gets to shore, he has eighteen feet of skeletal remains alongside his boat and the old man himself is nearly dead. Would the ending have been different if the young boy had been allowed to fish with the old man on this journey? I think we are led to think that way. The victory for the old man is that he made it home at all and he can now take Manolin out fishing once again. Together, perhaps, they will catch a big marlin, but the biggest catch of all was lost. Be it pride, stubbornness, or just a foolhardy decision to go for the big prize, the old man did it. Better to try and fail than to not try at all. For if the old man had cut his line after the marlin towed him out to sea for a day, the decision would have eaten at him for the rest of his life.

I revere Hemingway’s writing. It’s the stuff I will aspire to for as long as I write. I will never get there, but it is fun to imagine. I will also never get to the point where I will shoot myself in the head with a shotgun. Exquisite writing and shotgun-assisted suicide I leave to you, Ernest.

One Year Ago Today, We Left the NICU

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London’s first night home. I already look horrible.

Today is the one-year anniversary of London’s big move from the NICU to her new home. Reflecting on that day a year later, I think I made the right choice by not overthinking what a big change it was going to be for London and for us.

I knew it would be an exhausting transition, but my thinking was that I would roll with the punches, get knocked down a few times (which I did), adapt my style (easy, give up sleep), and then hang on for dear life and at some point in the future I would come out a practiced and knowledgable parent (still looking to the future on that one, at least in some regards). To me, going through that process seemed easier than trying to be ahead of the curve. Plus, that would take time to read and figure out what I was doing wrong. After 109 days in the NICU and then starting parenthood all over again when London came home, we did not have time for that.

Learning London’s cues taught me nearly everything I needed to know about taking care of her this last year. A few cues are exclusive to taking care of a preemie, like knowing when to stop the bottle feed and move forward with the tube feed, or knowing when 1/8th liter flow was not enough or if it was just right. I relied on London’s pediatrician, her nurses, her physical therapist, her occupational therapist, and both sets of grandparents to fill in the gaps in my knowledge.

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Today. Playing with her Little People farm.

A year later, London is far easier to take care of than she was with all the accessories she came home with. And, I am far more rested than those first days and weeks she was home. I am still tired most of the time, but I have coffee for that.

London’s first year home bears the mark of many a preemie: daily doctor’s appointments at first, then weekly, and then gradually monthly, with some major scares along the way. I hope and pray her second year at home will be smoother than that, that it will bear more marks of hope and promise than it will remnants of her harrowing beginning.

I’m a Cheerios Vacuum

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When London will not eat one thing I give her, Cheerios save us. They are like little life preservers floating about on the table top, saving her because they give her sustenance, saving me because she is actually eating something. 

I’ll hand London some Cheerios wherever we are. She drops half of them on a good day and 75% of them on all other days. 

I can’t let them go to waste. I will eat them off the carpet, the kitchen floor, from the couch cushions, from the bottom of her activity saucer, and from inside her onesie. 

There are two places I won’t eat Cheerios from. One, the bathroom floor. This has only happened once as I have never fed London Cheerios in the bathroom, but I mush have carried one in there on my clothing. I found it today. 

And two, from inside her diaper. Found one of those yesterday. 

And you can forget about the five-second rule. I am confident I have eaten Cheerios that were several days old, maybe a week. It’s easy to tell when you get one of those. They have entirely lost their crunch. 

My Cheerios consumption is up 1000% over last year. I suspect that as London grows older it will steadily decline from the current stage, which, I would guess, is at peak Cheerios flow. 

Sidebar Additions

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Hi People.

There may not be time for me to write a more substantial blog than this today, but I just wanted to alert you to a few sidebar additions to the blog. There is now a Facebook like button. So, if you haven’t, get on that button. There’s also a link to my Instagram account and a preview of some of the most recent photos I have posted there. Lastly, there’s a button you can click to follow the blog via email.

Now, I must attend to packing for my trip. I still remember how. I think.

12 Classics in 2015: Midnight’s Children

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For my fourth act, I read Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. 51yqNUCZu6L

When you study literature Rushdie’s works come up a lot in discussion. And yet, I made it through an English undergraduate program without ever being assigned one novel or short story by Salman Rushdie. In my graduate studies in International Relations, his name came up quite a bit too because of my focus on the Middle East. But no Rushdie reading assignment there either. Of course, when a professor would ever mention Rushdie in my undergraduate or graduate courses my classmates would nod their heads. I would too. We all knew who he was. But had we read his stuff? Maybe my peers had. I had not. So, I picked up Midnight’s Children, admired the cover, and dove in. It was March 30th.

