Welcome to the World

At 11:16 AM , after fifteen longs hours of pain and agony, we became parents. No words will ever capture the feeling when he came out. It was, without fear of hyperbole, the greatest moment of my life.

After being awake for almost 40 hours, I'm too tired to write much. Pictures should do just fine. Without further ado, my son, Jack Christopher:

About 1 minute old at this point. And loud as a siren.

The Missus gets to hold him for a moment or two before he's whisked off for some testing and she can recover from the horrors of natural childbirth without an epidural.

Yours truly holding his progeny for the first time.

All together now, Ramones-style: "We're a happy family, we're a happy family. We're a happy family - Me, Mom, and Dad!"

That's it. Too tired to continue.

Counting Contractions

For the past three hours we've been counting contractions. It started with a phone call from my mother, who was of course complaining that so far the Missus had been off her anti-contractions medication for almost 24 hours and nary a contraction to be seen. Not a minute had gone after hanging up the phone when the first one came. It was a small one; the next one didn't come for almost a half hour. So we decided they were just small Braxton-Hicks contractions and popped in a movie to watch. Ever since checking out the trailer for THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM I had been wanting to see the second film in the series, which I had only seen once.

About half way through they started coming more frequently. Sometimes 10-14 minutes apart, sometimes closer. At around 10:30 PM they began to come pretty consistently, about every 4-6 minutes. At 11:15 PM we finally called the OB/GYN on call.

Now, a bit of backstory. The original due date, before all the pre-term labor stuff, was June 14th. Which is now 19 days away (18 since it's now past midnight). We saw the doctor for a regular checkup on Monday, and Thursday we went again after a long night that began with my wife waking me up around 2:30 AM saying, "I think something just happened." Turns out the "thing" that happened looked to be the mucus plug. When we went on Thursday the first thing the doctor said was, "Wow! I think you;re ready to go into labor!" We confirmed that we had enough medicine to get us through Friday, which BOTH her main doctors confirmed was the end of her 37 weeks. We were told to call if the contractions were 8 minutes apart, or if her water broke. Properly educated, we left.

Cut back to about an hour ago, when we called the emergency number to speak to the doctor on call. It wasn't one of her regular doctors, but a younger woman on call for the evening. her response was to wait until they contractions were consistently 5 minutes apart, and not to worry too much, since we were only in our 36 week. Upon explaining that, unless we were in some alternate reality where time was measured differently, we had 19 days until our due date, and with the corroboration of her main doctors we were all in agreement that the Missus was, indeed, finishing up her 37th week.

Sorry, you can't argue with someone who knows what's what. She said to try a warm shower and get some sleep. "Slightly perturbed" only scratches the surface of our feelings towards this interloper. However, since there was a serious possibility that this dunderhead might actually be the person who would be delivering the boy into the world, we counted to 10 and relaxed, and began counting again.

Now it's 12:22 in the morning. Since the phone call the Missus has been having gradually longer and stronger contractions every 4 to six minutes apart, with the last 4 being exactly 5 minutes apart and lasting about 45 seconds each time. We're going to go for about another half hour and then make the call again.

There is the strong possibility that we may be seeing some baby pics posted soon!

Where's the Baby?

Not a lot of posting over the past week. Thursday morning I brought the Missus home from the hospital. It was a mixture of relief and fright for both of us - relief because she was finally home and didn't have to spend every waking moment in a hospital bed, fright because now she was further away from the place that she'll need to go to anyway as soon as the baby bubble bursts (alliteration always awakens awesome avenues of affectations).

So the weekend was spent making her comfortable, eating way too much food compliments of her parents who came by and cooked, cleaned and played pinochle with us. There was movie watching and laughing and a few tears, but not much.

There was also sleep. Lots of it.

