Parenthood

Buy Me A Beer

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No one knows what it is like to be a stay-at-home parent unless they have
done it themselves.

Maybe you watched your kids for a long weekend so your spouse could get a break. Maybe you watched your kids for a week while your spouse was away. Maybe you actually used all your paternity or maternity leave after your child was born. These are all great things to do. Necessary, in my view.

IMG_1018_43927But doing all of those stints with your kid doesn’t give you enough experience to know what being a stay-at-home parent (SAHP) is like.

There is an end you can see in all three scenarios mentioned above. Of course,  for SAHDs or SAHMs, there is also an end, but well beyond the horizon and out of sight. As a SAHD, I’m not yearning for the end of this job, but until you grasp the permanence of staying at home, you haven’t gotten a taste for the real thing.

And then you must prepare yourself because that’s the tip of the iceberg. There are so many challenging aspects of stay-at-home parenting. I have mentioned some of them in previous posts: limited adult-to-adult communication, a decent dose of isolation, the fact that you’re not making money, and facing the stigma associated with being a SAHD, which is certainly one thing SAHDs have to deal with a little more than SAHMs.

So why am I writing about this? Well, it’s long overdue. I have talked to too many people since becoming a SAHD who have never been a SAHD or SAHM themselves who imply that they know what it is like. Yet, we don’t do this in conversations with other professionals (and yes, I’m implying that I’m a professional and, once again, if you don’t get that, you’ve never been a stay-at-home parent) like doctors, accountants, or teachers. We don’t assume to know what daily challenges they face because we once used an epipen, did our own taxes using TurboTax, or completed a math problem on a chalkboard for an audience, respectively. So why do so many people assume they know the day-to-day ups and downs of SAHDs and SAHMs because they spend the weekend around their kids?

Because they assume it is easy. They assume it just must be like the weekend over and over again. How hard can that be?

I think the real problem is that being a stay-at-home parent is not viewed and talked about as a real job by enough people. Too many people talk about it as a hobby. I cannot tell you how far from the truth calling this a hobby is. Hopefully, I’ve conveyed that from time to time on this blog.

Next time you find yourself talking to a SAHP, treat them like a professional, understand that they work 80 hours a week, and buy them a beer because they don’t have a paycheck.

The House Is Not For Sale

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The last time I had a garage sale I priced every item, including the house. There were no takers that day. And on Saturday, when I finally had another garage sale this house was not for sale.

Instead, this garage sale was one in a series of steps we needed to take in order to finish the basement. There is a lot of stuff down there that we do not use and no longer have a need to hold onto, such as English class notes from UW, which I mentioned a couple posts ago.

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Ready for the deals!

Saturday was a huge success for us. At the end of the day we did not move that much stuff back into the basement. The majority of goods we sold and then we had one carload of them left for Goodwill.

Among the items, which did not sell, is a dining room table with two leaf inserts and six chairs. Interested? Leave a comment because this thing is going up on Craigslist for a sweet price. There were some leftover books, a few from my grad school days at DU. It wasn’t all that surprising to know the demand for The Market for Force: The Consequences of Privatizing Security is not that high, but why not try? But my two copies of Goodfellas on DVD (one of them unopened!) didn’t sell either. Are people insane? Have they not seen this movie? One of the all-time best. Watch it. Tonight.

One of the puzzling things about garage sales is what sells and what does not sell. A sturdy, still-in-good-condition wingback chair from the American Revolution did not sell, but someone bought Gone In 60 Seconds (eww, 24% RottenTomatoes score) for a dollar? This does not make sense. And that chair, well, it’s not quite that old and it found its way back into the basement. I had a collection of Pepsi cans for the last 16 years. It was a set of 24 collector cans from the release of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. They sold for $3 after pricing them down from $10. Although when I was 16 and collecting these cans I had a fantasy of selling them for a couple hundred dollars sometime in the not-too-distant future, but by 10am on Saturday, selling them for three bucks was one of the best moments of the day.

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Tired now. Ready for a snack!

After the early rush of professional garage sale shoppers, who show up early or even before the sale starts, lump everything they want to buy in a pile, and then ask you what you will part with it for, there was quite the lull. I think we didn’t have any interest for an hour. This cute little lady came by with her push toy looking for some deals. She found some shade instead and a granola bar.