And now it is May 12th. What exactly happened between the aforementioned dates, pardon me, between the covers of the book, I am not entirely sure. But I am not too worried about that because a major theme of the book is the unreliability of Saleem’s narrative. He reminds you again and again that this may not be the way things happened exactly, but it is how he is remembering them at this precise moment. Padma (Saleem’s future wife) reminds Saleem of his story’s inaccuracies as well whenever he has screwed up the date of a significant event, such as Gandhi’s assassination.

Saleem’s story starts long before his birth, with the telling of how his grandfather met his wife, but the story really picks up when Saleem is born at exactly midnight on August 15, 1947, the day India became an independent country. All the babies born in India during its first hour of existence end up acquiring special powers. One of them can time travel. Another is a powerful witch. Saleem, being born at the precise moment India was born, is the most powerful. He can read people’s minds. And he can feel the presence of all those born that fateful night, the young ones known as Midnight’s Children. He can read minds from afar and explore the memories of anyone he wishes.

Eventually, Saleem loses that gift, but acquires another, the ability to smell nearly everything, from love to the exact scent of every human he has ever come into contact with. Over 533 pages, his story unfolds like that of Forrest Gump. Saleem is intimately involved with his country’s dealings for much of the book. Finally, he catches up to his 31-year-old self who is telling the story, only to close the novel (spoiler alert) with the prediction of his own death on the day he turns 32.

Saleem’s journey is epic. There is no point in sharing the entirety of it here or ever, really. I would feel different, I think, if I had loved the book. But this book, which might be the heaviest lifting I will do throughout this New Year’s resolution of mine, was one of the most confusing books I have ever read. Perhaps, the most confusing book that I have ever finished. For most of the book, I consulted chapter summaries on Spark Notes. Of course, I read the chapter first and only then would I read Spark Notes. It was a rough start, having no idea what really happened after I finished the very first chapter. In my defense, it was late afternoon, I was sitting outside in the sun, and London was napping. But I had my coffee? It didn’t matter. In fact, coffee can’t really help you through this book. But Spark Notes did, so I actually felt a connection to the story from time to time.

The thing about Midnight’s Children is that it is damn respectable for the quality of the writing. The style is unbelievable. Rushdie’s vocabulary is astonishing and there are sentences that flow so well I read them a few times for the sheer delight in their finely-tuned form. The book won the Booker prize in 1981. And then, for the 40th anniversary of the Booker prize, it was voted Best of the Booker, the best novel to have won that prize in 40 years. That is one huge honor, which certainly played a role in my selection of this particular work of Rushdie’s. I have got to read such an acclaimed book.

I did. It did not live up to what I would expect for the Best of the Booker award, but the book will certainly stick with me for a while. And now, when a professor mentions Rushdie’s name I can nod my head without feeling like such a dolt.

DC Bound

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The last time I was in DC, I didn’t know how to operate any sort of camera, so I share this picture from London in 2012, the last time I was there.

A couple of months ago Kate secretly arranged for me to have a vacation.

I am actually going to travel out of the state. On. A. Plane.

I am heading to DC on Thursday for a four-night stay. My mom is helping out a ton by driving from New Mexico (again) to hang out with London while Kate is working.

When Kate first told me I was excited, but at once sort of terrified of leaving London and being away from her for four days. I have spent only one night away from London before and, even then, I was in the same city.

I am sure when I am dropped off at the airport I will have a little slice of adulthood immediately come back to me, the no-strings-attached freedom to move about as I please without a diaper bag, stroller, and a pretty big one-year-old baby. It will just be me. That will feel weird for a time.

As excited as I am for the vacation, I find myself already looking forward to coming back to Colorado and being reunited with my family. I have never felt that way before. It is one of those new feelings, that I can only ascribe to the love I have for my budding family.

Surviving at 22 Weeks

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“Do you want us to save your baby?”

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London at one-day old.

That’s a question you may have to answer if your baby is born earlier than 24 weeks, the current gestational age of viability. In fact, you may not get that question at all. Quite a few NICUs do not have the means to even attempt to save a 22 weeker. And, from the sound of an article I read in the NY Times yesterday, some doctors will not try to save a 22 weeker if they aren’t breathing on their own. And the chances of such a preemie breathing on their own, if the mother didn’t receive corticosteroids, is extremely slim, if it’s possible at all.

Yet, there are some 22 weekers who have made it, as detailed in a recent study, from The New England Journal of Medicine, mentioned in the aforementioned article.

The study, one of the largest and most systematic examinations of care for very premature infants, found that hospitals with sophisticated neonatal units varied widely in their approach to 22-week-olds, ranging from a few that offer no active medical treatment to a handful that assertively treat most cases with measures like ventilation, intubation and surfactant to improve the functioning of babies’ lungs.

