Brendan Cole
Sep 29, 2004
Wow.
Okay, so here is the full story, to the best of my memory. Not that my best is very impressive at this point. :)
Tuesday, 1pm: We go to the hospital to get "a gel". They put some crazy voodoo on Leanne's cervix to help it thinning. Leanne has had some high blood pressure, so they want to get things moving. The doctor tells us we have maybe a 2 or 3% chance of the gel kicking us into active labor, but jokingly says its probably closer to zero. We make another appointment for the same treatment Wednesday at 4pm and head home.
Tuesday, 11:30pm:I get home from losing another championship hockey game. Our team rocks at getting to the championship game and losing. I think this is the fifth or sixth runnerup season in a row. Anyway, back to the baby part of the story... Leanne had a nice 3 hour nap while I was at hockey, so she wasn't sleepy when I got home. So, we hung out watching Jay Leno until about 1am, before I headed off to "my room" to sleep. (I have been sleeping in another room to avoid Leanne's skillful snoring).
Wednesday, 4:30am:After my 3.5 hour nap, Leanne stumbles into my room, wakes me from a dead sleep, and tells me her water broke. I tried to just nod and go back to sleep, but apparently Leanne thought we should head to the hospital. :) We rested a bit, ate some food, then headed to the hospital and arrived about 6am.
Wednesday, 6:00am:The doctors confirm that indeed her water has broken, and check her cervix to find she isn't dialated at all, and hasn't completly thinned out. So begins the long, long journey. It took hours, and hours just to get to 1cm dialation. By 6:30pm, Leanne's parents (Bruce and Donna) and I are discussing over dinner how much longer we have to go. At that point, she was about 3cm... and the transition from 2 to 3 took several hours. Based on estimates and bad math, we are thinking a 4am arrival seems probable.
Wednesday, 8:30pm:Cervix is "3.5cm... maybe 4 if you are lucky". I had heard 4cm was a magic mark where the cervix can really start speeding up. Good thing, since its been 14.5 hours just to get to almost 4.
Wednesday, 10:00pm:Our doctor comes in. The nurse says, "last I checked she was maybe 4cm". Doctor checks things out, and says "Well, she's 10cm now... let's get her ready for pushing". Okay... NOW it hits me. This is serious. Baby is like... coming. The quick transition from 4cm to 10cm caught me off guard! It *does* put a little spring in your step though -- especially if you are the grandma (there was some concern Donna might emplode with excitement when she heard it was time to start pushing).
Original plan was for me to "uptown" (up near Leanne's head)... and avoid all that crazy stuff that happens "downtown". That plan went out the window in like 30 seconds. The nurse (one of those people with calm, pleasant yet... forceful demeanor) told me to grab a foot and help her push. So for the next hour and 15 minutes, that's what I do. Eventually, I can see the mostly bald head threanening to come out... weird white stuff and all.
And this is the part I will never forget. I am not talking about some miracle rush of love I feel for my first born son, and anything like that... this is much, much more insane. Leanne is doing great, and has pushed out a few inches of his head. I am thinking "well, that's about how much forehead I except, I should see his eyes soon". Um, ya... more head keeps coming, no eyes. about the time i am thinking "holy crap, my kid doesn't have eyes!", the whole head comes out. Talk about not helping. It starting to dawn on me that heads come out mis-shapen.. but DUDE. This can not be normal. I keep glancing back and forth between the freak of nature coming out of my wife and all the doctors and nurses. They all seem calm. (An important skill to have in a hospital is guauging how worried nurses look... calm nurses are a good thing). Anyway, believe it or not, they all don't seem to mind that we had an alien conehead. I am still wondering if they are just being polite. There is enough head above his face to hold like 4 brains. And in all honesty, I was wonder if there were extra brains up there without a skull, because the top of his head seemed so... loose.
