10) I don't know what we would do without family & friends
I pointed out in my previous submission to this blog series the fact that my wife & I had absolutely nothing in our home that would make it a suitable dwelling for a newborn when we got the call about The Duke being available. As a matter of fact, we had gone to great lengths to prepare our home for older children as we never anticipated we'd have the opportunity to potentially adopt a baby. Everything we were told in the training sessions we were required to sit through before we could be approved as adoptive/foster parents lead us to believe we had a better shot at finding a four leaf clover, getting struck by lightning, and winning the lottery all in the same day than of getting a baby.
That said, I don't know where we'd be if not for donations and gifts from the people we're lucky enough to have as family and friends. What most couples prepare for over the course of 9 months we did in a matter of hours, but only because we are surrounded by people who love us and who were willing to participate in The Duke's life. To anyone who helped us in any way, shape, or form, we can never say thank you enough!
9) Uninterrupted periods of sleep don't exist
I have to say that this has not been so much a learning experience for me as it has been for my wife.
Before The Duke came along I would typically get in bed around 10:30 PM, watch a little TV, and finally conk out by 11:30 or midnight. I drink a fair amount of water in the evening, and as a result I have to get up usually once or twice a night to relieve myself. (Too much information? Probably, but we're not done yet with the subject of bodily excretions in this blog entry, not by a long shot!) As such, I'm somewhat accustomed to having to put myself back to sleep every night after an interruption. The biggest difference now is that the "interruption" has to be fed, have his diaper changed, and then settled back into his own slumber before I/we go back to Dreamland.
The Duke is in a pattern of becoming needy about once every 3 to 3 and a half hours. So long as we time it right even with having to tend to him we can still get a good 6 or 7 hours of sleep per night, which is about what I was getting before.
8) Burping is not only necessary, it's encouraged
If you consider how newborns receive sustenance, you'll quickly realize why it is that they need to burp. They're on a liquid diet and they're going to wind up swallowing air. That air can be quite painful once it's trapped in their tiny bellies. Their little bodies aren't finely tuned enough to be able to bust out a burp as needed, so they need some assistance in the form of a pat on the back.
That said, The Duke burps like a grown man. He has all the power and volume behind his belches that I do, which is saying something seeing as how I've got roughly 34 more years of experience in the matter than he does. I'm sure that as he grows up he'll continue to hone these skills so that he's ready to vocalize a proper burp - because being able to throw a lighthearted jab at one of your buddies through a burp is part of what being a man is all about.
7) Baby formula is ridiculously expensive
We noticed that when The Duke was on a traditional formula after we first brought him home that it appeared to be going straight through him, meaning he wasn't getting the nutrition he needed. After talking to his doctor, we switched him to a soy-based product and he's really taken to it. He was a little over 6 pounds when he was born but I would say he's closer to 8 by this point in time.
I will admit that I had never looked at formula prices before now - all I can say about the matter is holy crap, why is this stuff so expensive?! It's just a powdered mix, how can it cost that much? Are soybeans on some kind of endangered species list? You'd think he was drinking something derived from a rare earth metal. And it's not like the stuff is packaged in a glass vial that was shaped by a master craftsman then scrubbed and polished by hand. It's a can for crying out loud!
Of course I say that even though when I was still working out regularly I used to pay $20 or more for a tub of protein powder. I guess that was different seeing as how I might take one or two doses a day versus him who's taking 7 or 8 per day.
6) Daycare is ridiculous
Up until now I had only heard stories of how daycare operations are so overcrowded that many have waiting lists and that if or when you do get approval for entrance into one the costs can be staggering. Suffice to say that we can verify both of those presumptions as being factual.
5) Baby poop is a horrific example of the sort of material our bodies can produce
I discussed formula earlier in this entry and I also mentioned how The Duke is on a soy-based formula. It still baffles me, to a degree, how a person like him can ingest what is a liquid (albeit one that is certainly loaded with vegetable fiber) and then poop what is most certainly a solid. It went in one end as a fluid but it came out the other end as this oddly chunky, not quite mustard yellow but not quite beige colored matter the odor of which is somewhere between rotting animal carcass and construction site port-a-potty.
