Cooper
One year old. Amazing. It's hard to believe that 12 months ago Christina called me in the middle of the class I was teaching to let me know that she thought she had started contractions. Damn! The nice thing about living on campus is that I could say, "I'll be right there" and mean it. Home in less than 5 minutes. She was certainly feeling the waves of a contraction when I arrived, and they were sporadically coming every 12 minutes or so. We were a ways off from having to make the short drive to UMass Memorial Hospital. One of the nice things about living in Worcester is the availability of good hospitals and good doctors. Our apartment is less than 10 minutes from 3 hospitals.
So as she had her contractions I played the good husband and rubbed her back and kept her as comfortable as possible. This must have been around noon or so, I made he a small lunch to start and got out the wooden massage tool with the smiley face on it and went to work. We must have watched a variety of things on TV, but the one thing that sticks out is that we watched The Big Labowski on Comedy Central. Of course this sticks out because we both love the movie, in fact we could have watched it uncut if we had just popped in the DVD, but I don't think either of us was thinking that clearly. Another reason is the scene at the dentist's office. If you pay close attention to the music playing while his teeth are getting worked on you'll notice that the song in the background is "My Mood Swings" by Elvis Costello, rather an appropriate tune given the circumstances.
Now I must say that things progressed rather slowly from this point, in fact I don't think we left for the hospital until about 7:30pm or so. When Christina decided the pain was great enough and the time between contractions had closed to about 7 minutes or so I dutifully carted her bag down to the new used Subaru station wagon we had purchased for the occasion (I was happy to swap it for my piece of crap Jetta). I drove us to the hospital, dropped her at the front door and parked the car. I will tell you one thing that will stick in my memory for some time to come; my son was born during what might have been the coldest week in 50 yrs. No lie, it was well below freezing and every time I went out to start the car the thing took at least 5 minutes to wheeze to life and a good 20-30 to warm up. It was the kind of cold where road salt just won't work and you can feel ice crystallizing inside your nose as you breath.
When we were both in the hospital I pushed her up to the maternity unit in a wheel chair and told the woman at the desk who we were, who our doctor was and all sorts of various information. She called up a nurse and boom we were in triage. Now if you've never been through this before, triage is where they asses whether or not you are ready to be admitted to the hospital or not. We were there for a good 3 hrs. In fact, Christina didn't get any drugs until about 9:30pm or so, but once she did she was floating.
Funny, it took until the 3 hrs we spent in triage for me to really realize our situation. There was a very young girl in the next bed, she was maybe 17, and she was clearly having some serious trouble with her labor and everyone was concerned. A couple of other things became clear, first, this was not her first child, second, she had not had very good prenatal care and that may have been leading to her difficulty. From the sounds of it she hadn't seen her doctor since the first trimester and she was delivering a few weeks early.
This made it clear to me that Christina and I had really thought this out. We had talked about having a child for a couple of years. Christina wanted to finish grad school and get going a bit in her career. I had wanted to get to it sooner as I didn't really want to be the oldest dad on the block, but in hindsight I think we waited just about the right length of time. We both had completed our education, I had a decent job that put a roof over our heads and we were both pretty mature. Christina was almost 32 and I was 34, and here were these two kids next to us about half our age. We had health insurance, good prenatal care and a family happy to help out with whatever we needed.
Once admitted Christina got the good drugs and shortly after that she got the epidural, yippee!!! We sat and smiled at each other, talked about all sorts of things and waited. Plenty of students came in during the process to observe, ask questions and comfort the both of us. I must say the doctors, nurses and students were fantastic, each and every one of them. Once the epidural set in Christina faded off to sleep around midnight and I followed shortly thereafter. I woke at about 5am and she was up an hour or so later. After a check by the attending physician it was clear that she wasn't progressing nearly as well as they would have likes. She had been in some form or another of labor for the better part of 18 hours and she was only 7cm dilated so the attending gave her Petosin (sp?) a drug designed to complete dilation and facilitate the birth. Once they did this I went outside to make a quick couple of calls to our mothers who would kill me if they weren't able to be in the room the second it was ok.
Maybe this is the right time to mention something we had been worried about for a couple of months. During one of Christina's ultrasounds, the doctor was concerned because one of the kidneys looked dilated, as if it hadn't completely formed. Now this is one of the most common birth defects and most people if born with the condition do just fine and live normal lives, some others have to go on dialysis. I've been living with one kidney since I was 9 and trust me I've suffered no ill effects. But of course it did give us something to worry about, and the point of telling you now is to give an explanation as to why the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit was on alert for our delivery. In fact they were going to be in the room so they could check him out right away.
The next few hours dragged along. By 10am both Christina's mother and mine had made it to Worcester as had Christina's brother Matt. They saw the two of us briefly and then went to wait in the lobby.
