Decisive Moment

 I don't know about you, but when I imagine the whole labor process, I imagine an attitude like this.

She roused me at 6am on Monday, the 19th of September, the baby's due date, and talk like a pirate day (strange history with the day for me, obviously), and told me that her contractions were regular enough for her to want to head down to the birth center in San Diego.  My first mumbled question was, "did your water break?" No. Well, no hurry.  I let my boss know that I was taking my little leave, we gradually packed the car with pretty much everything we use, or might use, in case of an apocalypse... like you do, and we started the two and a half hour drive to the nearest ethical birth center we could find.  The drive was simple enough: beautiful music and calming conversation; plus the toddler was still half asleep, so not awake enough to be... well..... a toddler.  We stopped at one of our bathroom places.  I had a cigarette, and the little one stayed in her seat because she didn't need to go to the bathroom.  Two minutes after being back on the road she needed to go to the bathroom.

 A while later, approaching the next place we normally stop for a bathroom/cigarette break, I asked her if she was able to hold it and needed to stop and go.  She said she was fine, so we blew through to get to SD quicker.  A couple minutes later she said she needed to go to the bathroom.  Toddler problems.  She ended up holding it successfully until we were about fifteen minutes out from the center (not without some screaming), so props to her.

I imagined that this would be a lengthy process, maybe labor at her grandma's house in Chula Vista for a while. We wanted to stop by the birth center so they could check her out first.  After announcing how busy her day was with babies popping out all over the place (I blame Christmas), the awesome nurse told her to take her time with laboring, but after checking her out she told us to stay close and be back within the hour.  We opted to head down to her grandma's, unpack our apocalyptic preparations, and leave the toddler with her grandpa and great grandma so we could have a little laboring peace.

 We walked around the city park part of Balboa Park for a little bit.  I took a couple shots with my phone, but we mostly just talked and laughed.  Then she thought her water broke...maybe.  If you don't know then it didn't.  It didn't.  We headed back to the birth center and checked into one of their hotel suite type rooms.  She didn't labor that long before the nurse suggested she get in the tub.  She said she didn't feel like she was ready to push yet, but she got in the tub, had one hard contraction, then on her next one the baby was there. Done.

 It took me completely by surprise.  I was looking at the baby in the water, and an embarrassing amount of time went by before I even realized.....that's a baby! it's over.  Shit.  I felt like I totally missed it.  These last two photos are sequential: 5570 and 5571.  I took a quick photo while she was getting into the tub, the put the camera down to hold her hand and rub her back because she was having contractions.  Then the main nurse rushed in and they got her to settle back a little so I moved to the head of the tub, aaaaand baby.  Simple enough.  I rushed over to grab my camera and started shooting again, but it wasn't long before they were handing me scissors to cut the cord, then handing me baby to take care of mom.  I recorded the whole thing with my computer.  I have the baby coming at minute five, but they clocked her "pushing time" at four minutes, and logged the event as "spontaneous vaginal water birth."  I posted a photo to IG with the tagline, "Wait, I missed it. Do it again."  I wasn't making some petty joke about the pains of labor.  That actually happened.

I've been through this once before, mind you it was 16 years ago, but it went how they tell you it's supposed to go: she woke me up in the wee hours of the morning when her water broke, we drove to the hospital and still sat in the delivery room for 1000 hours until the baby came.  That was exhausting.  This was..... chill.  And her water didn't break until the baby was coming out.  No one told me that was an option.  I know second babies generally come quicker, but this was like a storybook labor.  I was not prepared for that.  At very least I expected some verbal abuse.

The whole day was just beautifully serene and peaceful.  After I cut the cord and took the baby into the other room, of which there are no photos, I just hummed to her and she stared at me, like she wasn't surprised by any of this either; like, "ok, this is what happens next."  She latched right away, and just stared at mom.  Then another nurse showed up to do the poking and prodding, joking about the talk downstairs of the ideal laboring couple taking care of things upstairs.

The day obviously went by pretty quick, even though I had to run downstairs every couple hours to move the car to a different parking meter so we didn't get a ticket.  We had planned to have the toddler there to be a part of the beautiful festivities, but decided to give grandpa a call closer to birth and have him bring her down so she wouldn't have to suffer through the hours of labor and be bored out of her mind.  Not only did the hours of labor not happen, but there wasn't even enough time to think to call.

Then we went to great grandma's house and just hung out for a couple days waiting for follow up appointments.  Some family came to visit.  We slept a lot.  The toddler took a little while to understand the fragility of babies, but she gradually settled in.  I took the toddler on a couple little adventures so everyone else could breathe.  There were a couple really nice talks with grandma about parenting and life.  It wasn't long before we just wanted to be home.

Her mom showed up Friday to help out for a couple weeks.  I went back to work on Saturday to chaos, and an eleven and a half hour shift.  I got up before the sun on Sunday to go brew beer with my new boss at his house, which he kept referring to as the "last home brew."  We brewed a double batch of a sour oatmeal stout, and he walked me through the process that I've been reading about for the last couple weeks.  Then we tasted some of his beers and talked about beer and life and music.  It was amazing.  I really look forward to working with him.  Last I heard, the brewery part of the pub will be finished by the end of the month (shit. that's in two days), but I don't know how soon I'll actually be in there.  It will be a beautiful journey for me and my family, and this town.  I am completely overwhelmed to have the opportunity to be a part of it.  Add that to my being overwhelmed by this new little perfect baby; and to the current job; and to having mom in law staying with us; and tOdDler!!!; and fuck.

Eroica wrapped in my baby blanket.

The girl wants me to talk about how I'm feeling, still.  Everything is just a bit overwhelming right now.  Plus she's still recovering from the inside of her body turning inside out and is a wee bit emotional.  I am having a hard enough time dealing with the constant contradiction of being good enough and not being good enough every couple minutes, ad infinitum.

I love it here

Everything is beautiful; lAvaNyamaya.

Shut the fuck up.

Everything is going to be fine.

Breathe.

The title of this post was supposed to be more relevant.  I had constructed a beautiful little introduction talking about Cartier-Bresson's philosophy on photography and life, but I don't remember what it was.  I've been writing this for three days, and the first day was deleted by a computer malfunction because I function in the online world on a dinosaur, because ... life.  I'm tired.  Maybe one day it will drift back through my sad little mind again?

I imagine my posts, which have already been sparse on this particular blog, will become even harder to come by.  I just don't have the energy to life any more, much less write.  I am also in a pretty deep funk because of the quality of the few photos I did get of what was supposed to be the most epically beautiful moment of my life, a second chance.  Everything is a little bit blurry.  I've gotten pretty good at blaming my cut rate equipment, but maybe I'm just a lousy photographer.  On top of that, I honestly feel like I missed it.  I still go to sleep at night with the feeling that she's going to wake me up and we're going to have to drive to SD for something that has already happened.  Everything really went that smoothly, like it was just another day or week in our lives.  I feel like this post was entirely uneventful; outside of my normal voice; cut and dry events, albeit beautiful, and epic, and....... maybe I'm just depressed because I've already put too much expectation on this poor little soul?  Most parents can't wait to find out what their children will become; I am already assuming extraordinary.  She's a week old.  Right now I'm just happy that someone on this planet finds so much comfort in my arms.