Can I be proud of my 22 inches?

“Wow” exclaimed the nursed as she looked down. My little baby girl was 22 inches tall, well 21.5 inches actually but let’s round up, “isn’t she a tall one”!

She seemed pretty short to me, but I couldn’t help myself so I looked up just how tall 21.5 inches was. Turns out the cutie is between the 80^th and 90^th percentile! She’s winning already!

Now I know that the early childhood development experts all say that praise should be given for effort, and gloating over how smart your child is (or how tall she is or any other “fixed” state that she “is”) can be unhealthy. Actually, I think I’ve seen it described as “toxic” by one particularly grumpy researcher. But I just couldn’t help myself, I went straight over to little long luscious creature and blurted out, “[coo coo], aren’t you so tall, [coo coo], well done”!

Seriously, “well done”?? Of course it made no sense, and yet, I felt such a deep seated pride. I feel like I just joined that super annoying club of overly-proud over-sharer parents, but I’m not afraid to own it.

And I can’t wait to tell my daddy buddies!

P.S. height seems to be strongly correlated with frequency of feeds, especially overnight feeds...

19 days in!

What could I possibly learn in ninety minutes?

10:30am Sunday morning, not this week

Woke up an hour and a half ago

Enjoyed some delicious cuddles

Skimmed the NYTimes…Obama…Romney…blah blah…China…Europe…blah blah

Read a chapter of Here Comes Everybody…crowdsourcing…mobile-social…blah blah

Started to sketch out a powerpoint deck…white-space…blah blah

Interrupted deck sketching to discuss the most important issue of the day…

Where should we have brunch? Let’s go check out a new spot!

10:30am Sunday morning, this week

“Wake up” time has lost meaning, but we could go with 2am, 5am or 8am.

2am wake-cuddle-feed-burp-change-feed-swaddle-sleep cycle was rough. She had a tummy ache and nothing we tried seemed to console her. I think I felt my heart break every time she looked up at us, pleading for us to make it go away. She finally fell back asleep an hour and a half later, maybe because so much crying eventually tired out her little lungs, or maybe because just being held by mom eventually soothed her pain.

5am change was a little messy. Learned to swap out the changing mat from under her in the middle of the daiper change. Nobody told me that would be a required daddy skill or I might have practiced.

8am wake-cuddle-feed-burp-change-swaddle-sleep cycle ended with her lying on my chest, skin to skin, drifting gently in and out of sleep. Her needs were so basic, share the warmth of a body and hear the beating of a heart.

The next ninety minutes felt like an eternity, a place between thoughts, a time between days. I felt like my heart grew with every little breath she took, and I felt like maybe, just maybe, I had learned to accept unconditional love.

11 days in!

Am I having an identity crisis?

It’s been the most amplified four days of my life.

I used to think I was fearless. Then I watched my wife endure twenty one hours of contractions and fight her way through an hour and a half of pushing to bring our little baby into the world. To say I was “afraid” during labor would be like saying I was “happy” after delivery. Imagining the multitude of birth related complications that might arise and endanger my wife’s health, all of which were theoretically possible but statistically improbable, I was terrified. I experienced fear, true fear, for the first time in as long as I can remember.

I used to think I was graceful under pressure, level-headed and resourceful when sh*t hit the fan. That fantasy lies in a million little pieces on the floor of the hospital recovery room. The helplessness I felt that first night with our baby girl, not being able to console her as she seemed to struggle with her little breaths, was so foreign yet so intense. In the minutes before the nurse on-call arrived, I glimpsed a sense of helplessness so deeply that it felt molecular.

I used to think I was content, at least as content as a restless soul could hope to be. Then I experienced my first skin to skin contact with my baby girl, thirty six hours into her young life. I found a serenity that I could not have imagined possible. I wonder if Siddhartha would have left his newborn in search of enlightenment had he experienced the bliss of connecting with something (and someone) so pure.

I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror this morning while shaving, it was the first time I had seen myself in four days. I could barely recognize the person looking back at me. His confidence had been shaken, his sense of perspective toppled, his grounding uprooted, his history rephrased, his future recast.

And yet, it didn’t feel like a crisis. It felt more like an evolution. It felt awesome.

4 days in!

Can I get a hit of oxytocin?

The instructor at our baby care and feeding class this afternoon was maniacal about two things.

1. Exclusive breastfeeding, at least for the first six months. I agree.

2. Skin-to-skin contact, especially in the two hours immediately after birth. I agree.

She was also adamant, although with a little less conviction, about the bonding that can take place between baby and dad during the first hours after birth. In theory, dad is supposedly just as capable of enjoying those precious cuddles with baby and experiencing the bliss of an oxytocin rush (a.k.a love).

