The First Night

Does anyone know of a good hotel I can check into for a few nights?

As some of you may know, my wife and I welcomed our first child into the world on the morning of Saturday, August 27. I want to try and explain the amazing experience of childbirth but, well, I’m too tired to try (I’ll explain in a moment).

At the hospital, my wife and I had a pretty good routine. Hold the baby, put her down, watch her sleep, pick her up again, feed her and so forth. In reality, we didn’t have a lot to do in the hospital room so we focused our attention on the baby and the guards… I mean nurses. But now that we’re home, we have a ton to do AND we have to take care of the baby. In fact, relatives are due over sometime today and I have quite a few “decorated” pairs of underwear piling up in the dining room. That’s right, the dining room.

My wife is upset because she takes pride in keeping our house clean. I’m not sure how it happened, but it looks like hurricane Irene hit our living room, dining room and pretty much the entire first floor.

I’m fine with the mess; it’s the constant screaming that irks me. We went to bed around midnight and that’s when Chloe decided it was time to open her beautiful eyes and look around. Of course, the lights were out and she couldn’t see a damn thing, but she let us know… and let us know… and let us know. My wife is considering coffee. I’m considering hard liquor.

To make an unnecessarily long story short, it feels like I have rocks in my eyes. In fact, the muscles around my eyes are getting quite buff as they work harder to keep my eyelids open during 3:30 AM swaddling attempts.

But then, for that brief moment, she looks up at me with her brand new eyes and makes it all worthwhile. I know you hear this type of thing all the time in movies and novels, but there’s really no other way to say it. Holding my little baby that grew from virtually nothing, I get complex feelings of wonder, love and the burden of responsibility. She depends on me for everything. I am her world.

My stomach is eating my spleen right now, so I’m going to eat something.