The next installment of my continuing journey to "get to know" my baby.

It sounds strange, but I never realized it before. But, in fact, babies are very human-like. I never thought of them as anything more than crying, pooping, sleeping need monkeys. And... they are very much just that. However, they also have a lot of expressions and possibly even personality. I assume I'm imagining the part about personality. But apparently babies really are just baby human beings, just like kitten are baby cats.

That said... what an adjustment this all is. I really love the little bugger, but having one of these "babies" in the house is very consuming. Even with my limited role right now, it is still pretty consuming. Perhaps if I wasn't doing two loads of laundry each night, and washing dishes, and sweeping the floor, and dusting, and cleaning bathrooms, it wouldn't seem like so much. Plus, I also help with the baby.

Yes, I still call him "the baby". I'm not sure what that means, or if it implies anything. I called him "it" while he was in the womb, and "the baby" now that he's out of the womb. I don't think I've called him it recently though.

Last night I helped change a poo-diaper. I gotta tell you, I'm squeamish as hell about it. I just get sick to the stomach. Thus far, I have found the poo to be quite intimidating, and the whole experience to be jarring to say the least. Beside the poop, and smell, "the baby" is kicking and crying and miserable, which only prolongs the experience.

I also participated in the giving of a bath. I can't say it went too well for any of us. I didn't know what the hell I was doing. We had the baby bathtub in our big bathtub. I thought that it made sense to keep the water all in one place. But the baby bathtub actually slid around inside the big bathtub. That was bad. My wife did most of the cleaning, while I adminstered soap and clean water to various wash cloths.

Later, I spent some time with him, holding him and trying to "soothe" him. Personally, I think I did very little. The vacuum cleaner did most of the work. When he starts to cry, I turn the vacuum on, and he clams up and gets real mellow. With the vacuum on, I sang him a few songs. I have a pretty limited repetoir of half-remembered songs. I opened with "Yesterday", then sequed into "Eleanor Rigby" and "Yellow Submarine" (a bit of The Beatles "Revolver" can't be bad for anyone, eh?). Then I sang "Be-Bop-A-Lula" and "Thats All Right Mama", and I closed with "Helpless" by Neil Young. He fell asleep and I imagined that I was giving him a proper rock and roll history lesson. I started thinking, "I can do this. I can handle this. I'm good. Its going to be okay".

However, as soon as I turned the vacuum off, he started wailing, and continued until he mommy fed him. I went to bed.

I'm having a hard time functioning now that my child is born. I don't know why this should be. I just seem to find myself thinking about him a lot and thinking that my other various efforts are pointless. I thought that most of my efforts were pointless before, by the way. But now I'm somewhat in a state of shock. I have a baby.

In many ways, my life is much the same as it was last week, last month, last year. I can use the computer, listen to music, read the paper, do yard work, snort heroin, etc... That was an unexpected development. As it turns out, my role at this point isn't particularly important. My wife is breastfeeding, which has made her life very synchronous with the baby's life. They eat and sleep together at the same time all through the day. All I do is fill-in, pinch hit, etc...

Many of the things that I (as the relatively useless father) should be doing to support my breastfeeding wife, I was already doing prior to the baby. For instance, I did most of the cleaning before the baby was born, and I now I do ALL of it (not much of a change). I do more laundry than I used to, but THAT isn't a huge time commitment. I do more shopping than I used to, but that is pretty easy to fit in. Plus, since I have no feeding to worry about, I can pretty much sleep at night like I used to. God, even the diaper changes have been perfunctory for me. I've basically only done a couple here and there just to learn. So I'm lazy, right?

I don't think so...

Breastfeeding has so syncronized mother and child's life that I barely have a role. I think this will change with time, especially when we integrate bottle feeding into the diet. For now, however, I am starting to realize why fathers can feel "jealous" or otherwise useless in the whole process. We're just not needed other than to support the mother. And thus, I now know why the creepy phenomenon of male breastfeeding exists. I don't need that.

So, until further developments take place, I will enjoy my new life with the baby, along with my old life.

Here he is, minutes after birth. He came out and was as peaceful and nice as could be hoped for. And he was healthy and the delivery wasn't terrible, least of all for me!

His name is Alex. He weighed 9 pounds at birth, 21.5 inches.

We went to the hospital at 10:00AM or so, and he was born at 5:52PM.

I'll have more information later at Baby Alex Blog

Feel free to stop by right now. Unfortunately, all I have is a standard Blogger template, but it will be nice shortly. Hey, I just got home from the hospital, and figured out how to upload files from the camera, so all you web gurus can kiss my butt.

This will be the last post before the baby is born. What will George Bush do in my absence?

So here I am, on July 1, 2004; exactly 245 days since I made the chilling announcement that I was going to have a baby. That is actually only 35 weeks. But she was pregnant before I mentioned it here. And there really is still another week (technically), even though induction happens tomorrow. It DOES add to up to 40 weeks somehow.

Here is a sample from October 30, 2003:

So overall, I'm rather happy about the event. Nevertheless, I'm also filled with ten different types of anxiety. I'm not dysfunctional or anything. And it isn't overwhelming by any means. But it is daunting. I will have to move into a new house where she and I can live with her 13 year old son, and the new born. I have to sell my house which is pain in the ass. Not to mention preparing it for sale by painting it, cleaning it, and whatnot.

All of the above has now come to pass, except for the birth of the baby. I'm still filled the anxiety though. Maybe not 10 different types, but at least five or six. The house was sold. And we all moved. So now for the poop.

It seems that yesterday's post was a bit of an angry rant, wasn't it?

There will be another page for baby-related stuff once the baby is born. I still have to create that page, so stay tuned. I'll post it here. I can't have everyone who may want to see baby pictures and what not, coming to this pages and reading all of the rest of the infantile dick jokes and admissions of criminal behavior.

More later...