family | matching tracksuits

Enter: LMS, Part IV :: A Brief, Predictable Interlude

Wednesday 27 December 2006

All my life, I’ve had an impossible, unlikely scenario in my head: driving my laboring wife to the hospital, I get pulled over by the police for speeding.

We’re about eight miles from the hospital. It’s early Saturday morning. There’ll be no traffic, so I decide we’ll forget the back routes (which are really a touch longer, but less traveled) and go the main way.

About a mile down the road, we realize K doesn’t have her wallet. We go back, get the wallet, and start again.

K is groaning and begging me to hurry; the road is deserted; I speed up and do between 65 and 70 mph on a quiet highway with a speed limit of 45 mph.

As I near the intersection with the main road in town, the highway curves gently to the right, slightly downhill.

On the left side of the street is an Ingles. In a small darkened access road to the left sits a car. I know what it is immediately.

We come to the stop light, and I look in the rear view mirror — there he sits, though his lights are not on. I decided I’ll go ahead and pull over preemptively, but when the light turns green, his lights turn on. I pull over.

Fortunately, the officer is reasonable and lets me go with a warning to drive carefully.

But no offer to escort me? Come on! That’s not how we all envision it!

Enter: LMS, Part II :: Friday Evening

Friday 22 December 2006

K arrives home exhausted. “I just want to relax,” she says. “I have a feeling I’m going to need my strength.”

I make a quick pizza and salad for dinner, and after eating, K goes to the bedroom, not to emerge until it’s time to go to the hospital.

Worried, I set up the baby monitor we got at one of the many showers held in L’s honor and set it up. Throughout the night, K is moaning in her sleep, and often going to the bathroom. I bring her tea with lemon and honey. She sleeps a little more. I bring her more tea. She sleeps still a little more, but it’s a fitful sleep.

There’s no doubt in my mind that sometime Saturday we’ll be going to the hospital. Still no contractions, but it seems inevitable.

From birthing class, I know that it won’t be a question of Boom! and here comes the baby. Such things only occur in Hollywood. Labor takes time. Hours. Even days.

A story was told early in the class of a woman who was in labor for two weeks. Two weeks of contractions, hours apart, and slowly, probably almost imperceptibly for her, growing closer and stronger.

K’s friend spent sixteen hours in labor at the hospital. That’s not counting the time at home.

“We’ll be going to the hospital sometime in the late morning or early afternoon,” I say to myself, and sit down to prepare a short post making the announcement.

Lena Maria

Sunday 17 December 2006

Born Saturday, December 16 at 8:05 am

Seven pounds, fifteen ounces

The most beautiful creature K and I have seen

More details later in the week

L Minus 14

Tuesday 12 December 2006

K’s due date is two weeks from tomorrow. Which means, for the last week, we’ve both been thinking, “Any day now…” True, few first-time pregnancies are early, but last week’s ultrasound (confirming a weight of about seven pounds) has led us to hope more fervently that L will be here by Christmas.

And so soon, all the questions will be answered.

Some already are. The ultrasound technician was shocked at how much hair our daughter already has — and its length: about 1.4 cm (a little over half an inch). We could see the hair, waving about in the amniotic fluid, like some small detail from a painting.

In the meantime, every time the phone rings at work and I see it’s K calling, everything in me jumps just a little.

Birthing Classes

Thursday 23 November 2006

Last week, K and I (and L, indirectly) finished our last birthing class. I’d really recommend to anyone considering starting a family taking such a class. Not only did we learn quite a bit about the birthing process and what we can expect (in about six weeks now), but more importantly, that knowledge has put both K and me at ease (to a degree) about the whole process.

I always had visions of rushing to the hospital in almost-complete pandemonium, because who knows when that baby will make its way out. I knew it couldn’t be that simple, but having never really been close to the birthing process, the lack of experiential knowledge did nothing to dislodge fully my sit-com visions of the Big Day.

Who’s Watching?

Wednesday 15 November 2006

Though Asheville drivers are experts at testing it, my temper usually remains on a fairly even keel. I’ve become more aware of it lately, though, as L’s birthday approaches.