Now around 1pm the delivery nurse came in and started having Christina push, this actually went on for 3 hours. I couldn't believe how strong she was. A variety of attending physicians were in to observe and direct the proceeding but luckily for us our OB's office was right across the street and he was on call that day. About 3pm he shows up and checks things out, still only 9cm but he really wanted her to get going with the delivery, she was getting wiped out and he could see that. Honestly I was getting a bit worried. It didn't seem like things were moving along that well or that quickly. She had been pushing for the better part of two hours and all she seemed to be getting for her troubles was frustrated.
Another 45 minutes or so of pushing and no luck. It was then that our doctor asked her if she wanted some help. "Yes" and almost as soon as that, out came the salad tongs. And moments later he was out and being cleaned up, and checked out by the NICU folks and by 4pm I was holding my son. That last 15 minutes was a blur, but I can tell you that no less than 12 people besides me and Christina were in that delivery room, between doctors, nurses and med students. Christina was doing ok, it was a tough delivery that actually kept her off her feet for a while and the next couple of days were a blur. I couldn't believe how scared I was to be a dad. I mean it was cool (still is in fact) and I love my son like nothing else on this earth, but is there a more daunting a responsibility than parenting?
35 years old and my son will be 1 in a few days. I'll be 52 when he graduates from high school. I'll be 56 when he graduates from college (unless he goes my route, in which case I'll be 58). If he waits as long as I did to have kids I'll be nearly 70 by the time I'm a grandfather. But the funny thing is, in many ways I feel better prepared. I was very hot tempered as a young man, and I don't think that lends itself to parenting. My dad was 27 by the time I was born, at which point my brother was already 3 _ yrs old. He and my mom struggled to make ends meet for years. Now Christina and I aren't loaded, but we are both working and Cooper has never had to go without anything to this point.
He started walking the week before Christmas, and now he's really quite good at it. He's a happy kid. He smiles a lot and loves for us to read to him as much as he loves to play with balls, stuffed animals and musical toys. I hope he is that well rounded for the rest of his life. My one regret for myself is that I may have pigeon holed myself too early in life and not given other things a chance.
He a verbal kid too. He's less than a year old and he already has a vocabulary that includes:
Momma
Da Da
Ball
Kitty
Puppy
Beaver (that's a story in and of itself)
Bubba (bottle)
No
And Baaaaaaa for his stuffed sheep.
Is he a genius? Of course. no really, he's doing quite well in most areas, the only problem so far has been ear infections, he's on number 7 as we speak and once he finishes with his current round of antibiotics, we're going to start him on a maintenance dosage for the next 5 months. Hopefully that will clear things up, if not we'll have to start looking at getting tubes put in.
Christina and I get exhausted at times, the kid is non-stop movement, he walks and crawls everywhere (mainly chasing our cat Fenway). He is having trouble switching to the sippy cup from the bottle, but getting rid of the pacifier was no problem. We'll get through but it can be hard. We're definitely first time parents, but it's clear to everyone that we love him a lot.
Over the past year we have made some decisions, the most important being that Cooper is going to be an only child. We love him, but at our age we can't see dealing with all the 1st year stuff again. In fact it's clear from our friends that in many ways he's been pretty easy. He's been sleeping through he night since he was 4 months old (though he is an early riser) and he's got a great disposition even when he's sick. It's also a financial decision. We can provide well for one child, send him to day care and maybe even a good private elementary school (middle school and upper school are free for him where I teach). A second child would push the limits of our resources. And if we spread it out 3 or 4 years I'd be nearly 40 by the time child #2 made it's appearance.
Anyway, ramble, ramble, ramble. I love my kid. He's great, he's my buddy. I love waking up at 5:15am to here him cheerfully standing up in his crib saying "Da Da! Da Da!", it can't help but bring a smile to your face right?
It's funny though, one of the women who works at the dining hall at school is my age and her daughter is having her second child. 35 and a two time grandmother and the whole family on some form of public assistance. Ok, this is where I'll get myself in trouble. I am a bleeding heart liberal, but it just makes no sense to me that a 16 yr old with one kid that she is having trouble taking care of goes out and gets herself knocked up. I know the guy is just as responsible, but it should be clear to her already that they may not stick around. It's 2004, rubbers work. So does the pill, so does depo, you name it they all work. Sure they fail sometimes, how about using more than one form of protection? What's it going to hurt? Of course I guess it doesn't help that we teach kids nothing in school about this. Abstinence only right? Right. Anyway, Happy Birthday Cooper Albino Webb.
