Prozac nation

My doctor offered me a prescription for Zoloft yesterday. Not a big one and not in a big dosage. Just enough to get me over the hump I seem to have hit between being giddy about the new addition and being giddy about the new addition with the occasional bout of weepiness thrown in.

I responded, of course, by bursting into tears.

My body chemistry is clearly messed up. Even now, comparatively well rested after a cumulative five and a half hours of sleep last night and very happy to be sitting in my quiet house reading the paper and watching the kid sleep happily in her swing, I can feel the tears coming. It's not so much that I'm unhappy. I'm just ... off. Like my gears aren't shifting properly.

I said no to the drugs, by the way, at least for now. I'm thinking that with a little more rest, a little more time getting comfortable with the feedings and a little more effort to engage with the world -- tomorrow, for example, the kid and I will celebrate the fact that I've lost 21 pounds in the past two weeks by going out for a bagel -- this will end and I'll be back to my happy, cynical, cranky, usually tear-free self.

And if not, there's always the Zoloft.

I'm going to Disney World

Where to begin, where to begin ... Judybat captured the whole experience of childbirth quite nicely, with a lot more detail than I could possibly provide given how out of it I was by the end. I do, however, have some random thoughts on the topic of Beta's arrival:

- Expectant mothers please skip ahead. For the rest of you, let me let you in on a little secret no one shares with you until after labor: It hurts. Worse than anything I could have imagined. Bad enough that as they were rushing me into the operating room, talking in not entirely calm tones about the baby's heartrate and the possible need to put me under general anethesia so they could rip the child out as quickly as possible, all I could think was, 'A C-section. Great. Soon it won't hurt anymore.' Don't get me wrong. People warned me it would be painful. But I think there's a difference between saying, 'This is going to hurt,' and 'You're going to wish you were dead.' Of course, we are wonderfully well designed creatures, even if the process by which we reproduce is sort of barbaric compared to say, chickens or fish. Even in the moments immediately after the operation, heck, even in the seconds as the spinal was taking effect, the pain went from something very specific to something fuzzy and general. I can tell you I was in the worst pain of my life, that it was excrutiating and hellish and left me a husk of myself. At the same time, I can't find the words to describe to you what the pain actually felt like. This is the reason some women give birth more than once. You forget with frightening speed.

- Breastfeeding is a lot harder than anyone let on. Given Judybat's experience -- her milk came in mere hours after her C-section and TheBoy emerged ready to feast -- I figured this would be simple. Baby comes out. Baby latches on. Boobs get bigger. Party on. Instead, I find myself feeling like half a woman as I sit here, 10 days after the fact, waiting for my body to provide enough milk to keep the kid from starving and taking herbs every six hours and pumping myself raw. (That was too much information, right?) The amount of advice I've gotten on the topic is dizzying, and I know it's going to be fine: Worst case, our friendly neighborhood lactation consultant will call my doctor and get me a prescription from some handy dandy hormones to force my body to shift into bovine mode. Still, it's frustrating and surprising. Got milk? Not so much.

- Forget all that talk about how strong I was during childbirth. In the aftermath, I'm an emotional mess. Actually, that's not right. Most of the day, I'm as happy as can be considering how little sleep I'm getting. But there's a brief period every day during which I feel the uncontrollable need to weep. Often, I do. I'm told this is completely normal -- and not necessarily the first signs of post-partum depression. It's just that sometimes when I find myself thinking back on the whole experience, on how wonderful the nurses and our midwife were, on how safe I felt even during the worst of it, on how small my world became sitting in that hospital bed, I start to cry. And I can't stop. Judybat says this post-birth period can make you feel like you've got post traumatic stress disorder, and I think I know what she means. There's also a natural emotional letdown: I've just done the most powerful thing I'll ever do in my life, the thing my body was meant for, the most painful (I hope), exhilarating, rewarding single experience I suspect I'll ever have. What do you do after that? Break into tears for no obvious reason, apparently.

Update

More drama, but just a little bit.

