It Takes an (Online) Village

First-time parents, at least in this zip code, are hyperalert. Baleen wakes up five minutes before the Dragon Boss and tells me, it's time for his feed. Five minutes later, he's awake. But that sensitivity means that Baleen (and I) aren't just attuned to his needs, we're worried about them. We've sent texts, emails and phone calls to the moms of Abigail, Dario and Henry, but that's just when we've been really worried about something. For everything else, it's been the Goog. If you were to look through Baleen and my search history over the last 13 days, the first two weeks of Whit's life, this is what you'd see.

When does the umbilical cord fall out...can spitting babies sleep with a pacifier...would cracked nipples make baby spit up blood...do cloth diapers make him sweaty...nursing mother's companion 6th edition vs. 4th edition...proper latch...newborn sleeps too much...newborn sleeps too little...when can you suction baby boogers...can you feed when hiccuping...when does baby's hair fall out...do I pump both sides...when to pump without getting engorged...when is the breast empty...when does the baby reach the hindmilk...does spicy food cause a fussy baby...what happens when the umbilical cord falls out...can you overwash your hands...when do babies sleep through the night...do people keep the umbilical cord?

Exercise

I feel out of shape and want my body back, said one (unnamed) new San Francisco dad to his wife.

On day 4, I biked four blocks to La Boulange for a baguette. On day 5, our family of three and Gigi aborted our small walk when Baleen fainted two blocks in. On day 8, I took the Dragon Boss on his first walk around the block, just the two of us, looking ahead for other pedestrians and crossing the block when those with fully developed immune systems encroached. On day 13, I went for a run.

Our family of three drove up Clipper all the way to Ocean Beach, 20 minutes from door to sea. Baleen and the sleeping Dragon Boss hung out along the seawall while I ran south along the pretty hard-packed sand. From the south side of the parking lot to the big drainage pipe is exactly 2 miles.

In my sleep and sweat deprived state, the 4 mile run took me 29 minutes and brought me the furthest I've been from Baleen and The Dragon Boss in these last 13 days. The good news? To get 2 miles away took just under fifteen minutes, but to get back to my family? Less than that, meaning I ran faster to them than I ran from them.

CPW

Whit's got a new best friend. Cooper Patrick Wright was born on Tuesday, March 27th at 1.27am in the very same hospital where The Dragon Boss was born just 11 days before. The four new parents in the room stuck their face right up to Coop's and said the same thing that anybody who's seen a picture of him has said, he's got his dad's features and his mom's hair.

When I asked Whit what he thought, he said, He looks like a left-sided midfielder. He went on to say he got a good listen at his lungs and they sounded like his dad's, the guy who blew away the 2-mile Cooper Test back in sophomore year with a team best just over 11 minutes, so he's got the engine to paint the touchline for 90 minutes.

He went on to say that when dad leaned Coop in a little closer, his left hand tried to break out of the swaddle so he's most likely a lefty like his mom. And while he might use her dribble drive to be a two sport letter winner in high school, it's the left foot that impressed him. Dad, Whit said, if you're picking teams, make sure he's on our side. I don't want to have to defend him.

Shiner

Prohibition's over. After ten months of sparkling water and worryingly draining amounts of Hetch Hetchy in this dry winter, Baleen had her first bit of alcohol last night. For the first time back in the saddle, she had the full trinity of options: any of the liquors in our cabinet, the open white wine that Gigi left a glass of, or any one of four beers in the fridge: Budwesier, Anchor Steam, Fat Tire and Shiner Bock Black Lager.

It might have been because of our relations in the Republic of Texas or because of what the nurses told us, that the self-justifying Irish have shown in scientific studies that a good, dark stout has beneficial effects on breastmilk, but she went with the Shiner Bock, taking only a few sips and leaving the rest to this happy father.

If it felt a little odd to have a beer for the first time in so long, then it felt even odder to have it at 6.15 on a Monday night, the same time that she used to leave work down there in Silicon Valley. But that's not how we should think of 6.15 anymore, or at least not for the next few months. 6.15 is the new 9.15, that is, just an hour or two before our bedtime.