It's a visual and smell that I wasn't necessarily prepared to have to deal with. I haven't gone so far as to invest in a HAZMAT suit but I am considering purchasing one of those inclosures with the rubber gloves in them - you know, like the type you see in monster movies where a scientist needs to examine a specimen but doesn't want to touch it for fear of contamination? I may have to run a ventilation line but that's alright.
4) When it comes to interpreting the needs of a baby, science has failed us
The Duke is a grunter. As in when he makes his presence known it's not through a coo or some kind of gentle sound, it's through a "HNNNNNGH!" or a "WUUUURGH!" When he starts to grunting you can safely bet that in short order he's going to need either a bottle or a fresh diaper.
That said, our boy isn't a particularly fussy baby however there have been times where he'll cry and we have no idea what his need in that moment actually is. Are you hungry? Here's a bottle. Wait, why are you still crying? Your diaper is full? Okay, lets change it - wait, I did what I thought you needed, why are you crying now? You don't like being naked and it's chilly in the house? Well why didn't you say that to begin with?
I'm shocked there isn't some kind of gadget out there that can accurately predict what it is that a baby like The Duke needs when he begins to sound off about a given displeasure he's experiencing. I don't know what a device like that would cost but I would be willing to at least consider buying it if it existed. It would seem to be a more worthwhile product than a lot of the other seemingly useless and/or limited baby tech that's out there.
3) Babies require roughly the same amount of gear as is needed for a military deployment
Speaking of baby tech, I am dumbfounded at the volume of gear that is available these days for parents to equip and accessorize their baby. I can only compare it to the cellular phone industry in that there exists this insane, fanatical culture centered around outfitting today's children with stuff that they don't know they have and would more than likely be just as well without. What's worse is the fact that to the modern parent all of it is apparently necessary, although I would say that aspect has more to do with Mom and/or Dad wanting to maintain a particular social status level through ownership of a certain stroller, car seat, or what have you than it does with serving the needs of the child.
There are things in my house right now because of The Duke that I have no idea what they do (some of which I have no desire to learn what they do) or that I could do without because I already had a device or process that accomplished the same task. Case in point, after we brought home The Duke I bought a lidded trash can (with the little step you can press to raise the lid) and a pack of stick-on air deodorizers thinking that would be an adequate containment unit for diapers and other waste. All totaled, it cost about $11. Was it sufficient?
Someone gave us one of these things, a Diaper Genie by Playtex.
If you've ever seen the bio-hazard disposal boxes mounted on the wall of a hospital or doctor's office examination room, this is essentially the same thing only instead of needles and bloody gauze this is for poopie diapers. Depending on what model you opt for, these things will set you back anywhere from $30-$40. The kicker, though, is that it doesn't use ordinary trash bags - instead it uses a cartridge pre-loaded with a sleeve of plastic that you must cut and tie off as needed. How long will the cartridge last? Who knows but refills of these cartridges cost $7 a pop!
So, just to re-cap where we stand with my trash can versus the Diaper Genie...
My Trash Can:
- Initial investment: $11
- Recurring costs:
* $30 for 1,000 trash bags purchased from buying club
* $3 per pack of deodorizer inserts
Diaper Genie:
- Initial investment: $35 (I split the difference)
- Recurring costs:
* $7 per cartridge
If you do the math, the trash can wins handily in terms of cost of ownership over the lifetime of the device. Plus, who's to say manufacturing of the refills doesn't up and stop or that a new & improved model won't come out leaving you with no way to wrangle the poopie diapers? You're left with a gun for which no one is making bullets and that's not a good thing. Also, you can continue using the trash can well into the future either in the child's room or somewhere else in the house. At some point the child won't be in diapers anymore - what will you do with the Diaper Genie then? You might have gotten your money's worth out of it by then and I guess you could hold onto it until you're wearing Depends. The latter option is a personal choice and not one I'm ready to make right just yet.
