It doesn't take a village to raise a child -- just Grandma Collins
Column: Check Your Head appeared in Fort McMurray Today July 20, 2006
By DAN MACEACHERN
Today staff
Regular readers of my column (i.e., my family) know that my wife Alex and I were expecting our first child. You might even know, much to Alex's discomfort at the personal information being shared with my estimated tens of readers, that there were complications early in the pregnancy, such that we were told early one January morning by the emergency room doctor that Alex had had a miscarriage.
Fortunately, the doctor was wrong, and the little MacEachern burrito was doing just fine. I'll spare you the details this time, mainly because Alex will kill me if I get into it again.
As the pregnancy progressed and the danger to the baby lessened, Alex began to have a more pressing fear: that our child was going to inherit my (apparently) freakishly large head. I did not know that I have a big head, but Alex and her family confirm that I do. Alex was hoping for a natural child birth, but she didn't relish the thought of having to squeeze out a living being with a head the size of a car battery.
I told her not to worry about it, but that was easy for me to say. Everything is easy to say for the father, I'm told, since he's not the one carrying the child, and most attempts to console your wife in her moments of distress will go unthanked and will sometimes even be derided, given that it's pretty much directly your fault she's suffering the discomfort in the first place. Alex started showing the pregnancy fairly early, and the baby "bump," as it is now supposed to be called, if celebrity tabloids are anything to go by, seemed to be there forever, and always would be.
Alex herself felt that the baby was never going to actually come, as though she had contracted some sort of perpetual perma-pregnancy, and she was doomed to forever sleep on her back and require help to get up from the couch.
But fifteen days ago yesterday, with smoke from prairie forest fires turning the sky the colour of concrete and veiling Fort McMurray trees in a blue-grey haze, Alex called me at work to say she was at the hospital and that the doctor was inducing labour. She'd left the Suncor hearing (she works for the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board, and because she is partly insane, insisted on working right up until it was time to deliver) to go to the Northern Lights health centre because she was feeling dizzy. The doctor took one look at her elevated blood pressure and said it was time for the baby to arrive.
I finished up my work at the paper in what I can only presume was a calm, professional manner, which was difficult because I felt like hyperventilating.
Labour wasn't dramatic, at least not initially, the way it is in movies and on television. Alex didn't spend her labour cursing me and saying things like, "You did this to me!" In fact, she cursed less than she does in real life, and I was left remarkably unscathed except for the time I took a picture right when a) she was trying to sit up and b) she was being hit by a massive contraction. This is apparently not when you want a camera flash going off in your face. But when I look at that picture today -- Alex's upper teeth biting her lower lip as she begins the F sound at the start of the phrase she was about to hurl at me, murder in her eyes -- it was completely worth it.
Active labour started several hours later, which we idled away by playing cards, but by midnight the doctor wasn't satisfied with Alex's dilation. Alex got an epidural so she could sleep without waves of pain washing over her body every few minutes, and the doctor said she'd check her out in the morning.
I'd barely woken up from the hospital cot when the doctor decided that there wasn't enough improvement over the night, and that our baby would be delivered by C-section. It's unfortunate that Alex got the worst of both worlds -- she got to experience much of the pain of labour, but then had to have a C-section anyway. I was disappointed for her, but I'd by lying if I said I wasn't just a little happy that I might get to hold our baby first.
I put on scrubs and Alex was wheeled into surgery. I didn't get to be in the room with her, though, as she was going to be put completely under; the epidural wasn't completely numbing her, which she needed for the operation.
Instead, I watched from a window into the operating room, and could only see Alex from the waist up. I had no idea what was going on, or how long the operation would take, and each second ticked off at the clock at a glacial pace.
Finally, I could see the nurses craning their necks towards the operation, and I knew our child had been born. One of the nurses turned towards me and mouthed the words "It's a girl!" and moments later a nine-pound, 10-ounce purple, screaming little person was carried over by my window as the nurses performed their newborn duties -- checking the lungs, wiping off the white gunk (I don't know what that was. I don't want to know what that was).
