Three weeks ago my wife and I were in the hospital. We’d gotten there around three in the morning and were three weeks early so the doctor told us over the phone to wait a couple hours before coming in, just to be sure.

So we waited for what felt like an eternity but which was really just a blip over the course of the day. And then when we got to the hospital we waited some more. And waited. And waited. The shadows went from non-existent to long to short and then to long again. It was funny because when we left the house at 2:30AM I was worried she’d push the baby out on the side of the freeway. It was not funny because when you’re used to being in control of most everything, watching the person you love most be in so much pain for so long is one of the only times you’ll ever feel truly helpless.

At this exact time on that day, my wife was probably in the middle of her second or third attempt at watching the latest Hunger Games movie, which she’d restarted multiple times between dozing, not necessarily because she wanted to watch it specifically but just because she wanted to watch something and the options at the hospital were slim. Meanwhile, I was probably trying to read the book I’d wanted to read for years and had just started a few days prior, which I still haven’t finished because (spoiler) you don’t have much time for yourself once you have a kid and if you read before bed every night then you’ll quickly find yourself not reading at all.

And then finally after all that waiting he was here. The rest of the hospital stay, and really all the time in between, was a blur. If I really focused I could probably recount more from those couple days, but that’s not the point of this post. The point is the last three weeks and the observations I’ve had on the job since then. I’ll put it in a fun bulleted list, since people love lists. Hell, it’s what made Letterman so good, and I now think I need to add that despite my hairline I’m in my early 30’s and only watched Letterman because my dad did.

• Okay I know I said the point wasn’t the time in the hospital but I can’t get out of here without saying that my wife is basically a superhero. The day before our son was born my dad said to me over the phone “I don’t know how women do it. Like, all of it.” and like a fool I nodded along and said something stupid like “yeah, pretty crazy” and that was it. What I would have said, had it been the day after he was born instead of the day before, was “YES HOLY SHIT HOW DO THEY DO THIS? HOW IS THIS HOW IT’S SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN? WE’VE BEEN DOING IT LIKE THIS FOR HOW LONG???” or something to that effect. I still can’t believe the kid who poops and pees on me came from inside of her
• Speaking of pooping and peeing, man this kid is a machine. A pooping and peeing savant. If I was as good at any one thing as he is at both, I’d be writing this from my yacht in the Pacific
  • Just kidding, I’m more of a “friends with boat guy” than I am a boat guy myself. In fact, one of my ex-coworkers has tried to sell me a yacht multiple times in the last year and I really just want to ask him why he thinks the kid who used hit the test dummy with the sledgehammer in the office would want to own a yacht
    • As an aside, the impact-sensing mouthguard needed to be tested and who better than the intern making minimum wage? It taught me a very valuable lesson about getting good at automation so that I could be the person analyzing data rather than collecting it
• Okay back onto the pooping and peeing. I’m sure I’ll write about my son plenty over the years because kids in general are funny and interesting and I’m little of both and that later on it will have a lot less pooping and peeing but what else does an infant do? Anyway, the most important thing I wish I could tell myself from three weeks ago is it’s not a matter of when or if you’ll get peed on, but how many times in one day. You just have to accept that it’s going to happen. I’m already at one today, and the day is still young. Additionally, the most likely time to pee or poop is immediately after you put on a new diaper. The second most likely time is as you’re putting on a new diaper. See the bolded text above
• One crazy thing I didn’t expect was that both of my cats seem to be unable to see the baby if my wife or I are holding him. They just assume he’s part of us instead of some independent entity, and then they walk up and sniff us and get all surprised to find another creature about their size in the house
• More about the cats, I expected I’d accidentally refer to my son as “Buddy Cat” or “Smalls” or any of the numerous other nicknames we have for them in the first few weeks at home. What I didn’t expect was the frequency with which I do it. It’s a good thing the kid can’t understand English yet, because he’d have a really hard time knowing his name or if he was even a person
• A lot of the nickname confusion probably has something to do with a lack of sleep. I remember a Blue Scholars song with a lyric about how sleep was the cousin of death. Well we’re going to live forever because we’re not spending much time with the Sleep-Death family at the moment
• It took my body a little while to adjust. Whenever I drink alcohol or catch a cold, my resting heartrate goes up by about 10%. Same thing happened with the baby:
  
  That precipitous drop in sleep corresponds to June 10, which is when my resting heartrate went from the typical upper-40’s/low-50’s up to mid-50’s, and after a few weeks of adjusting I’m back down to my typical range. Now if only I could stop forgetting random words or dozing off during baseball games
  • The dozing during baseball probably has more to do with the Mariners’ offense than the lack of sleep, to be fair
• This kid is less than a month old and he’s already memeing with the best of them. Dude is going to be a poster
  
• Lastly, I’ve learned that you cannot really have a list of things to do in one day anymore. Best you can reasonably get away with is having one goal and hoping you get it done. I’m surprised I got this post out before noon. When I wanted to mow the lawn last week it took me until 7PM to finally get out there
  • Okay that might have been a little bit of laziness too

That’s it for now, but I’m sure there’ll be more later. I haven’t gotten any real writing done in the past few weeks, so it was fun to put some words down. The kid is really amazing. My wife is really amazing. The hospital staff, by and large, was really amazing. I’m still ticked at the nurse who walked in the day after he was born, heard him crying because he wanted food, and immediately pronounced him a “fussy baby”, as though sentencing him to a lifetime to complaints and frustration. Give him a break! He was less than 24 hours old! He’s not fussy. He’s perfect. Now I just hope I don’t mess him up.