So as she had her contractions I played the good husband and rubbed her back and kept her as comfortable as possible. This must have been around noon or so, I made he a small lunch to start and got out the wooden massage tool with the smiley face on it and went to work. We must have watched a variety of things on TV, but the one thing that sticks out is that we watched The Big Labowski on Comedy Central. Of course this sticks out because we both love the movie, in fact we could have watched it uncut if we had just popped in the DVD, but I don't think either of us was thinking that clearly. Another reason is the scene at the dentist's office. If you pay close attention to the music playing while his teeth are getting worked on you'll notice that the song in the background is "My Mood Swings" by Elvis Costello, rather an appropriate tune given the circumstances.
Now I must say that things progressed rather slowly from this point, in fact I don't think we left for the hospital until about 7:30pm or so. When Christina decided the pain was great enough and the time between contractions had closed to about 7 minutes or so I dutifully carted her bag down to the new used Subaru station wagon we had purchased for the occasion (I was happy to swap it for my piece of crap Jetta). I drove us to the hospital, dropped her at the front door and parked the car. I will tell you one thing that will stick in my memory for some time to come; my son was born during what might have been the coldest week in 50 yrs. No lie, it was well below freezing and every time I went out to start the car the thing took at least 5 minutes to wheeze to life and a good 20-30 to warm up. It was the kind of cold where road salt just won't work and you can feel ice crystallizing inside your nose as you breath.
When we were both in the hospital I pushed her up to the maternity unit in a wheel chair and told the woman at the desk who we were, who our doctor was and all sorts of various information. She called up a nurse and boom we were in triage. Now if you've never been through this before, triage is where they asses whether or not you are ready to be admitted to the hospital or not. We were there for a good 3 hrs. In fact, Christina didn't get any drugs until about 9:30pm or so, but once she did she was floating.
Funny, it took until the 3 hrs we spent in triage for me to really realize our situation. There was a very young girl in the next bed, she was maybe 17, and she was clearly having some serious trouble with her labor and everyone was concerned. A couple of other things became clear, first, this was not her first child, second, she had not had very good prenatal care and that may have been leading to her difficulty. From the sounds of it she hadn't seen her doctor since the first trimester and she was delivering a few weeks early.
This made it clear to me that Christina and I had really thought this out. We had talked about having a child for a couple of years. Christina wanted to finish grad school and get going a bit in her career. I had wanted to get to it sooner as I didn't really want to be the oldest dad on the block, but in hindsight I think we waited just about the right length of time. We both had completed our education, I had a decent job that put a roof over our heads and we were both pretty mature. Christina was almost 32 and I was 34, and here were these two kids next to us about half our age. We had health insurance, good prenatal care and a family happy to help out with whatever we needed.
Once admitted Christina got the good drugs and shortly after that she got the epidural, yippee!!! We sat and smiled at each other, talked about all sorts of things and waited. Plenty of students came in during the process to observe, ask questions and comfort the both of us. I must say the doctors, nurses and students were fantastic, each and every one of them. Once the epidural set in Christina faded off to sleep around midnight and I followed shortly thereafter. I woke at about 5am and she was up an hour or so later. After a check by the attending physician it was clear that she wasn't progressing nearly as well as they would have likes. She had been in some form or another of labor for the better part of 18 hours and she was only 7cm dilated so the attending gave her Petosin (sp?) a drug designed to complete dilation and facilitate the birth. Once they did this I went outside to make a quick couple of calls to our mothers who would kill me if they weren't able to be in the room the second it was ok.
Maybe this is the right time to mention something we had been worried about for a couple of months. During one of Christina's ultrasounds, the doctor was concerned because one of the kidneys looked dilated, as if it hadn't completely formed. Now this is one of the most common birth defects and most people if born with the condition do just fine and live normal lives, some others have to go on dialysis. I've been living with one kidney since I was 9 and trust me I've suffered no ill effects. But of course it did give us something to worry about, and the point of telling you now is to give an explanation as to why the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit was on alert for our delivery. In fact they were going to be in the room so they could check him out right away.
The next few hours dragged along. By 10am both Christina's mother and mine had made it to Worcester as had Christina's brother Matt. They saw the two of us briefly and then went to wait in the lobby.
Now around 1pm the delivery nurse came in and started having Christina push, this actually went on for 3 hours. I couldn't believe how strong she was. A variety of attending physicians were in to observe and direct the proceeding but luckily for us our OB's office was right across the street and he was on call that day. About 3pm he shows up and checks things out, still only 9cm but he really wanted her to get going with the delivery, she was getting wiped out and he could see that. Honestly I was getting a bit worried. It didn't seem like things were moving along that well or that quickly. She had been pushing for the better part of two hours and all she seemed to be getting for her troubles was frustrated.
Another 45 minutes or so of pushing and no luck. It was then that our doctor asked her if she wanted some help. "Yes" and almost as soon as that, out came the salad tongs. And moments later he was out and being cleaned up, and checked out by the NICU folks and by 4pm I was holding my son. That last 15 minutes was a blur, but I can tell you that no less than 12 people besides me and Christina were in that delivery room, between doctors, nurses and med students. Christina was doing ok, it was a tough delivery that actually kept her off her feet for a while and the next couple of days were a blur. I couldn't believe how scared I was to be a dad. I mean it was cool (still is in fact) and I love my son like nothing else on this earth, but is there a more daunting a responsibility than parenting?