Inversion

The Dragon Boss thinks night is day and day is night. This is not uncommon for newborns who might spend their first few weeks like they did their gestational months, asleep during the day, soothed by mom's motions and awake at night, just making sure everything on the outside's okay. But unless you're in the Arctic Circle in June, this inversion just might drive you crazy. It's testing these parents' patience.

We've done the basics, like ensuring Baleen's dinner diet was bland, bland, bland with no spice that would keep the Dragon Boss up through the night. We've also tried to keep him up during that day for at least fifteen minutes after each feeding, often unsuccessfully, so now it's time for a little trickery.

We're leaving him unswaddled during his day naps. It's bright and a little noisy in here, yet still pleasant. The bouncing Bob says it's 70.1, but we want to associate the cocooning, warm sleep with some deep REM at night so mom and dad can get their rest, too. We know he's still going to wake us up when he's hungry, we just wouldn't mind getting some sleep between feeds. It might be that 7pm is our new bedtime.

The Hunter

100 million years ago I was a hunter. I slept soundly through most of the first two nights of hospital feedings, not even waking when the night nurse would jostle my bed or turn on the spotlight right above me. It's because way back when, when I was in the Olduvai Gorge, I must have been one of the endurance runners who chased down meat for the group. I needed my rest for that, I thought.

But evolution evolves and I've become a gatherer, or rather, a consumer of what Gigi gathers for me. I awake at most any flutter from the Dragon Boss. When I'm especially short on sleep, I'm an even lighter sleeper.

I hear his breathing and jostling a few feet away and try both to interpret it, and to figure out what direction his sounds are going. If they're leaning toward wakening, then it's even less sleep for me and Baleen, but if he's headed back to sleep, then the both of us can get our little bit of rest before the next big movement.  

P/D/F

In college, once a semester you could PDF a course. That meant your only grade was Pass, D or Fail, with any Pass not counting for or against your GPA. The last few days have felt a little like I've just arrived for the final of a course I'm PDF'ing and I have that moment of panic, did I study enough for this one?

I bought the books, I've been to class, I've even done a little of the reading, but never all of it because I had Baleen, who had done all that work. So yesterday, when I was trying to figure out which drawer the clean again magic swaddle blanket went into, I opened about three of them before finding the swaddle drawer, remembering that Baleen had already taken me on a tour of this fully stocked nursery and told me where everything went. 

As I was opening and closing drawers, I found what looked like the sac you put a rolled up sleeping bag in, this one big enough to fit a 30-inch'er. Why the heck did Baleen buy a sleeping bag for the Dragon Boss, I wondered? Now that she's having a son is she preparing for some man-activites? Nope. It's just the sac that you put the Moby wrap in, as she told me on that tour a few weeks ago.

Likeness

When the Dragon Boss came out, everybody who saw him said he definitely got my genes. They pointed to his mouth or his eyes and said, There, that's you. They even pointed to parts of him or all of him and said, He looks a lot like Margarine.

Margarine liked that at the beginning, but now that a few days have passed and he looks more and more like a human, Margarine doesn't get mentioned as much, which upsets him. We're a little less focused on the feelings of a thirty-one year old than we are on this five day old, but Margarine hasn't given up. Big Emma tells us he's been staring at the photo below and swears it looks just like him.

Gigi, in town from Boston and saving our lives with wonderful meals, errands to Walgreen's and even running to get the car when Baleen fainted on the sidewalk today (Yikes, a little too much exertion after surgery, but she was up and alert after just a few seconds), thought for three days that his mouth was Wood Duck's, continually asking me for pictures of her to examine, but always ending with, I think it's Wood Duck, but I've seen that mouth somewhere. Well, it was right in front of her for eighteen years. It looks like Baleen's got the bottom half of the face while I have the top half. At least for now.

The Mission Suburbs

The Dragon Boss came home today. His mom and I were unbelievably impressed with all the staff we encountered at CPMC, the doctors, nurses, and even cleaning staff, like Liz, who came running down the hall when I had gone on a walk with Baleen leaving her backside open for all to see, and we were a little worried about how we'd fare on our own.

There's nothing to fear. The Dragon Boss made it easy. He slept slept through the car ride and the tour of the apartment when I walked him into every room and said, This is the kitchen where mom makes those wonderful, irreplicable dinners that she can't replicate not because it's not a word, but because she doesn't follow any directions.