2) Stores specializing in baby gear are oddly terrifying
My wife & I went to a Buy Buy Baby location last weekend in Columbia, South Carolina. (As it turns out, BBB is a sister store to Bed Bath & Beyond - whoever owns these things has some affinity for the letter B apparently.) It was the first time I'd ever set foot inside a store that sold nothing but baby products. To say that I had a hard time digesting the entirety of the thing would be an understatement.
Why? I can't hammer it down to be totally honest with you. I guess I assumed that babies weren't so complicated that the breadth of offerings in a store like that one would be as vast as they are. Sure, a lot of it is worthless stuff that people buy because they can, but I couldn't get over how it is that all of those products exist. Because if they exist, someone bought them and uses them. Babies have gotten along for a very long time without things like the Pee Pee Teepee (I'm pursuing a patent on a rival product right now, which I'm calling the Tinkle Tent), but there's a Mom or a Dad out there right now that won't change their son's diaper without it because they're mortified at the thought he might score a head shot on one of them with a well-timed stream of whiz.
1) Priorities
There was an indie professional wrestling event last Sunday (November 2) in Cayce, SC promoted by a company called WrestleForce which I have featured previously in my Rasslin' with Redbeard YouTube show. When I'm at events like that one I typically will record the matches (provided the federation in question has voiced no opposition to my doing so) then later on I'll add them to my YouTube channel (which you can find here at this link). I don't want to toot my own horn but after that particular show I was contacted by three of the wrestlers that had performed on the show who wanted to know if I was there because they were eager to see and share footage of their matches.
I wasn't at the show. For obvious reasons.
That's not my way of saying I'll never go to another pro wrestling event; far from it, actually, as I would hope to be able to get to one or two a month even now. I had just spent the night in North Carolina the weekend before in order to attend a show in that state. Even though the building where WrestleForce runs their shows is less than 45 minutes from our house, it wouldn't be fair of me to take off two weekends in a row and leave my wife to tend to our child by herself.
Only I would use professional wrestling as an analogy for pertinent life lessons, right? It's a valid example of the fact that we're parents now and there will quite often be times where our schedules, needs, wants, and desires are going to play second fiddle to The Duke's schedule, needs, wants, and desires. Parents have to be prepared for that.
To me, sacrificing things like personal interests for the sake of being a considerate, involved parent is just one more way of showing how much you love your children. That doesn't mean giving up on your own aspirations, rather that as a parent you've got to acknowledge the responsibility that comes with the life you're charged with shaping while continuing your own life. For some that might mean not going to the movies or out to dinner as often, for others it might be that your work hours have to change or that you'll have to look at your classes to see what will be best going forward. Everyone can do it, you just have to be willing to put in the work to make it happen.
Being a Mom or Dad takes a level of maturity that a lot of people just plain don't seem to have these days, and I feel like that's why some relationships fail after children come into the picture. My wife & I aren't as young as a lot of new parents are when they bring home their first child. We're fortunate enough to have already done a lot in our lives and are fairly content with where we are emotionally and professionally. I've made the comment before that I don't have a whole lot of goals left in my life. I met a President of the United States. I've traveled abroad. I have a stable career. I was front row at a Metallica concert. I could name others but I'm sure you get the idea. Saying you've checked off a lot of items from your list of things to do isn't bad. It means I can be more in tune with allowing things to happen in my life as opposed to having to chase them as hard as I would have otherwise. It's an especially good thing now because it will allow me to enjoy being a Dad without feeling like I've got to impose my will on my wife or The Duke in order to pursue some arbitrary gain that, in the grand scheme of things, doesn't matter as much as making sure that little boy grows up to be healthy and happy.
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