The study involved very premature babies, those born at 22-27 weeks. Among the 22 weekers, there were 78 cases:

18 survived, and by the time they were young toddlers, seven of those did not have moderate or severe impairments. Six had serious problems such as blindness, deafness or severe cerebral palsy.

7 out of 78. So at 22 weeks, there’s less than a 10% chance of surviving without any severe, lasting impairments. Survival rate at 23 weeks was about 33%.

The article detailed the varying strategies used by hospitals around the country. Some hospitals are very ambitious and with the parental approval, go after all 22 weekers. But, understandably, some hospitals stick to the 24 week line as the viability tipping point. A doctor describes his hospital’s strategy this way:

At his hospital, “we go after the 24-weekers,” he said. “If it’s 23, we will talk to the family and explain to them that for us it’s an unknown pathway. At 22 weeks, in my opinion, the outcomes are so dismal that I don’t recommend any interventions.”

At 22 and 23 weeks, I am glad that parents are asked the question I opened this blog post with. After having experienced the emergency delivery of my daughter at 26 weeks and then the following 109 days in the NICU, I would hesitate to answer yes in a 22 week or 23 week situation. My gut tells me at 22 weeks, I would say no. At 23, I’d have to think about it a lot more. It would depend on whether or not my wife received steroids. There was no time for steroids in London’s case, and that set her back significantly even at 26 weeks, nearly a month older than the earliest babies in this study.

It was a fascinating article to read. Here is the link again. I am amazed that 22 weekers can survive, but blindness, deafness, and severe CP are not minor complications. And those are the 22 weekers who make it out of the hospital.

 

Coffee Obsessed? You should read this.

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The bloom in the Chemex.

I do not like the thought of going through a day without coffee. I love drinking it, but I have also become infatuated with making it. Weighing out the coffee beans, grinding them, weighing out the water, and slowly pouring water in a circular motion from the inside out have all made for a ritual I have come to love over the last year.

Learning to make coffee and learning to enjoy it has been a very long process. I did my compulsory stint at Starbucks, but I did not enjoy coffee then. Years later, I only drank the stuff as an energy boost and took very little delight in its flavor. I consumed more and more of the stuff through grad school. After graduation, the consumption declined, but it did not stop. When my wife and I bought our first house, I finally had some room to let my coffee wings spread out some and I took to cold brewing, modifying a method my father-in-law was using. In December, after I received my first Chemex and coffee grinder I transitioned to following this recipe from Counter Culture Coffee for Japanese style iced coffee and I have not looked back.

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Actual ice cubes are a nice touch.

I have learned a lot about coffee in the last year, but then last week I picked up an issue of the New Yorker from 2011 and read a fascinating article. I learned that I still have a lot to learn about coffee. For example, for best results when the cherry is picked from the tree, it is twisted off, not plucked. (I’ll remember that next time I am picking cherries in El Salvador.) And, we are in what is called the third wave of coffee consumption. Furthermore, the coffee snobs of the third wave lament the ancient ways of making coffee, which originated in Ethiopia. Only now, in this era, is coffee growing and brewing coming close to the true potential of the fruit.

The article is “Sacred Grounds” and it was wonderfully written by Kelefa Sanneh. I highly recommend reading it, even if you are not obsessed. Maybe you will be once you finish.

Another Day, Another Echo

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Two days ago I posted “Turning One Again“. In that post I mentioned that this time last year London was going through a bunch of new tests to find out why she was so tired. Actually, “new tests” is incorrect. By May 4th, 2014, London had had several echocardiograms, she was just going to have another. I thought I would share a video of the last echo she had in the NICU. Kate had stopped by London’s room on the way to work (in the building next door) and had wound up getting to see the echo.

I do not expect you to be interested in watching a baby get an echocardiogram. The event is not spectacular or rare at all if you have had a preemie. But what is exceptional about the video is how London is so cool with it. She yawns in the middle of the video, like, c’mon, get this over with…it’s not my heart that has an issue.

Kate sent me the video that morning before I had made it to the NICU and it warmed my heart. This was classic London–so extraordinarily comfortable with another intrusive procedure in the NICU–that it did not surprise me all that much. London remained unperturbed throughout this test and others. Over the course of 109 days in the NICU London’s attitude absolutely rubbed off on us. We were never happy to have to sit through another echo or eye exam, but seeing how tough London was through it all made us roll with the punches like old pros. You will stress yourself to death if you can’t find a way to cope. Looking to our baby for strength proved to be one of the best strategies to weather the storm.