As I watched a video of mother and baby experiencing the magic of those first moments of skin-to-skin contact, discovering each other, finding comfort in the each other’s gaze and scent, and nourishing each other’s soul, I couldn’t help but think that however deeply I loved my baby girl, it would not be fueled by the same primal intensity.

For now, I’m not envious, just curious. And I want THAT!

46 days to go!

What’s dad’s value-add (in the first month)?

Cover the last night feed with pumped milk so mom can get some rest.

Sterilize the feeding bottles, at the end of each day or as often as needed.

Make sure mom has a glass of water nearby whenever she’s breastfeeding.

Do laundry every day (note: keep soiled baby clothes soaking in a bucket of water until it goes in the wash).

Apparently, these are the ways in which I can be most helpful in the first weeks and months after birth (based on my own poll of new moms, n=2). Now, I’m no more narcissistic than the next guy, but is there nothing else I can do during one of the most critical periods of our daughter’s life?

Is that really the full extent of dad’s value-add?

Any and all suggestions welcome from moms, dads and interested bystanders. PLEASE!

In the mean time, I’m going to be the best trained baby CPR-giver there ever was. BTW, baby CPR class was incredibly informative, and somewhat terrifying. Even if the 1 in 15,000 odds mean that we hopefully won’t need to put the theory into practice, it’s a non-zero possibility and could mean the difference between life and death. I’m definitely going back for the child CPR class in a year.

60 days to go.

Is there no room for mistakes?

“This is the best advice I can give you about being a dad to a girl – spend LOTS of time with her.  You’ll be the first man she falls in love with and the one who teaches her how she should be treated…”

WTF? That’s a LOT of pressure, no?

Before my so-called friend shared those words of wisdom with me, I was worried about things like competing with my neighbors for those precious few kindergarten spots at our local elementary school, or having to quit my non-profit work and go back to management consulting to pay for private school if we don’t get a spot.

Ha!

Now I’ve got some real worries, like screwing up all my daughter’s future relationships by not being there for her the one time she needs me most. That is truly the most terrifying thought I have ever had. Ever.

I’m hastily reading “Touchpoints Birth to 3, your Child’s Emotional and Behavioral Development” by Brazelton. This class is not going to be graded on a curve.

67 days to go.

Am I worth less than Mark Zuckerberg?

I studied computer science

I thought I could change the world when I left school

(perhaps naively assuming I needed to stick around until I finished school)

I started my first venture when I was 23

(albeit with a slightly less ambitious goal than to connect the world)

So why am I not worth $19.1B (or even $15.5B)?

Mom?

This must have been my big-man train of thought when I blurted out “I’m no Mark Zuckerburg, but…” to my wife as we were shopping for maternity clothes.

This weekend’s mission was to find a pair of white linen pants (or a red poly-cotton blend dress, whichever came first...), and winning would mean taking home a piece we could dress up or dress down and fit into all throughout the last two and a half months of our pregnancy!

I’m sure navigating the largest tech IPO in history wasn’t easy for Mark, but that must have been quite linear and predictable compared to our shopping adventure!

Before I could finish the sentence, and possibly become self-aware, she pulled me close, kissed me on the cheek and proclaimed “you are my Mark Zuckerburg”!

I felt loved. I felt like a man. Possibly worth more than Mark Zuckerberg.

Five incredibly perceptive and well-timed words from her, that’s all it took.

If one lady in my life has that kind of power, how is this going to work when I have two??

73 days to go.

Am I cheating on my wife?

Our first date was a non date. We were just-friends going out to dinner. It was easy, it was fun, there was sushi. Yum.

As our friendly-emails grew more frequent, one day, she sent me a cheeky picture of herself, close up, staring longingly at a piece of tuna sushi. Done.

As we got closer together, sushi became our thing, among other things. We love going out to sushi, we love ordering in sushi, we just love sushi.

Or at least we did. Until we got pregnant. Somewhere in the excitement and panic and wonder and worry, something got lost. "We" can't eat raw seafood anymore. No more sushi.

I didn't have to deal with weeks of nausea. I haven't had to start taking a regiment of 7 prenatal pills every day. I don't spend my mornings stretching to ease the pain in my lower back. I can still fit into all my clothes and I don't have a clue how I would deal with not feeling in control of my body. But i'm here, wanting to be here, possibly not helping, but trying. 

I'm here in spirit, totally. We're partners, all the way.

Until last tuesday.

I stepped out of the office to pick up lunch, went into the corner deli, walked past the sandwich counter, saw the pre-packaged tuna sushi+roll combo for $7.95, and....

OMFG, it was so good!

81 days to go.