He wasn't much interested, which is understandable because he's already been to all those places before, even the car, but his parents were and are very happy to be home for the first time with the newest member of the family.

Day Three

A lifetime of hoping begins. Last night it was for a second pee so (big) little Whit wouldn't need anything to supplement his mother's milk. Next month it'll be for admission to our local day-care, ten years from now it'll be for an 86 on that Earth Sciences test, and a few years after that it'll be for Gerry Sharpe (that same Gerry Sharpe who was going to be a star for Bristol City until he broke his leg and found his future coaching American children near the warm waters of Virginia Beach, not Blackpool) or some equivalent to pick him for his eighteen man roster.

But all of that is far away; for now, we can be happy that he did get that second pee, which made his parents happy, and also made his dad realize that all those things he'd heard before but not understood, how Abigail's mom, whom I'd never thought would mention something so delicate as pee or poop, could mention Abigail's so frequently in that sing-song voice while we're all eating lunch.

Because we're just three days in and I already want to tell everybody about big little Whit's, but I'll hold off for now. You can ask me about it, but I'm not going to out and out tell you about it. Not yet.

The Dragon Boss

600 million Chinese women envy us. (Big) little Whitby James B. arrived at 10.17am in this Year of the Dragon, 4709, a whopping 9 pounds and 6 ounces and 21 inches long. His mother labored for a long time before the doctors decided they wanted to get him out of there and he came out crying, which is just how he should have.

When he came out, the anesthesiologist, who probably did a few C-sections that day and maybe twenty that week and a few hundred that year, yelled at me to take a picture. For him, the operating room is old hat, but I'd never been in a place where they put you in never been worn before clothing from head to toe and remove all your jewelry before cutting your wife open, so when he told me to reach for the camera, I stayed right there by Baleen. To which he said, you're crazy, man, and jekylled from Dr. House to Richard Avedon, taking Whit's first forty pictures and capturing his first moments with mom. Thank you crazy Dr. S, and to everybody else in that room.

After the earlier false start with naming him Baxter, Baleen and I kept Whitby close to our chest, only sharing it with one or two people whom we thought would tell us if they loved it or just liked it, and not tell us that it was the worst thing they'd heard. I'd had to pause in my sentences with Baleen in the last month or two and make sure Whitby came out and not Baxter, but now that he's here, he's only Whitby to me. But when we wheel him into the night nursery so Baleen and I can get just a little bit of sleep, the nurses tell the other dozen babies, almost all six or seven pounders, here comes The Boss. So we haven't settled on a nickname, and those things come and go depending on what he shows at what time, but if we had to go with one now, it'd be The Dragon Boss.

Leisure

Baleen's biggest concerns right now are bedsores. Oh, the calm before the storm. The seismograph machine next to her says the contractions are ninety seconds apart yet her demeanor suggests I've got some time before I get to be a father.

Let's keep the focus on me for a second. So far, I've seen The Descendants, had the ham and Brie sandwich and am looking forward to tomorrow's California Club, been sent to Walgreen's for some chocolate (which Abigail's mom thinks was really for me, to which I say, had I known there would be chocolate in the birth room, I would have brought it, not bought one), filled 8 cups of water, and given 0 massages.

I think all that will soon change, as will my ability to update friends and family. The pitocin is in, as of thirty minutes ago, and for the first time of the day, Baleen said she needed something now. See you soon friends and family. But not too soon. Xo

Squeaky Bum Time

It's squeaky bum time* over here in the Mission suburbs. We're going to the hospital tomorrow to get induced. The doc says that Baleen is as plugged up now at 41 weeks as she was at 20 weeks, and that he doesn't think anything would happen between now and the time she'd have to get induced anyway at 42 weeks so might as well get a jump on things.

We'll call the hospital at 5am and ask if they have any rooms. If they do, we're starting the day with my first cup of hospital coffee; if they're full, then we wait until 1pm when they've kicked out a few 2-day moms. We've got four movies on the iPad, a few books and leftover pizza to bring to the hospital as it could be another day of waiting.

If the little prompts don't help much, then they'll let Baleen get one more night of rest and give her some bigger prompts on Friday. That means a Thursday or Friday baby and an open house for any visitors on Saturday or Sunday. Either way, we're not coming home until we're a family of three.

