Bahahahaha… isn’t life great? MrsDvl’s water broke this morning—it looks like the Little Dvl is on his way (woo hoo!). I’m going to be running around in happy little (slightly panicked) Father-to-Be circles for a while (details to follow if I have time to write more). Wow, so he’s on his way. Pretty surreal. Clearly he’s our first, one after forty years of pretending kids don’t exist. Boy are we in for some fun times.
So here’s a question I’ve been mulling over for some time now: What are my first words to him going to be?
I know what I want them to be. A bit of (pretentious) Polonius-like wisdom, a wonderful bit I picked up from the Nicomachean Ethics years and years ago that always stuck with me (no, not the bit about the utter servility of mankind ).
I also know what I don’t want them to be. I’m steeling myself not to burst out in a “aiiieeeeeeyyyyyyeeecccchhhhh — what the hell is that?! Will that goo come off?” or a “whoa, is he supposed to look like that?" I’ve been warned by MrsDvl that that won’t be funny.
But really, I think I know what’s most likely — an incomprehensible and unintelligible babble of choked up word-like sounds. I think I’ll be lucky if I don’t drool.
So in the wait I need to pause for a few seconds every once in a while to sit, collect, and chill. Help me out a bit here—when your little Dude or Dudette arrived, what’d you say?
~Rhythm~
As soon as she arrived, I kept asking “Why isn’t she crying? Is she ok? Why isn’t she crying?”. She’d had a bit of a surprise and it took a few minutes before she had a cry. I’m honestly not sure what my first words to her were, but I think they were something along the lines of “Hello baby”. I was still pretty concerned by the breathing problems/no crying at that point, and was given just a couple of minutes with her before she was whisked away to the ICU.
She was fine, by the way. After a few hours of observation, she was returned to my room and my care.
I think they were, “Hi, Baby!” And at some point in the first minute or so, I told him “Happy Birthday.” After that, there’s a lot of talking about the baby to other people, and a lot of just looking at him, all twitterpated.
Not very profound, but I was kind of a mess by then and they were whisking her off for oxygen and stuff. They swooped her over my head and gave me a lot of Demerol.
Cazzle, where you breathing during that time?
Man, I hope I can keep it together in The Room. He’ll have plenty of time to realize I’m a bloomin’ idiot, no need to start out that way!
(On a slightly related note, are there any designers checking in on this thread? Designers who can work with Quark Passport? We have this laughable project due on Monday, and we may be busy for the next few days )
Wow. I don’t even remember. I can see the event, recall my girls’ faces clearly when I held them the first time but I don’t know what I said, if anything.
But that was preceded by my question to the delivery doc: “what’s with her nose?” because it was all smushed against her face. She had a hard time squeezing through my wife’s pelvis.
(the baby, not the doctor.)
With the 2nd: “wow, you’re a loud one, aren’t you? Hi sweetheart!” She was lying, screaming, under the heat lamp by the time they let me into the room after the C-section.
#1: “Hey, sweetheart - oh, isn’t he cute?” between bouts of uncontrollable sobbing. This was after an unplanned emergency c-section. He had twisted around so much that he had a complete and perfect knot tied in his umbilical cord. He was a few weeks early, and jaundiced, so he came out with a very quiet cry. Opposed to…
#2: …who was a scheduled c-section, right on her delivery day. She came out screaming AT THE TOP OF HER LUNGS. My unfortunate first words: “That’s my DAUGHTER?” She was so loud, family sitting in the waiting room across the hall heard her come out. And she didn’t stop crying until they stuck a bottle in her mouth. The good news: she scored a perfect 10 on the Apgar.
Hardly They kept reassuring me that she was going to be fine though, and she was. Eighteen months on, I’ve had plenty of opportunities to hear her scream and spend a lot of time wishing she’d be quiet!
).
)