After the lull, the stragglers seriously impressed. One of them bought my Pepsi cans, size XXXL standard issue sweatpants from the University of Wyoming athletic department, a Starbucks shirt from my barista days, and Unbreakable on DVD. One big ticket item was left, my mountain bike. It was time to clear space in the garage for my next bike, which will not be a mountain bike. Plus, these are just some of the repairs the bike needed: new rear tire, new rear wheel, new disc brake pads, new bike seat, some spoke fixing on the front wheel, and a thorough tuneup. After a few hours, I did not think it was going to move. Right about the time we were thinking of packing everything up it sold. I was a little proud of the bike in this moment and of how I had kept it together for so long, even when it meant using gorilla glue to hold the spokes in place.

Now that the bike was gone and it was going on 12, we started packing up. A couple lucky shoppers got an old digital camera for free and a copy of Command and Conquer: Generals for nothing!

But still, the table and chairs remain untouched. Someone still has yet to get that lucky!

“Do you get to stay home with mommy?”

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For over a year now I have been telling people that I stay at home with my daughter. Response to this news falls into two categories.

First response: dismay, followed by an awkward pause in the conversation while IMG_6356recipient of the news digests what I have told them. Their inability to register that there are such people as stay-at-home dads (SAHDs) is obvious on their face and the direction in which the conversation now moves. They typically switch the topic, pointing out London’s cute outfit or smile, etc.

I get this response mostly from older generations. Just the other night after a meal out, I was standing outside of the restaurant holding London. An older woman started talking to us. She was admiring London. The conversation was going well. I love talking with strangers who want to hear about London. Staring at London, the woman asked her, “Do you get to stay home with mommy?”

“No, she gets to stay home with me,” I said it as proudly and happily as possible and looked at her for a reaction. I saw it. A band of confusion moved across her face like a TVs signal being interrupted. God bless her, she tried to recover, but it sure seemed like she had never met a stay-at-home dad before. I also get the feeling that these people assume my role as a SAHD is strictly temporary.

Second response: surprise (but not as much as the people in the first response), excitement, support, and curiosity about meeting a SAHD. Usually these people immediately tell me how awesome it is that I stay at home with my daughter. They tell me that I am doing a great thing. Unlike the first group, people who give me the second response do not assume I dislike this job or am just doing it for a short period of time. Not surprisingly, people in this group are younger and, because of their response, much better to talk to after the SAHD genie is out of the bottle.

Consider this a public service announcement. When you meet a SAHD today, next week, next year, or whenever, give them the second response. You might make their day and make a new friend.

DVDs $1, Stories Are Free

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This house and its occupants are prepping for a garage sale this week. London’s help is extremely limited to nonexistent. She takes a long time examining every little thing we hand her, so she won’t be determining what we are getting rid of and what we are saving. She is most helpful when she decides to take a long morning nap on a Sunday so we can dig through the basement for potential hot ticket items.

We found lots of things to sell yesterday and just as much to throw away or donate. I discovered I had three copies of Goodfellas. (Hey, if there’s one movie to own several copies of it’s that one.) I have a DVD player to sell, but I can’t seem to locate the power cord or the remote. I am finally going to sell my Star Wars Pepsi can collection from one movie, which was both the most anticipated movie of all time and the most disappointing movie of all time, The Phantom Menace. But this can collection? Pristine. Complete. It represents a lot of work. It represents a lot of soda drinking.

For some reason I still had the majority of my class notes from the University of Wyoming. I chucked them all, but kept a few stories to possibly share on here. I threw out two boxes of old New Yorkers, magazines I had been saving because there was at least one tantalizing article in each magazine. I had lofty visions of getting to all of them some day, but having so many magazines and books I want to read around the house can really stress me out. It almost leads to less reading because I see the stacks everywhere and just think, I’ll never make it, why start now?