I just realized I posted this video on the blog already, but it was months ago and in a different context. Thanks for stopping by!

The Story of London’s Birth

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This picture…because it’s Cinco de Mayo!

A few months ago I wrote a post linking back to the story of London’s birth, the first posts on this blog. It had been a while since I had mentioned them and wanted to make sure people were aware of them, especially since they were now buried in the archives.

I have finally done something I should have done months ago. I have posted links to London’s birth story in the About the Author tab of this blog. I encourage you to read those posts if you have not.

In the meantime, happy Cinco de Mayo! I made a margarita last night following this recipe. It was delicious, but to make more tonight I had to raid the limes at the grocery store today. You will need a lot of limes. Enjoy!

Turning One Again

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May 4th. May the Fourth Be With You. It’s Star Wars day.

And it’s also one year from London’s due date. It’s her one-year birthday (developmentally). It is a significant milestone, but I think May 19th will be more of a celebratory day because that will be the one-year anniversary of London’s homecoming.

This time last year we were going through a stressful stage of London’s NICU stay. We were hoping to have her home by now, but we were hitting really big snags regarding London’s energy. The journal entry from May 4, 2014 reads:

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May 4, 2014.

Eileen and Megan (nurses) are very uncertain about why you are so tired all the time. Will ask questions with docs tomorrow. For now, starting 24 hours of all tube feeds.

I remember crying after being told of London’s lack of progress and of a new battery of tests to be performed on her in the coming days. My chair was backed up against the window in London’s pod and I numbly stared out into the rest of the NICU as Megan explained what the next steps were going to be. Kate held London. I let the tears drop out of my eyes without blinking. I was in a dark, sad place, and so surprised that we were still in the NICU with no set discharge date.

So much can change in a year. As today’s afternoon thunderstorm rolls across Denver, I am reminded of the first couple of weeks London was home. There were storms every afternoon, including several tornado warnings. London would fall asleep in the middle of the living room while hailstones hit the windows. I’d try to fall asleep wherever I could too, but couldn’t pull it off quite like London. Kate and I lost massive amounts of sleep all over again for the same baby, but we eventually found our groove. And London did too. She’s right where she should be for a one-year old.

Happy Birthday again, London!

London’s First Cry

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London was on a ventilator for the first three weeks of her life. This meant that we didn’t hear a peep from her all that time. We could see from time to time that she was crying, but there was no noise to accompany the cry. It looked so odd, different than any other baby cry I have ever seen. Finally, when London promptly freed herself of the ventilator we could hear her cry. This time it was unlike any baby cry I had ever heard. Intubation can damage the vocal cords of preemies. The damage, in London’s case, was only temporary, but for a while her cry sounded like this. I described it to someone as sounding like a goat. It’s heart-wrenching to hear, then and now, because I just want to pick her up, cuddle, and rock her, but back then that was never an option. And now that it is, London doesn’t cry. Decent trade off.

The Apple Watch, A Screen Too Many

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…And I’m not buying it…

The Apple Watch is not for me. I know, I know, a lot of people said the same thing about the iPad. Who needs one of those? But the two are not the same. When I want some actual peace and quiet, I enjoy storing my computer away, setting aside the iPad, and taking my phone out of my pocket and leaving it somewhere out of reach. I don’t want to take my watch off every time I want some peace.

It matters to me that the watch, like the computer, iPad, and iPhone, is another temptation to go down the rabbit hole of the internet, whether that is compulsively checking emails or entering the time suck known as Facebook. The internet and the screens on which we access the internet are only good in moderation. I feel a noticeable difference in mood when I shed myself of access to the world wide web. I relax a little more than I can if every one of those devices is pinging me with notifications and breaking news.

For me, truly cutting away from all that technology means I have to physically remove it from anywhere within reach. It’s an out of sight out of mind thing. If I keep my phone on me when I would rather be writing or reading then I will inevitably take a lap around the internet on it, making me less productive and having a negative effect on my mood. The watch would just be another temptation to do all that. I have a hard time envisioning someone with the Apple Watch regularly checking the time and doing nothing else with the gadget.

Now that I am a dad, ridding myself of screens has become much more important. I still catch myself looking at my phone a little too much and not at London. It breaks my heart when I think of giving more attention to my stupid gadgets than to the beautiful baby I spend every day with. Having a mini computer on my wrist is the last thing she wants and I agree.

I just can’t imagine having an Apple Watch and not increasing the amount of time I look at screens, which I think is more than enough already. And it makes me feel ill when I see toddlers walking around connected to their iPad already. The absence of a screen on my wrist will be another attempt to shield London as much as possible from lesser forms of communication than what we were made for.