Sep 14

Written by: Chaitanya Marvici
Friday, September 14, 2007

Well, as some of you that know me might know, I have just had the pleasure of being there for the birth of my first child.   It was awesome.   Well, the birth itself was kind of boring and quite short actually as I am told most c-sections are, but seeing my child for the first time was just awesome.    However, for those guys that might have or are thinking about having kids, let me give a couple of words of advice.   (And yes, this is probably unwanted, but too bad.  This is my blog after all...)

No matter what you read or are given advice ( most of the time unwanted ) about with the arrival of the little one, nothing well ever prepare you for the complete chaos that will very quickly envelope every part of your life.   One of the things that *I* was not told by anyone nor did I read anywhere is that *I* would be changing the diapers in the hospital.   Me changing diapers?  Na....but it happened.   I got stuck with making sure that the tar baby had clean depends on.  I think that women keep that little piece of information secret so that we don't bail on them when it is time to go to the hospital.   I could be wrong here, but somehow it wouldn't surprise me if that is actually the case.

Another piece of information that no one bothers to tell you is that a hospital is the worst place in the world to recooperate from.  ESPECIALLY if you have just had a baby.     First, the women that just gave birth has a nurse.   Second, the baby has his or her own nurse.   Third, they are completely incapable of visiting at the same time thereby making sure that you are not able to get a wink of decent sleep the entire time that you are there.  And heaven forbid that the women should have problems with breastfeeding.  Then you have to deal with a lactation consultant.   Yet another person to interrupt your awesome 5 minutes of sleep that you just managed to squeeze in.  In light of this little tidbit of experience, I opted to get my wife and kid home early.   We still didn't get much sleep, but at least we had peace and ....  I guess quiet is the wrong choice of words there, but you know what I mean.  I was just glad that we didn't have nurses showing up when we were finally able to get to sleep...

As of the writing of this blog, my newborn is a week old.   Yesterday was his first doctor's visits.   He had two of them.  The first was to get his tougue tie fixed.   The doctors do this to allow the baby to breastfeed easier if they are having problems because they can't move their tougue around enough.    During this visit I also found out that a newborn has the same defense mechanism as a frog.   For those of your that don't know, i'll explain this the easy way.  You pick up a frog, what does he do.   He pee's on you.   That's it.   Well newborns do the same thing if they get in a painful situation.    Lucky for me, I was not the unwilling recipient of this defense mechanism.   The nurse that wanted to hold him during the clipping of his tougue tie was.  About the only thing I could think of was "Whew....I still have more errands to run AND another doctors visit.   I'm glad I don't have to wear pee'd on clothes."  On the other hand, she had to go through the entire day with wet clothes on.   But then again, I will probably never see her again, so what does it matter to me.  

His second visit of the day was at the pediatrician's (not sure I spelled that right, but oh well...) office.   This was just his first general physical to see how he is doing.  I well have to say that the doctor was nice and i'm sure that he tells lots of parents this, but he told my wife and I, and I quote, "He's the perfect baby".  (Note: keep in mind that he has had no issues, with the exception of the tougue tie since birth.  This does not take into account the fact that he was breach because he was not able to find out the correct way to be facing.   I hope that this isn't a showing of what's to come...)    Now after hearing this my head got so big that i'm surprised that my wife and the doctor didn't have to leave the room due to lack of space available.  

Well that's enough for now.   Hope you have enjoyed these immense words of wisdom.

Chaitanya

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