Normal? What's Normal?

Well the world is a little more unbalanced now as the new ally has begun to settle in. Life is slowly beginning to establish itself with a new form of normalcy that we will have to adjust to. Jakob is now attempting to sleep for more of the night than previously achieved, which is working out better.

He developed a knack for keeping us awake in fear by waking to eat every 2 hours or so and then waiting until you figured it was safe, and laid him down, to vomit his food and gag on it. Makes for some long, hard nights. It was making me wonder what was up, since nobody in our bloodline has a problem eating, hence our svelte and sleek figures.

The brief details, for those who care:

Rainy Jakob decided that mommy's womb was a cozy place to be and he wasn't coming out.
Mommy decided, with the aid of doctors, that this just would not do.
Thursday was spent back and forth to the hospital trying to induce, but he was having none of it
Friday morning began early with an IV bag and a drip to coax him out, to no avail.
Late in the afternoon they gave him a little nudge and by 6:46pm he was out and assessing the world.
We made it home on Sunday afternoon and are now settling in.

And that, as they say, is that!

The hospital staff were excellent, except for our initial move to the post delivery floor, where we were greeted by Nurse Ratched. Luckily it was the end of her shift and we never saw her again (Yaaay!!!). The rest of the nurses were fantastic and the doctors and everyone involved were great too. After the birth they congratulated us both and told Mommy that she did a great job, which she did. She was fantastic through it all, and while she won't agree or admit it, she made it look as easy as squeezing an abundant amount of baby out of little hole can be made to look. If people were shown her labour on a video, they wouldn't be worried at all about it, she made it seem so easy. The part that did me a good laugh was that they also congratulated me (makes sense, for my brief part in the festivities) and then told me I did a good job too.

I've still never figured out why I get a pat on the back for my part in the birth. Unless most fathers out there are better souls than I am, there is never a time in their lives they feel more useless. You get to stand there while a platoon of very trained individuals cater to the needs of Mom and Baby while keeping a close eye on the health of both. All you can do is get ice chips and, when the party really gets started, tell your wife to breathe. You feel like some kind of deranged parrot who keeps getting in the way. The staff seemed to enjoy our company though, as the one nurse even left late for her football game (Thank god they finally won!!) to stick around for the end of it all.

So my thanks to the doctors and nurses who make it all as bearable as they can (especially the epidural man!!! I think the wife has him on our Christmas card list now.), and the cafeteria staff who make food seem unappealing and terrifying (I think they take the fear out of having a baby, and speed up the recovery, by horrifying you with the possibility of more heinous things, like having to eat that food for a while).

I also learned that you have to be careful what instructions you give to maintenance staff, as they were more than happy to follow the instructions on this planter to a devastating effect.

It may not have been an easy start with the little guy, but it was all still a once in a lifetime event. No matter how many times you see a child born, you will never see the same exact same child born again. It's like being a member of a special club, once whose membership includes an army of people who went to school for years and years so they can watch these events unfold time and again. Once this idea hit me I realized why they all came upstairs to visit us again. I also realized that they are probably one of the luckiest of all medical people. This is one of the only times in the medical profession that the system is concerned primarily with life instead of staving off death and preventing suffering.

So I'll ditch before getting too fluffy and philosophical for now. Not to say I'm done with that yet, the week is still young.