35 years old and my son will be 1 in a few days. I'll be 52 when he graduates from high school. I'll be 56 when he graduates from college (unless he goes my route, in which case I'll be 58). If he waits as long as I did to have kids I'll be nearly 70 by the time I'm a grandfather. But the funny thing is, in many ways I feel better prepared. I was very hot tempered as a young man, and I don't think that lends itself to parenting. My dad was 27 by the time I was born, at which point my brother was already 3 _ yrs old. He and my mom struggled to make ends meet for years. Now Christina and I aren't loaded, but we are both working and Cooper has never had to go without anything to this point.
He started walking the week before Christmas, and now he's really quite good at it. He's a happy kid. He smiles a lot and loves for us to read to him as much as he loves to play with balls, stuffed animals and musical toys. I hope he is that well rounded for the rest of his life. My one regret for myself is that I may have pigeon holed myself too early in life and not given other things a chance.
He a verbal kid too. He's less than a year old and he already has a vocabulary that includes:
Momma
Da Da
Ball
Kitty
Puppy
Beaver (that's a story in and of itself)
Bubba (bottle)
No
And Baaaaaaa for his stuffed sheep.
Is he a genius? Of course. no really, he's doing quite well in most areas, the only problem so far has been ear infections, he's on number 7 as we speak and once he finishes with his current round of antibiotics, we're going to start him on a maintenance dosage for the next 5 months. Hopefully that will clear things up, if not we'll have to start looking at getting tubes put in.
Christina and I get exhausted at times, the kid is non-stop movement, he walks and crawls everywhere (mainly chasing our cat Fenway). He is having trouble switching to the sippy cup from the bottle, but getting rid of the pacifier was no problem. We'll get through but it can be hard. We're definitely first time parents, but it's clear to everyone that we love him a lot.
Over the past year we have made some decisions, the most important being that Cooper is going to be an only child. We love him, but at our age we can't see dealing with all the 1st year stuff again. In fact it's clear from our friends that in many ways he's been pretty easy. He's been sleeping through he night since he was 4 months old (though he is an early riser) and he's got a great disposition even when he's sick. It's also a financial decision. We can provide well for one child, send him to day care and maybe even a good private elementary school (middle school and upper school are free for him where I teach). A second child would push the limits of our resources. And if we spread it out 3 or 4 years I'd be nearly 40 by the time child #2 made it's appearance.
Anyway, ramble, ramble, ramble. I love my kid. He's great, he's my buddy. I love waking up at 5:15am to here him cheerfully standing up in his crib saying "Da Da! Da Da!", it can't help but bring a smile to your face right?
It's funny though, one of the women who works at the dining hall at school is my age and her daughter is having her second child. 35 and a two time grandmother and the whole family on some form of public assistance. Ok, this is where I'll get myself in trouble. I am a bleeding heart liberal, but it just makes no sense to me that a 16 yr old with one kid that she is having trouble taking care of goes out and gets herself knocked up. I know the guy is just as responsible, but it should be clear to her already that they may not stick around. It's 2004, rubbers work. So does the pill, so does depo, you name it they all work. Sure they fail sometimes, how about using more than one form of protection? What's it going to hurt? Of course I guess it doesn't help that we teach kids nothing in school about this. Abstinence only right? Right. Anyway, Happy Birthday Cooper Albino Webb.
posted by jwebb at 8:01 PM
3 Comments:
Hiya Josh,
Did you know Cooper was going to be a boy ahead of time? We waited until Jack was born before we discovered what sex he was. Pretty cool.
How long was Christina in labor for total? Paula went in on a monday morning and Jack wasn't born until just after 7pm on friday. Was a looooong, ridiculous week.
I hear you on the one-child thing- we've got another on the way in July. Then I'm done. Not getting any younger. I didnt know you had one kidney- what happened to the other one? Weren't born with two?
Talk to you later,
-Dan
Dan-
No we didn't know he was a boy and Christina was in labor for a total of 28hrs not bad I guess. As for my kidney, I was born with two and had half of one removed when I was 9. The other half was infected and they were worried about removing the whole thing as the other one was functioning properly. As soon as they removed the bad half the other one kicked into full gear. It certainly didn't stunt my growth.
I've skimmed this post about 20 times at work but never had the time to read the whole thing...(okay, I admit it, I'm lazy). It sounds like you are a great Dad. Terrific that Bush wants to teach our teenagers ABSTINENCE. Yeah, like that will work. Kids are always gonna have sex. Teach 'em how to do it safely is my theory.
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