So, to those stories. I’m going to close this post with one. Please note, these are not my words. It was an assignment in an undergrad writing class for which you had to use a minimum number of sources to build one story or essay using nothing but quotes, a literary collage. And, here it is…

What I recall isn’t pain but a sense of jarring reversal, as of all motion, sound, and light encountering their massive opposites. I felt grass and dirt against my cheek, and sorrow that Dad was shot, and confusion that I couldn’t reach him. (1)

As I saw the last blue line of my native land fade away like a cloud in the horizon, it seemed as if I had closed one volume of the world and its concerns, and had time for meditation before I opened another. (2)

I shut my eyes, the old morte settled its grip, and the next country gathered itself under my feet. (1)

The grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise. (3)

I waded ashore with measureless relief. The bank was an even slope of waving knee-high grasses and I came up into them and turned to look back. It was a wide river, mistakable for a lake or even an ocean unless you’d been wading and knew its current. Somehow I’d crossed it and somehow was unsurprised at having done so. (1)

There came into view a man, or so it seemed. (4) He had a blue coat and a long brown beard; his eyes were blue and bright, and his face was red as a ripe apple, but creased into a hundred wrinkles of laughter. In his hands he carried on a large leaf as on a tray a small pile of white water-lilies. (4)

“This is what we all find when we reach this country. We’ve all been wrong! That’s the great joke. There’s no need to go on pretending one was right! After that we begin living.” (5)

The words uttered by the person without, affected me as somewhat singular, but what chiefly rendered them remarkable was the tone that accompanied them. It was wholly new. I cannot pretend to communicate the impression that was made upon me by these accents or to detect the degree in which force and sweetness were blended in them. They were articulated with a distinctness that was unexampled in my experience. But this was not all. (6)

“We do not want you to become lazy, but to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised.” (7)

It (the words) imparted to me an emotion altogether involuntary and uncontrollable. When he uttered the words my heart overflowed with sympathy and my eyes with unbidden tears. (6)

He sat down on a rock and swung his feet in a stream–it was deep and swift; it would take him in a moment. I seized his arm. Please, I said. Soon, he replied, which makes better sense under the rules of that country than ours. Very soon! he added, clasping my hands; then unable to keep from laughing, he pushed off from the rock like a boy going for the first cold swim of spring; and the current got him. (1)

Is there a single person on whom I can press belief? No sir. All I can do is say, Here’s how it went. Here’s what I saw. I’ve been there and am going back. Make of it what you will. (1)

 

Sources:

(1) Enger, Leif. Peace Like a River. Atlantic Monthly: New York, 2001.

(2) Irving, Washington. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories. Penguin: New York, 1978.

(3) Tolkien, J.R.R. Return of the King. Houghton Mifflin: Boston, 1955.

(4) Tolkien, J.R.R. The Fellowship of the Ring. Houghton Mifflin: Boston, 1954.

(5) Lewis, C.S. The Great Divorce. Harper: San Francisco, 1946.

(6) Brown, Charles Brockden. Wieland. Oxford: New York, 1994.

(7) Hebrews 6:12. Bible.

 

Blogging Away Resistance

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You may have noticed that for a while in the late spring and early summer I was writing a lot on here. Every weekday I would sit down and write something. I was going strong. I was practicing my craft and sharing whatever came to mind. Traffic to the blog steadily increased too.

And then nothing.

Two-week and three-week blocks would pass without me writing anything at all. And when I wrote, the posts weren’t so much related to raising London at all. There were a few book reviews and a little something about Jon Stewart’s last show.

Some of this absence is explained by some summer and spring trips. We are once again free to move about the country with no complications other than those standard hiccups that come with a baby (even though she wears 3T clothing, she’s still technically a baby).

The rest of the absence can be attributed to me thinking it is healthy to take a break from writing every so often and then just a dearth of ideas. The writing break I’ve always been a fan of. It is healthy, but this break has been unhealthily long due to this creeping feeling that I am just contributing to the noise, that is, the saturation of our world by parenting blogs.

I have been having an internal debate about what is worthy of writing about. There is a part of me that wants to write as much as I can on here. And there is also this part that just does not want to spew forth words just for the sake of it. There is a part of me that realizes the stupidity in having a blog about fatherhood. There are thousands of them out there. And there have been billions of fathers before I became a father. What do I have to contribute to fatherhood that has not already been contributed? Is there anything original for me to unearth, create, or ideate?

Well, for a while now the part of me that answers no to that question has been winning the debate. And I think that is the resistance Steven Pressfield writes about in his amazing work, The War of Art.

Coming up with words to share on this blog is moderately difficult for me. But giving into resistance and batting away those words while admonishing myself for ever thinking they were worth putting out there is very, very easy to do. This is the “War of Art,” and it is so unbelievably hard to be in when you think of yourself as a creative, whether you are drawing, writing, painting, sculpting, photographing, or whatever it is that you create.