* Coined by Sir Alex Ferguson at the tail end of the 2002-2003 Premier League season when Manchester United and Arsenal were battling it out for the title, it refers to the anxious, final moments of a match when spectators start fidgeting in their seats, producing noises on those plastic seats that sound like squeaky bums. 

The Spice Tour

Baleen's grounded me. She got hint of a weather pattern somewhere on the West Coast and she's deflated my wheels. No commuting or Hawk Hill Raid during this most crucial period, she says, I need you safe. It's no use protesting that I don't take chances in the rain or reminding her of my wedding vows. After all, it's not the worry that something will happen; it's the worry about worrying that something will happen.

So we're spending a lot of time together, talking about schedules and well-behaved children, and digging through the archives of friends' baby announcements. We're also gone spicy. Very spicy. Come on out fkaBax we're saying without saying it. Not a meal has passed since the due date without a little heat. On Friday night it was Indian with W&C. Saturday morning was a simple brunch at Plow in Portrero Hill, but not so simple when your 'taters are covered in Youk's Hot Sauce, made by Tom Brady's brother-in-law's brother. Sunday was two types of chiles, serrano and jalapeno, and even last night's ragu, whipped up by Baleen, had red pepper flakes sprinkled on top.

Tonight it's gonna be ma po tofu from Mission Chinese. Baleen called this meal months ago over another night at Mission Chinese, and said, If I'm still north of a buck fifty a few days past my due date, then you have to take me to Mission Chinese. Never get in the way of a woman approching 41 weeks and her ma po tofu, so we're braving the rain for what we hope is our last meal on the outside. Anything's better than castor oil.

The Rules

fkaBaxter,

Mom set some rules this weekend. She seems to think she'll have as much influence over you your first few weeks as she will the rest of your life. My advice to you, treat your very first day, whether that's tomorrow, Tuesday or Saturday, as if it's Thanksgiving Day.

If you want to sleep, sleep. If you're awake and curious as to who these two people are who keep holding each other and smiling at you, sleep. You'll get to know us well enough. If you're hungry, eat. If you're not hungry, still eat. I'm not sure what colostrum tastes like, but I wouldn't let go because when you want it on day two, Mom might not give it to you. And on day four she may wake you up when you're happily sleeping, swaddled in a carefully chosen swaddle blanket to go over a carefully chosen outfit, all to try and put you on a schedule.

I know that you'll have your own opinion, and that things won't always go as intended. I'm trying to tell your mom that. Just as we meant to hike on over to Positano this weekend, the Italian hill town that we see from our living room (don't get confused, it's Bernal Heights, but when we've got our glasses on and it's a full moon, we call it Positano), things changed. And things might change as early as Day 2 with you. Just don't cry to me then or ten years later when you say that mom won't let you play outside because you haven't finished your homework. Because I might one day take you to the World Cup or take you out of school on a day when there's two feet of new snow, but I won't gang up on your Mom with you. We were teammates long before you came along.

1st long exposure pic taken with spider leg base given by Big Emma & Margarine

Baby Room Art

I don't know why I, Baleen, was so particular about the art on fkaBaxter's bedroom wall.  I guess I will blame it on the "nesting" hormone.  The same one that led me to spend way too much money at the container store so that I could put organizing containers within organizing containers in our kitchen drawers.

I wanted the nursery room art to be fun and playful, but not too baby-ish.  So after a solid month of deliberation, I decided that I wanted to do colorful silhouettes.  But of what?  US Presidents, of course!  I thought it would be good to get some history in fkaBaxter's life early.  So, I found someone on etsy who would custom make us acid washed paper silhouettes of GW, TJ and AL.  Very pleased with the results!  Just hope they don't scare fkaBaxter after dark.

Due Date Raid

All the hummingbirds were away this morning, even a recovering JayBird. That left a chance for a Hawk Hill jersey, but no order. With the hummingbirds you know it's going to be a fast ride through the Flats, whether you're the lead wheel or just hanging on. Without them, it's up to everybody else, myself included, to set the pace.