The thought that a child is going to be watching every move I make just as I watched every move my father made is enough to soothe tempers when ~~idiots~~ individuals don’t know how to make a left turn at a traffic light, a common occurrence in this small city.

I can picture the individual I want to be, the father I want to be, and mold myself to it, stripping away the one or two bad habits I might have (really — no more than that), in order to produce an ideal of fatherhood. In all seriousness, there’s nothing like the thought of having your own child strapped into a car seat in the back to keep check temper in check.

Assumption

Monday 30 October 2006

In Poland recently, a middle school teacher was called out of her classroom for some administrative duties — a meeting or some nonsense — and while she was gone, a group of male students assaulted a female student, stripping her to her underwear (or further — I can’t recall exactly) and pretending like they were going to rape her.

She committed suicide the next day. Reports indicated that there were other issues precipitating the suicide and that her parents held nothing against the perpetrators’ parents.

It’s hard for me to imagine me reacting similarly were something like that to happen to my soon-to-be daughter.

It’s no longer permissible to say parents are responsible in any way for their children’s behavior. It’s this; it’s that — it’s anything but poor parenting. Yet as L’s birthday approaches, I can’t help but wonder at the validity of that assumption.

Reading List

Wednesday 13 September 2006

Frederick Wirth writes in Prenatal Parenting of an experiment Anthony Casper conducted at the University of North Carolina regarding parental reading and prenatal development. He had mothers read Dr. Seuss’ The Cat in the Hat to their unborn children twice a day. A few days after birth, the infants were given a chance to hear the story again. However, using a device fitted with a special nipple, the infants could change the story being read by changing the rate at which they were sucking.

As demonstrated by their sucking speed, the newborns remembered The Cat in the Hat better. Furthermore, they preferred it read forward instead of backward. (Wirth, 37)

So I guess in a way I was wrong when I suggested that our daughter might prefer Shell Silverstein to Robert Frost.

Or, looking at it another way, here’s a chance to get my daughter interested in all the nerdy literature I love.

Of Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat,
Sing Heav’nly Muse

I aim to give L a headstart on senior lit…

22 Weeks

Wednesday 30 August 2006

Quickening

Sunday 27 August 2006

It takes patience and calmness to feel her. “Did you feel it?” K asks. “Yes,” I say, hesitantly: a small, quick pressure against the palm of my hand could easily be missed.

All this time, K, with her belly swelling, passed through all the early signs of pregnancy, and it was exciting for me, but still somehow distant. I’m an observer, not a direct participant. But once it became possible to feel L’s kicks, a new depth to the situation has emerged. Every day, the reality that we are soon going to be responsible for a little girl becomes more and more obvious and increasingly present. That goes without saying. But feeling L move about makes the realization all the more potent.

Lena

Tuesday 1 August 2006

“We have to have a serious talk with your parents about pink.” We were leaving the clinic after the confirmation: by some time in late December, we’ll have a daughter — Lena Maria.

For months now, she has been an “it.” Rather, we’ve referred to Lena as “Bączek.” “Little fart” in Polish. “This means she is no longer ‘It,'” I thought, when the ultrasound technician said, almost immediately, “It’s a girl.”

“It’s a girl,” and the name dilemma washed away. “Lena” has been our choice for a girl for some time, but for a boy — nothing. Kinga had plenty of ideas, but for some reason, none of them made me feel much of anything. “Lena,” though, has such a warmth, a strength, a beauty to it that I liked it immediately.

“She” means directions and details for the dreaming that were never contained in “it”. Vague imaging becomes focused. At some point, she will break some boy’s heart. At some point, her heart will be broken. She will have a favorite book and a favorite game. She will come to me one day, crying with a childhood injury. At some point, I might find myself dancing with her at her wedding. Yet these thoughts are all so distant that they’re just as unrealistic as when we knew nothing more than the potential: “I’m pregnant,” Kinga whispered in my ear one morning, many weeks ago…