AnnaRay and Sister - or Swordhook, as The Boy likes to call her - came home yesterday after four days - or an eternity, as I like to call it - in the hospital. AR's recovery was hampered by an infection of her uterine lining, which they treated with 24 hours of antibiotics, and little Sister had to spend two days in the nursery under ultraviolet lights because she was jaundiced.

Their homecoming has been a lot easier than I remember Griffin's. Back then, we had just spent three days in a cocoon as I recovered from my c-section and the nurses took care of everything so all we had to do was marvel over this tiny creature that bleated like a sheep and made us a family. Then they discharged us and we kept asking each other what were they thinking just letting us leave like that with a baby? - I mean, come on! We had no idea what we were doing!

This time around I couldn't wait for that discharge. I was all set to take care of that baby, but I wasn't prepared for the stress of having my girls in the hospital while I had to take care of my boy back home. We are so lucky to have a network of great friends on whom we relied for child care, and while The Boy wanted his mommy and the baby to come home, he was perfectly happy rolling his Thomas the Tank Engine suitcase from one sleepover to the next. But I was constantly torn by my desire to return to that cocoon of the hospital room and my need to deal with what was going on in the real world.

Meanwhile, AR was dealing with the stress of breat feeding when her milk had yet to come in and the baby had yet to learn how to nurse. I had totally taken it for granted that the one thing babies know from the get-go is how to suck, since The Boy, having 50 percent of his genetic makeup come from my DNA, started chowing down as soon as he was given the chance. (Five days of parenting two children and already I'm starting with the comparisons! Sibling rivalry, here we come.)

Now everybody is home, and things get easier every day. The Boy is a little bit whinier than usual, but he's also clearly excited about having a baby sister. "Ima, I want to hold the baby," he says. "I want to rock her back and forth."

I'll have to tell you more about it later, because sleeplessness has overtaken my brain, and I feel my coherence ebbing with every word I type.

Welcome, Sister

Our latest little tiny came into this world strong and healthy, announcing her presence with a lot of kicking and screaming after an emergency C-section. The mad dash from the labor room to the OR, with AnnaRay screaming on a gurney and me being told to wait in the hall, was the most horrifying moment of my life - but I'm getting ahead of myself. Here's the story:

Anna started leaking amniotic fluid on Wednesday, but felt no labor pains. The midwife said 85 percent of women go into labor within 24 hours after their water breaks. Anna did not. After a relatively relaxing day of waiting around for nothing to happen, we agreed to check into the hospital so AR could be induced. Once the amniotic sac has ruptured, the risk of infection increases with every passing day, but the likelihood of going into labor does not.

Thursday morning was a little surreal. We got up, relatively well rested, got The Boy ready for school, and headed off to have a baby. There was no urgency, no pain, just the knowledge that at the end of the day we would be a family of four. We were excited about the prospect of AR's pregnancy being over, but we were both a little disappointed. This was not the way it was supposed to happen. Anna had gotten used to the idea of trying to labor naturally, and I was looking forward to supporting her through it. But it didn't seem like such a good idea for her to forego an epidural if they were going to put her on Pitocin to get the contractions going. My experience with the drug was that - unlike natural labor in which you ease your way onto the contractions - it hits you like a jolt of lightning. (I was going to say a ton of bricks, but I think when a ton of bricks falls on you, you're mercifully knocked out.)

To our great relief, our midwife explained that they could ease AR into labor by starting off with a small amount of Pitocin and gradually increasing it, so it looked like we'd have a shot at the childbirth experience we'd been readying ourselves for after all. AR was hooked up to an i.v. drip around 10 a.m. and spent the next few hours alternatively sitting in bed with a fetal monitor strapped to her belly and strolling the corridors with the i.v. pole tethered to her arm. Not exactly natural, but at least she wasn't numb from the waist down.

Not much happened for a while. AR was feeling contractions, but nothing too painful until about 3 p.m. It's fitting to note here that we've been able to reconstruct a timeline of events based on the College Hoops Classic semi-final matchup between Maryland and St. Johns, which - along with long, slow deep breaths - provided AR with some distraction through the contractions. The game started at 4 p.m., and by the second quarter things were getting a little intense, (in the labor room, if not on the court.)