If you're going to get up at 5.50am to climb this damn hill, might as well go for it. So I set the pace through the Start. At the first turn in the False Flats, when all I'd seen for the last two minutes was my pedals, I counted the shadows on the hillside. Four, five, six, seven, still counting when I hit the turn. I wasn't soloing this one, I was leading the old State Belt Railway. Just after the Circle, Packy Bonner and Captain Fixie pulled ahead. I stayed close, telling myself I just might have enough to pass them when I needed to, and when Alec Baldwin pulled on by, I only had enough to nip him. 7.44 in the end, third place, and my 9th fastest ascent. I'll take it.

That left me wanting a little more on the Sprint, like last week, but unlike last week, I got this one right. I took the second wheel, stayed on the second wheel when a sprinter pulled on by just before the second stop sign, and jumped at just the right time, coming across the line just in front of the second group of sprinters who did what I've done so many times before, waited just a little too long to make the move.

39 Weeks and 6 Days

Tomorrow's the due date, yet arriving home from work today felt like most any other day of the last month. Baleen greeted me at the door, effervescent as ever, energized like little Shrimp Jr was back in 1986 for Margarine's return from school, except for the white belly poking out between the black top and pants and a hot meal in the oven. 

Baleen says her body only feels the tiniest bit different, a little bit of pain here and there, but it could be another week of this (or more, don't tell Baleen). We've been told that births normally come at night. The source is long forgotten and we didn't bother to check it, but we've come to believe it. So each of the last two nights we've been thinking, tonight might be the night. Two nights ago, as I was preparing for my test, I was thinking, please don't come tonight, please don't come tonight. Last night, it was, come on out fkaBaxter, but maybe wait until I haven't had a few beers and I've had a full night's sleep so I can help your mom get you out. 

That's tonight. I'm armed with a full night's sleep and a belly full of Baleen's pork deliciousness. It's called pork saltimsomething but I'm a little unsure how to spell that word in front of this wide audience so I'll spend my time reading the birth manual. It might be my last chance, though Baleen thinks we're going to make it through the weekend just the two of us. Still, I'm sleeping in my socks tonight just in case.  

Waterworks

Okay, I'm ready for fkaBaxter. I knew he'd eventually arrive; I mean, our second bedroom suddenly accumulated half a dozen giraffes of different sizes, boxes arrived to the office almost every day, and Baleen kept getting bigger, but it felt so far away, especially after morning sickness and nausea and long commutes and the priority of healthy meals after those long commutes meant all my attention was directed sideways, toward Baleen.

Then the eighth month came around Baleen stopped making that long commute and really preparing for fkaBaxter while I had to prepare for the SATs again. Not the actual SATs, but some age equivalent test, a seven hour test graded on a computer with a Pass/Fail for all your bosses to see. So while Baleen was putting the final touches on the nursery and Googling healthy casseroles to freeze, I was slogging through a four hundred page study manual. But I'm done and my attention isn't pointed sideways, but a little lower. I'm crouched down there like Gary Carter ready to catch little fkaBaxter.

There's a $5 bet going on around here about whether I'm going to cry in that hospital. Baleen never carries cash, but she's promised to empty her purse of a few pounds and twenty quarters if she's wrong. As exhibits A, B, and C, she cites any viewings of The Voice, when I might get a little teary eyed at people realizing their dreams on a big stage or even acting admirably when they're crushed; for me, I cite August 14th, 2010, when I stood up in front of our friends and family and spoke clearly enough for everybody to hear, downwind as they were. Either way, it's the best $5 we'll ever spend.

Hors Categorie

Nick at Nite led a field trip to the East Bay on Saturday. With signed permission slips, he took us on the BART to a Bay Area suburb, Orinda, where we rode through neighborhoods with garages and manicured lawns on well-paved roads to the base of Mt. Diablo.

Mt. Diablo's our local McKinley. There are bigger mountains out there and plenty of routes with more overall miles, but from top to bottom, it's the Bay Area's best. 3,245 feet over 11.1 miles means you're gonna be on that bike for at least an hour, painfully pedalling uphill. If you do it in August, make sure you get from top to bottom without stopping because that's when it's tarantula spring break, frenzied males running around trying to find any female. In March, they're burrowing underground like Baleen on those mornings when I turn off the heat, the covers pulled firmly to her chin. Seriously. Mt. Diablo's famous for them.