I have not written these words anywhere else. Sitting down with my computer now and explaining my absence was as much for me as it was for the followers of this blog. I hope it means I return to regular blogging, but even as I write this I fear the next time the fuel gauge reads empty. That thought alone is almost enough to put a halt to the journey right this minute, but I am not there yet.

Pressfield writes that resistance will bury you. Okay, maybe I was a little buried there for a while, but for now, for now I am above ground.

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 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.

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.

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.

Graduating to a Bottle

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Last week I uploaded a video of Kate and I feeding London 1 ml of milk from a very tiny syringe. Though it was a long, long time until London could move on up to a bottle and I took many videos between that syringe and the first bottle, I wanted to skip to a video of an early bottle feeding.

In this video nurse Eileen is giving London a bottle. It was during a time of London’s NICU stay in which she was particularly stubborn about wanting to drink at all. Sometimes she was a champ, drinking her whole feed, but at other times she drank 5 ml and looked at us like, what? I’m done. Just gavage the rest and get on with it.

I think I had been trying to feed London and handed her off to Eileen, hoping London would cooperate a little more. She does in the video at least, but I can’t remember if she finished that particular bottle. Most of the time she did not. Thus, when it was time for London’s NICU discharge she came home with an NG tube.

One thing you see here in the video of London is the pacing that we had to do for quite a long time before London had the energy and the skill to take a constant flow from the bottle without choking and also learning how to breath properly during feeding. We would give London some flow from the bottle, for three seconds about, and then tilt the bottle back and let her catch her breath and finish swallowing the milk. It seems simple enough, but you also had to keep her body tilted to the side as well. And after that, you had better familiarize yourself with London’s cues…or else a nurse might give you heck from the other side of the pod, “And dad’s just choking the baby over there.”

When my sister visited London she was eager to give her a bottle. I felt bad, but I just had to say no. I went on to explain that it wasn’t like giving a full-term baby a bottle, at least not yet. After watching me feed London, my sister acknowledged that it looked difficult. I’m glad she did. At that point, I was only willing to hand London to someone other than Kate or a nurse if all they were going to do was sit with her.

I remember the day I discovered that I did not have to pace London’s bottle anymore. We were waiting for a ROP exam, and she was a little moody so I brought out a bottle and I tilted it up so the milk started flowing and I did not tilt it back down again until the bottle was empty. I was astonished and looked from the bottle to London’s happy, chubby face and back to the bottle. I knew we had reached a milestone in London’s feeding progress. But back down to earth we came, for the ROP exam was next.

The Mountain Buggy

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I never expected to receive a stroller as a surprise birthday gift. Nor did I expect to be happy when receiving a stroller as a surprise birthday gift. When both of those things happened, I knew I had fully arrived as a SAHD.

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With the latest edition to the stroller stable.

The picture here is just moments after I came in the door to find London locked in and ready for a stroll in this Mountain Buggy Terrain, the tallest, most beautiful jogging stroller I have ever pushed around. We had thought about making this stroller our everyday stroller for a while, but after using it for nearly three months I am glad we did not. To be clear, the Terrain is amazing. At its tallest, it’s actually too tall if I want to run with it. (I love having something that’s too tall). The stroller is rock solid on bumpy trails and there is more than enough adequate storage below the seat and in pockets on either side of the sun shade.

But the thing is a beast! When collapsed it barely fits in the back of our Toyota Highlander. It’s no light stroller. Lift with your legs, not with your back. Lugging it around for everyday tasks and errands would have been a hassle. I am still ever so grateful for our Uppababy and the Chicco umbrella stroller we now have.

Again, the tall strollers are consistently one of the most expensive models in the market. However, our Terrain was a spotless floor model so it was discounted nearly $200. Phew.

I’ll never forget the first time I took London for a run in the stroller. She started giggling as soon as I started off on the trail. She kept laughing so that in ten minutes she had worn herself out and was snoozing. So even on gravel, the Terrain provides a smooth enough ride for the occupant.

I had given the Uppababy some stroller love on this blog back in September. The Mountain Buggy is worthy of the same praise. If you’re tall and want a jogging stroller, look no further.

I Hear Old People

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It was one of those freak, 65-degree days in January and I had ventured downtown with London. We were at REI and I had just sat down at a patio table at the Starbucks there, overlooking Confluence Park and the South Platte River and Cherry Creek.

Our table was in the sun and London stayed in her stroller, which was positioned just right for her to eye every person walking by her on their way to get a coffee. Babies love people watching and London was clearly into it.