Her name is Molly Joy -- MJ to her father, MoJo to her Uncle Dominic --and she is no longer purple, or even the shade of yellow she became -- thanks a lot, jaundice. We're overjoyed, but not a little bit terrified at how to look after her. I mean, she's over her jaundice, but she hasn't been getting enough milk and now she's got "thrush," which is a yeast infection in her mouth. See, the pediatrician can use words like " thrush" and "jaundice," but in my mind that gets translated into "worst parents in the world."
Fortunately, I've gotten pretty good at changing diapers. Or at least I think I have. I imagine on Molly's next doctor visit, the pediatrician will discover that Molly has severe diaper rash, shoot me a withering glare, and pick up an office hotline to Social Services and ask them to send over a couple of case workers to save the poor child from her woefully negligent parents.
Fortunately, we have a secret weapon: Grandma Collins. Alex's parents live close by -- like Everybody Loves Raymond close by -- and without Alex's mother's help and advice, I'm not sure what we'd do. "We'd be screwed," is how Alex puts it.
I mean, I'm not the most nurturing person in the world. In my college dorm, I wanted a plant, but didn't trust myself to keep anything alive. So I got a cactus, figuring it would require very little maintenance. Even I could keep a cactus alive, right? Well, even a cactus couldn't survive being repeatedly knocked off my desk. I felt this didn't bode well for any potential offspring.
So the fact that I'm now responsible for a living, breathing human being is still something of a shock. Slowly, though, we're getting the hang of it, I think. I can do just about everything but feed her -- Molly does sometimes latch on to my nose, which I am relatively certain does not resemble a nipple. But at least I know when that happens to hand her off to Alex (whom we've nicknamed, to everyone's amusement but hers, the "Dairy Queen").
Not that it's time to breathe a sigh of relief just yet, because I have a feeling our biggest challenge is just around the corner: Grandma MacEachern arrives soon -- and I'm not sure Grandma Collins is ready to share.
© Copyright 2006, Fort McMurray Today Unauthorized.
By DAN MACEACHERN
Today staff
Regular readers of my column (i.e., my family) know that my wife Alex and I were expecting our first child. You might even know, much to Alex's discomfort at the personal information being shared with my estimated tens of readers, that there were complications early in the pregnancy, such that we were told early one January morning by the emergency room doctor that Alex had had a miscarriage.
Fortunately, the doctor was wrong, and the little MacEachern burrito was doing just fine. I'll spare you the details this time, mainly because Alex will kill me if I get into it again.
As the pregnancy progressed and the danger to the baby lessened, Alex began to have a more pressing fear: that our child was going to inherit my (apparently) freakishly large head. I did not know that I have a big head, but Alex and her family confirm that I do. Alex was hoping for a natural child birth, but she didn't relish the thought of having to squeeze out a living being with a head the size of a car battery.
I told her not to worry about it, but that was easy for me to say. Everything is easy to say for the father, I'm told, since he's not the one carrying the child, and most attempts to console your wife in her moments of distress will go unthanked and will sometimes even be derided, given that it's pretty much directly your fault she's suffering the discomfort in the first place. Alex started showing the pregnancy fairly early, and the baby "bump," as it is now supposed to be called, if celebrity tabloids are anything to go by, seemed to be there forever, and always would be.
Alex herself felt that the baby was never going to actually come, as though she had contracted some sort of perpetual perma-pregnancy, and she was doomed to forever sleep on her back and require help to get up from the couch.
But fifteen days ago yesterday, with smoke from prairie forest fires turning the sky the colour of concrete and veiling Fort McMurray trees in a blue-grey haze, Alex called me at work to say she was at the hospital and that the doctor was inducing labour. She'd left the Suncor hearing (she works for the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board, and because she is partly insane, insisted on working right up until it was time to deliver) to go to the Northern Lights health centre because she was feeling dizzy. The doctor took one look at her elevated blood pressure and said it was time for the baby to arrive.