Monday morning still no baby, so I went off to work to roll out a national program I was hoping the baby would get me out of (you will pay, NFU...you will pay). The Missus had a doctor appointment where she found out she was dilated 3cm, and so for all purposes is done with the early stage of labor. Hooray! So the word is now some medicine to stop contractions until Saturday morning, and then just wait. If her water breaks, or she has contractions less than 8 minutes apart, we're to go to the hospital. The doc's anticipating a Memorial day baby, so we'll see.

Bags are packed, car seats are installed. We're ready to rock.

Elvis Costello & the Imposters @ the Nokia: 05-16-07

Some of the people who went to the Elvis Costello show at the Nokia Theater in Times Square probably thought the show was okay. There wasn't a lot of crowd interaction, the stage and light show was for the most part sparse, and there were a lot of obscure songs (no "Vernonica" - sorry).

There were probably a few people (although not many) who simply can't be pleased with any performance. "Well, yeah he played a lot of older tracks, but how could he NOT play the alternate version of "That's How You Got Killed Before" from the B-sides of King of America?" You're never going to make those people happy.

There was definitely one person who was sceptical going in, determined to not buy any merchandise and ready to chalk the night up to a pleasant evening. By the end of the second encore he was outside buying a shirt and admitting it was a really great show.

And for the vast majority of the sellout crowd there that night (yours truly included), it was an amazing jam-packed show of 31 songs, including Beatles and John Lennon covers, theremins, sing-alongs, and plenty of focus on the first 10 years of his 30 year career, a career that seems to only improve over time. A couple pics and random thoughts below:

At this point (almost a week later - more on why that is later), I can't remember what songs were playing when I snapped the pics. The line to get in was two city blocks long, and in the pouring rain all anyone could think about was getting in and getting dry. By the time we made it in, EC had just launched into opener "Welcome to the Working Week" off debut album My Aim is True. By the time I snapped this shot I think we were on "Shabby Doll," which rocked.

Very blurry close-up (camera phone - sorry) around a killer version of "Beyond Belief." There was a large focus on the early stuff, especially around This Year's Model, Get Happy, and Imperial Bedroom, all of which was alright by me. There were a couple newer tracks - right after this he launched into a menacing, lurching version of "Alibi" off of When I Was Cruel and a great rendition of "Either Side of the Same Town" from latest Imposter album The Delivery Man earlier were both awesome. Let's face it, I'm probably going to think everything was awesome!

The need for a drink and to dry off from the constant bopping forced us to the back of the theater for the encores, which were definitely the best part of the evening. As great as it was to hear some of the more obscure favorites, having the band rock hard through a flurry of hits including "No Action," "High Fidelity," and "Radio Radio" among others was fantastic. The whole night was lean and mean, EC opting for more rock-oriented arrangements of his tunes.

After some cover tunes, a track from last year's River in Reverse that included some great anti-war lyrics (from "I Don't Want to be a Soldier"), and a solo version of "Alison" that I'm not ashamed to say moved me to call my wife in the hospital and hold the phone in the air so she could hear it, they finally ended with an insane "(What's so Funny About) Peace Love and Understanding" that included the main melody to "Singin' in the Rain" during the piano solo.

Altogether an incredibly wet, incredibly fun evening of excellent music.

Happy Moms Day

Today I'll be spending Mother's Day cleaning the cars and installing the car seats before going to spend the rest of the day with the Missus. Latest news is they're going to send her home Thursday, with about a week's worth of anti-contraction medication. This may change, but for now that's the plan. Baby seems to be doing fine, and at first they were simply going to let her go home without any medication, which would have worked perfect logistically, but I'll take anything that keep upping the chances of having a perfect little NFU (New Family Unit for those of you that didn't read the BOTM post).

This morning, though, I'm saving just for me. Little breakfast, the paper, and a movie I plan write up later tonight. I already made the phone calls to the rest of the family wishing them the best. Hope you all did the same. To any mothers reading this today: Happy Mother's Day. Here's a picture of something motherly:

Any chance to squeeze in a Zappa reference, you know...