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The scene of the crime.

I pulled out my phone and casually checked my email and did a quick scan of Instagram. It was about two to three minutes of screen time before I heard an old woman speaking. She was seated with her husband, I assume, at a table directly across from our table, with the path for patio customers between us. I had started to eavesdrop because I heard her say to her husband, “Don’t you wonder about kids these days and what their vocabulary will be like as they start school?”

I couldn’t hear what her husband said in response. I continued listening, positioned in a way that I was facing London, now giving her a bottle, but I had my sunglasses on so my eyes were fixed on this lady and she could not tell.

What she said next made me freeze. “Well, that dad over there has said all of three words to his daughter since sitting down. He’s been playing with his phone and not talking to her at all.”

In that moment, I’m pretty sure I wanted to huck my iced coffee at her face. But she went on, bemoaning the sad state of parenting because of parents like me who look at their phone in the presence of their baby. I continued my stare, amazed that she could not see my eyes through my sunglasses and astonished that she would choose to say such things at all about someone sitting right across from her.

The old couple’s conversation eventually shifted to a different topic.  Where I sat I did not need the hot, January sun to keep me warm anymore. My blood was boiling. For the next ten minutes I sat there thinking about what I would say to this woman, if anything at all, and how would I deliver the message? And every word I spoke to London I second-guessed, am I saying this to London just because of what that old lady said?

Was this a moment to hold my tongue and be the bigger person? Or did this justify letting this old hag know just how much her assessment of modern-day parenting was incorrect? I admit, normally, I would have let this lady walk by without saying a word, but I had never had my parenting called into question like this. I am no perfect parent, but speaking and reading to London is where I excel. I decided I had to defend this.

The couple had stood up, gathered their biking gear, and were making their exit, forced to walk right by me. My eyes did not leave that old lady as soon as she starting moving. This time she noticed my stare and as she was right by my table I said, “I heard every word you said about my daughter and I. I really didn’t appreciate it and wanted to let you know that you are wrong. I have read thousands of pages to my daughter and I think she’ll have a fine vocabulary.”

Old lady, immediately apologetic and surprised, “Oh, I’m so sorry.”

No response from me. London stared at her and made some noises. “I can tell she’s trying to talk,” the old lady said.

“Yep,” I said, a little on the curt side, but hey, I think it’s pretty clear that I didn’t strike up this conversation to be friends with you so move along.

She felt like adding one more thing, “Well, it wasn’t like I was broadcasting it.” I did not acknowledge that and she got the hint and moved on. All the while her husband was a little behind her and I am pretty sure he missed the whole exchange. I gave him a wave and said, “Enjoy your ride.”

“Thank you,” he said, and walked on, completely unaware of what went down.

It was so liberating to let that woman know just how wrong and mean her comments had been. I watched her at a distance now, as she was getting onto her bicycle. There was a part of me that was hoping she would feel like an ass for the rest of the morning.

I think what that old lady said to her husband that day is so characteristic of some older or elderly people. It’s this feeling they sometimes get (or always have) that everything used to be better and now everything is going to shit, including parenting. As many people grow older the list of things they dislike and bemoan grows longer and longer. Eventually it is so long that most of the sentences coming out of their mouths are complaints. The worst of these are the most negative people to be around. This is a trait I loathe and one that I hope does not follow me into my golden years.

As a younger person it can be discouraging and exhausting to be around people who think everything is going to hell. I know it is very hard to be positive sometimes. And it is hard to hope. But try. Promise me that. And I’ll promise to read to my daughter today.

Early Smiles

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London’s early smiles were one of the first signs of how happy a baby she would become. At first I thought the flashes of a smile I saw were just the typical baby imitating the adult’s facial expressions, but by the time this video was taken on her two-month birthday I had changed my mind.

You can see London try to look up at me. The comfort of knowing that dad is holding her breaks through those hiccups and appears as a smile on her face. And then, back to hiccuping. Kate says, “She smiles a lot…”

She did then and she still does. She is constantly reminding me to be happy and then to stay happy. Even in those most frustrating moments of parenthood when I am in grumpy land and want to stay there, her joy cracks the scowl on my face and I surrender to her smile.

We are blessed and spoiled with such a happy baby, who continues to amaze the most weathered parents, grandparents, and great grandparents by her no-fuss, ebullient temperament.