Brave New World
Baby Beatrice is now a part of this world - the world of the air breathers - and no longer a part of the aquatic womb world. While we lost one Fitou of sex undetermined we gained one Beatrice of gender female and wail powerful.
The last 2 days (I think it has been two days, I am unsure) have had something of the surreal to them caused by extreme sleep deprivation and sudden need to interpret and cater to the needs of one baby who, though new to me and this home, nonetheless seems oddly familiar.
I guess the hardest adjustment to make is the realisation that babies are not guests, they are here to stay. Babies do not ask permission before the take over your bed, wake you up at 4 AM and squirm about for the rest of the night. If they prefer to sleep all day, they will do so. If night time is when the mood for a protracted gurgle-fest takes them, well even better.
Baby does sleep a lot, but when baby is awake it looks at you and says:
'you are mine, not the other way around. Now be a good boy and clean up this black poo I just took in my pants, and while you're at it, put these boots back on that I kicked off earlier'
Baby is boss.
I thought this would bother me, but I am towing the line nicely and baby seems pleased with my work so far so I might just make it...
So, onto (back to) the labour. This is sort of two blogs rolled into one, but the last 2 days were just too much chaos to sit down and focus.
Baby's entry into the world was both swift and severe. Isabelle basically went form early labour to baby out in about 6.5 hours - which apparently is quite fast. The downside was that the swiftness of the thing dealt Isabelle a fairly relentless and painful labour which was tough to watch and no doubt only slightly tougher to endure (maybe slightly more than slightly).
Isabelle was like some sort of fierce amazon when the labour got going. It was both impressive and humbling to watch. It made me think that men are essentially glorified hunks of beef next to the incredible might and capacity of a woman in full thrall of feminine glory.
We did the whole thing in our apartment, from A to Z. It was a decision we took a few weeks ago but did not advertise to anyone for fear of being labeled as hippies or eco-druids. When you tell people about home birth, they get all freaked out as though you are going to suddenly light mushroom shaped candles and make them listen to whale-song.
Something about a hospital seems to give people re-assurance.
Hospitals give me fear.
I have been in too many emergency rooms for too many self-inflicted injuries to see hospitals as anything but places to be avoided at all costs.
Birth is natural, part of the great cycle of life: nothing - sperm - egg - growth - ejection - lifetime of grudging responsibility - slow decline - marginalisation - nothing. Why this needs to take place in a room shared with strangers inside of dank brick buildings that smell vaguely like disinfectant and festering flesh is beyond me.
Anyway, I digress. So home-birth; very natural, sort of weird. One minute you are in your living room playing cribbage. The next your wife is huddled over a countertop screaming in the worst pain of her life and you want to help but know to keep your distance because if you get to close she will backhand you into the air, arms akimbo and smashing against a wall across the room with her impressive labour super-powers. Then she is on a bed and someone is saying something about a head and the you see this flat hairy thing where a flat hairy thing should not be and then look back and a whole head but the head looks dead except the midwife is smiling so I guess it is OK and then this thing shoots out all in a rush and you wonder if it can be that quick what was all the 2.5 hours before and the screaming and the watching my wife look like she is going to pop from the internal pressure. Then this baby is there and someone is handing you scissors and then sheets in laundry, placenta in bag, baby in crib and have a nice 18 years, we'll be back tomorrow to tell you its all a big joke and you can go back to getting wasted on random Friday nights just because the sun is shining or the Habs won an early November game against the Florida Panthers in overtime, but its not a joke and the baby is staring at you and it wants something, but what??
In the middle of the night last night, I thought of Eraserhead and the scene when he goes to unwrap the baby from its swaddle and... No, I cannot. I promised myself not to think about Eraserhead again.
That way leads to madness...
So baby is healthy and quite cute by all accounts and everyone is healthy and now is the beginning of the rest of our lives.
Hmmmm