I'd been telling AnnaRay for a long time that she could make it through labor without drugs. True, she is a wimp when it comes to pain, but labor presents a different kind of pain, because it's purposeful. It's not signaling something is wrong; it's telling you that your body is doing the work that needs to be done to accomplish the astonishing task of getting a baby out through the most improbable of all exits. Also, I know what AR is capable of when she sets her mind to something.

But it's one thing to know she's capable of something and another thing entirely to watch her actually do it. At the risk of getting a little maudlin here, let me tell you that I get a little weepy at the thought of how strong and brave she was. Words fail me when I try to express how amazing she was, but I can tell you this: if after this experience she were to turn to me and say, "For my next trick, I'm going to fly," I would have no reason not to believe her. She never complained and did not once ask for any kind of pain relief; she just sat quietly, intently, concentrating on her breathing, until around 6 o'clock when it came time to push. We knew she was ready to push, because that's when she started screaming.

The screaming was a little scary for me, and I found myself feeling guilty that I ever suggested she try to do this without an epidural. But the nurses and midwife were unfazed. They did suggest that she take all that energy coming out of her mouth and refocus it on the pushing, and that seemed to be working, but soon things got a little scarier. There was talk of the baby's heart rate dropping, and AR changing positions, and calling in another nurse and then a doctor and how about using the vacuum to give you a little help to get that baby out and let's try one more really good push and see if we can that baby out because we really need to get this baby out soon and if we can't do it this way we'll have to try something else...

I was still trying to process what this meant - that after all that hard work, she was going to have a C-section and that this really was not the way it was suppose to happen - when all of a sudden it seemed like there were fifty people in the room and they're throwing a blanket over AR as they wheel her out of the room and start running - RUNNING! - through the corridor, and I'm running after them, trying to get to her side to hold her hand or something when they tell me I can't go into the operating room with her because there was no time to give her a spinal and they'd have to put her under general anesthesia.

I guess I'm pretty lucky, though, because that was the worst moment of my life, and it only lasted a few seconds. Things got better pretty quickly when they told me there was time to do a spinal after all, and here are some scrubs and booties and put this net over your hair and go ahead in so you can see your child being born. About ten minutes later I peeked over the curtain sheilding AR's head from what they were doing to her body and saw a surprisingly large little noggin emerge from AR's abdomen. And then I saw, Oh! It's a girl! That's a girl, right? I asked, just to make sure, and it was. She was 8 pounds, 13 ounces, healthy and pink, and now we are four.

I'm ready

I'm looking forward to the moment when my wife turns to me and says, "Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow!" Not that I want her to be in pain; I just know it's the only way for us to get from here to baby. I know she's looking forward to it too - not the pain so much as the end of the discomfort, (if not the sleeplessness.)

She's been having Braxton Hicks contractions for weeks now, but on Wednesday she felt a little crampy and came home early. This is it, I thought, because AnnaRay leaving work early is an unprecedented event. But it was a false alarm, and now, in addition to dealing with sleeplessness, pelvic pressure and the constant need to pee, she must endure my constant inquiries about what she's feeling. "What was that? Did that hurt?" I ask with the maniacal glee of Renfield every time she sighs, holds her body or changes position.

As weird as it sounds, I'm really looking forward to helping her through labor. Clearly, I've forgotten the misery of it. All I can remember was that it was an intensely intimate time for us. I remember thinking shortly after The Boy was born that I could not have chosen a better partner to go through this with me, yet how could I have possibly known that when we decided to spend the rest of our lives together a million years ago when we were childless and had no idea what it meant to be parents?

I'm looking forward to proving myself in the same way.

And I walked 10 miles through the snow to school ....

As part of the whole 'preparing for the baby' thing, someone gave us the brilliant idea of having Beta bring TheBoy a special gift, essentially a bribe to distract him from the fact that he's no longer the sun and the moon and everything in between. (As opposed to the special gifts Beta continues to bring me.