There's cache for those who can get up the 11.1 miles from the base at the Athenian School to the absolute summit, 3,864 feet from sea level, in under an hour. Strava says that 841 people have tried it and 81 peole have done it. Poor Stephen Bowline, having reached the summit in 1:00:00. He's looking for one more second; I'm looking for another one hundred and thirty-six seconds. They're out there. Somewhere.

Status Quo

You can either buy clothes or buy pictures. It's that simple. No one who is not very rich can do both. Gertrude Stein to Ernest Hemingway, as he remembered it in, A Moveable Feast

Better get used to some old Eddie Bauer; I bought my first painting the other day. It's from Lily Stockman, the Jersey girl educated in Cambridge, though I bet she'd tell you Harvard becasue there's no need to be evasive when you're talking to grown-ups.

It might not seem so from her website, but she's done some painting, at least once, I can prove it, and she spent a year in India on one of those things that I'm never quite sure where they come from or how one gets one, but that everybody calls grants. She picked up a love of good sugar from there, in addition to some textiles and a little Delhi belly, but most importantly, for Baleen and me, she did some paintings. 12 of them, it seems, called The Industrial Grain Storage Facilities of India. Can you put an emerging market on a canvas? You can, but it's not elephants next to BMWs, as you might think. It's Agro Pop. as Lily calls it, pink grain elevators. That's India.

I found the painting the same way I found Baleen: through Abigail's aunt, though Abigail's mom and dad might say, ahem, I think we had a little something to do with that*. I was reading her blog, then reading the comments on her blog, then reading the blogs that the people who comment on her blog follow. Which brought me to Lily, which brought me to Status Quo, which makes me think of Baleen and our Indian honeymoon. xo

*Dario's dad, reading this, is probably saying, what about me?!, thinking that he must have had something to do with it, though not remembering what it was so I'll have to tell him. Baleen gave her business card to you, Dario's dad, and I got Baleen's email address from that card and emailed her the next day. So you're right, DD. Take a bow.

117 Steps...

..from the Montgomery Street BART stop to Montgomery Street is what I take when it rains, as if I worked in John Hickenlooper's Denver Capitol office, he of the bowls of fruit and no elevator policy. The BART also allows me a few minutes to read on the way to work, or, this morning, grade the How Elite Am I test that Baleen, Abigail's mom and I took the other week*.

It's from Coming Apart, the don't call it class warfare book that's got the NYT editorial staff throwing spitballs across their virtual desks. David Brooks wants it required reading, up there with Huck Finn and Bowling Alone; Paul Krugman says, It's the Economy, Stupid, or the disappearing, decent wage jobs for the non-college educated working class, stupid, and Nicky Kristoff says, Well, there's something to that, Paul, but when I think of my hometown, little old Yarhill, Oregon, population 925, I see what he means.

What he means is that it's not just the 99% versus the 1%, it's the top 20% versus the bottom 30%. And to make matters worse, the top 20% used to look a lot like the bottom 30% fifty years ago, but since then, they've created that very signficant gap by doing the things that the bottom 30% professes to do, but doesn't really do, he says, like work hard, go to church, raise children in a two-parent household and get a college degree. Yikes. There are oodles and oodles or charts to back up these claims, claims that have been made in other places, by other people, and they are done as dispassionatly as possible to let the charts tell the story, not adjectives or exclamation points. It's worth a read, and then a discussion with friends over dinner, but if you're going to do that, and if you're in San Francisco, Boston or Austin, you might not want to serve Baleen's snap pea soup, lest you end up with egg all over your face.

* By this measure, Abigail's mom, Baleen and I are somewhere between "a second-generation (or more) upper-middle-class person who has made a point of getting out a lot" and "a first-generation middle-class person with middle-class parents." Abigail's mom scored the lowest of us all, hampered by her two parents in "high-prestige jobs", Baleen was smack in the middle, and I was on top, most likely due to the efforts of my parents, especially my father, who, when I was thirteen years old and we were looking to move to where they live now, the gated, Virginia community, checked out the bike racks at the local pool on a hot summer day and said, "I don't know, there are no bikes here. The kids get their parents to drive them to the pool."