Wednesday, 10:48pm: Gilbert is out! Except now he finally gets his real name Brendan Cole. No interesting history with the name, we just both mostly liked it, and it wasn't super common... yet not too obscure. I did all the usual stuff at this point... cut the cord, helped get some footprints, helped wash him, stood there looking totally shell shocked, you know, the usual stuff. He looked mostly cute to me (if I overlooked the extra brain space). Leanne seemed to like him well enough, though I think she was too tired to care.
Thursday Morning: That pretty much brings us to now. I slept a bit last night in the lazy boy in our room... when Leanne wasn't snoring too loud and Brendan wasn't crying too loud. I figured that like the night before I got 3.5 hours of sleep. It seems a bit messed up that they start you off in this insane new process sleep deprived, but such is life. Everyone is doing fine today, baby has been checked out a few times, and they haven't found any problem. They didn't even mention his freakish head. For my part, I am just glad we keep a hat on it... makes it a little less obvious. :)
My Secret Ambition
Sep 24, 2004
Well, I suppose it isn't that secret now that I am telling you, but how cool would it be... if 5 minutes before a movie started, I ran down to the front and busted out in a stand up routine? I figure I only have a few problems.
- I am afraid of speaking in public
- I don't *have* a comedy routine
- I am often sober.
I figure it can't be that hard. I am a decent cook, and I think its mostly because I enjoy food. By the same logic, since I enjoy laughing... I should be a good comic! So far this hasn't proven to be the case, but I am cautiously optimistic. If only I new somebody from Nantucket, i would totally have a good start...
Addiction Update
Sep 23, 2004
The all important update on things I can currently addicted to!
- Fixing Asteroids: Had I known that fixing the stupid thrust sound would have been such a pain the butt, I would have never started. But now, I have too much invested! To fail now, would just be embarrassing. So far, we have found the schematics and replaced every capacitor in the thrust input, and general sound output circuits. And replaced two crazy IC's, not that I know what they are for. This has all done... nothing. Not sure what the next step is... but I am sure it involves buying more stuff. :)
- The Sims 2: Weird computer game. I mean, really... its Barbies for adults. It's hard to even claim its "fun", but it is pretty addicting. I mean, who can turn off the game when your poor sim is passed out on the floor from being tired... in a puddle of its own pee? The wife can now cook like Chef Boy R Dee and paint like, um, somebody who can paint. But damn, the husband is useless. :)
- Burnout 3: XBox racing game... but forget the racing... its all about the crashing. A large portion of the game are these tests where you try and do as much destruction as possible. You get ranked by how many dollars of damage you do. Whats not to love?
- Fable: And the video games just keep coming. Someday, I will have to figure out why I am so drawn to them. Anyway, Fable is your basic role playing game. Kill some baddies... get experience, apply experience to your character so that you can kill even bigger baddies, rinse, repeat. All these games are crazy addictive, because there is always just "one more thing" to do. Got the new sword, so I wanna try it out. The new sword rocks, so I am almost got the next level. The next level gave me this cool new spell, so I need to try it out. Etc. I shouldn't ever get started with these games, cuz I can't stop. I suppose Gilbert might solve that problem... since I won't even have time to get started.
Meringue
Sep 08, 2004
I suppose some people would say I have a lot of weird pet peeves. I hate people like that. People who don't appreciate my pet peeves are one of my pet peeves. ;-)
Case in point: Meringue. What. The. Hell. Is. That. Crap? I mean, if you are going to put something fluffy, sweet and white on top of pie... shouldn't it always be whip cream. Given that whip cream is superior in every way, it would seem so!
The very work example of this was when eating at The Metropolitan Grill. I enjoyed an awesome steak, and then ordered one of my favorite desserts -- Banana Cream Pie. You can see where this is going. It came out with Meringue on top. Talk about disappointment. Lucky for them I was too drunk off Chopin Martinis to care. :) Even though they applied some lovely torch action to the whipped egg substance, its just not whip cream! On a banana CREAM pie? Are you serious!?
Rant Complete.