Playtime has become quite a delight these days: TheBoy tells himself little stories -- out loud, of course -- as he lines up his cars or maneuvers his trains or bangs his two sticks together. So I figured this might be the perfect time to introduce him to the ultimate childhood experience: Action figures.

Oh, how I loved my action figures. Star Wars figures. G.I. Joes. You name it. I spent hours and hours lining them up and making up increasingly complicated stories about their adventures. Sort of like "Lost," except without those danged numbers.

TheBoy is a little young for Darth and Luke and R2D2 with the spring-action head that makes a clicking noise when you turn it. But he's certainly mature enough for Adventure People, those four-limbed Fisher Price figures I remember so well. There were a divers, astronauts, a TV news crew and that slightly creepy Grizzly Adams fellow in the lumberjack outfit. (Because what kid doesn't like to dream about clear-cutting?)

I turned to the Internet, source of all things good and true. And here's what I found: Even the least brand-name toys of my childhood have become collectors' items far outside the range of what any sane parent would spend on their child. Don't believe me?

The problem is that today's action figures all, to put it plainly, stink. Check out the difference between my generation's Star Wars figures and this generation's. Even Princess Leia has a Mark McGwire look to her. Someone measure that girl's head! Fisher Price has replaced its Adventure People with bizarrely proportioned firefighters and police officers, which sort of forces Junior and Juniorette to stay within a set saving-the-world storyline. Where's the freedom for creativity? Where's the message that anabolic steroids aren't a good thing?

I'm sure, in the end, we'll come up with something appropriate for TheBoy. He does love his trains, and there's nothing that will please his Nana and Pop, who arrive in town tonight to stare at my stomach, eat numerous Portland breakfasts and revel in the constant miracle that is their grandson, will enjoy more than a naptime trip to Toys R Us to help me scope out the possibilities. But I find the whole thing a little depressing, and not just because the action figures of my youth were a heck of a lot cheaper than Thomas, Percy and the gang.

Just twiddling my thumbs here

To the dear friends who keep calling us to ask if we've had the baby yet ...

Um, no. We'll tell you when that happens. Promise. Cross our hearts. It's just that, what with the waiting and the discomfort and the general sense of "Let's get on with it already," I've had a hard time recently putting together anything interesting or even intelligible.

So, please stop calling. A watched pot never boils. A watched uterus never contracts. Besides, we've got two weeks left yet. A loooong two weeks.

Plus, if the kid is born this week, we sort of have to to name it Schumer, right?

Priorities

I was talking to a college classmate of mine about the multimedia work I do for the newspaper, and she told me that a guy from our class was in charge of that kind of thing at the Times. The New York Times, that is. Needless to say, I was skeptical, and not just because I know the guy who’s in charge of multimedia for the Times and I’m pretty sure he’s at least a little bit older than me, and I’m absolutely sure we didn’t go to the same Alma Mater, because he made no mention of it when I handed him my resume a few years back after knocking on his door in search of the possibility of maybe at some point in the future, dare I say it, getting a job at his fine institution.

So I Googled the guy – this classmate of ours – and found (in his engagement announcement published in the Vows section of the Times) that he is, in fact, in charge of the entire web site, not just the multimedia bits that are published on it.

I believe the thought that ran through my head was, what the fuuuuuuh ckhave I been doing for the past 15 years?

Well, there were those two years after graduation I spent in Boulder, CO working my way up from bussing tables to waiting table and ultimately, after a short stint delivering pizza, tending bar. That was a proud day for my parents, when I finally got to work behind the bar. But maybe I should have gone to Harvard to get an MBA instead.

Nah.

I’m not sorry for the choices I’ve made. And while I often lament my lack of professional accomplishment, I wouldn’t trade any of the experiences I’ve had bumbling around trying to figure out what to make of myself for any title, paycheck or raft of responsibilities. I struggle enough being responsible for myself.

So I will content myself with the sense of accomplishment I feel when I’m biking through the pouring rain with the kid riding in the trailer hitched behind me and a woman calls out from the sidewalk to say, “You guys rock! Hard core, man.”

Hard core. I wonder how that would look on a business card.