I finished up my work at the paper in what I can only presume was a calm, professional manner, which was difficult because I felt like hyperventilating.
Labour wasn't dramatic, at least not initially, the way it is in movies and on television. Alex didn't spend her labour cursing me and saying things like, "You did this to me!" In fact, she cursed less than she does in real life, and I was left remarkably unscathed except for the time I took a picture right when a) she was trying to sit up and b) she was being hit by a massive contraction. This is apparently not when you want a camera flash going off in your face. But when I look at that picture today -- Alex's upper teeth biting her lower lip as she begins the F sound at the start of the phrase she was about to hurl at me, murder in her eyes -- it was completely worth it.
Active labour started several hours later, which we idled away by playing cards, but by midnight the doctor wasn't satisfied with Alex's dilation. Alex got an epidural so she could sleep without waves of pain washing over her body every few minutes, and the doctor said she'd check her out in the morning.
I'd barely woken up from the hospital cot when the doctor decided that there wasn't enough improvement over the night, and that our baby would be delivered by C-section. It's unfortunate that Alex got the worst of both worlds -- she got to experience much of the pain of labour, but then had to have a C-section anyway. I was disappointed for her, but I'd by lying if I said I wasn't just a little happy that I might get to hold our baby first.
I put on scrubs and Alex was wheeled into surgery. I didn't get to be in the room with her, though, as she was going to be put completely under; the epidural wasn't completely numbing her, which she needed for the operation.
Instead, I watched from a window into the operating room, and could only see Alex from the waist up. I had no idea what was going on, or how long the operation would take, and each second ticked off at the clock at a glacial pace.
Finally, I could see the nurses craning their necks towards the operation, and I knew our child had been born. One of the nurses turned towards me and mouthed the words "It's a girl!" and moments later a nine-pound, 10-ounce purple, screaming little person was carried over by my window as the nurses performed their newborn duties -- checking the lungs, wiping off the white gunk (I don't know what that was. I don't want to know what that was).
Her name is Molly Joy -- MJ to her father, MoJo to her Uncle Dominic --and she is no longer purple, or even the shade of yellow she became -- thanks a lot, jaundice. We're overjoyed, but not a little bit terrified at how to look after her. I mean, she's over her jaundice, but she hasn't been getting enough milk and now she's got "thrush," which is a yeast infection in her mouth. See, the pediatrician can use words like " thrush" and "jaundice," but in my mind that gets translated into "worst parents in the world."
Fortunately, I've gotten pretty good at changing diapers. Or at least I think I have. I imagine on Molly's next doctor visit, the pediatrician will discover that Molly has severe diaper rash, shoot me a withering glare, and pick up an office hotline to Social Services and ask them to send over a couple of case workers to save the poor child from her woefully negligent parents.
Fortunately, we have a secret weapon: Grandma Collins. Alex's parents live close by -- like Everybody Loves Raymond close by -- and without Alex's mother's help and advice, I'm not sure what we'd do. "We'd be screwed," is how Alex puts it.
I mean, I'm not the most nurturing person in the world. In my college dorm, I wanted a plant, but didn't trust myself to keep anything alive. So I got a cactus, figuring it would require very little maintenance. Even I could keep a cactus alive, right? Well, even a cactus couldn't survive being repeatedly knocked off my desk. I felt this didn't bode well for any potential offspring.
So the fact that I'm now responsible for a living, breathing human being is still something of a shock. Slowly, though, we're getting the hang of it, I think. I can do just about everything but feed her -- Molly does sometimes latch on to my nose, which I am relatively certain does not resemble a nipple. But at least I know when that happens to hand her off to Alex (whom we've nicknamed, to everyone's amusement but hers, the "Dairy Queen").
Not that it's time to breathe a sigh of relief just yet, because I have a feeling our biggest challenge is just around the corner: Grandma MacEachern arrives soon -- and I'm not sure Grandma Collins is ready to share.
© Copyright 2006, Fort McMurray Today Unauthorized.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home