Apparently my friend Gajohnson saw a program on 20/20 claiming that top blankets at motels, like the colorful one pictured here, have a very high fecal content.
 

Magic crystal

Wyatt was the picture of health, at both ends. His healthy diet announced itself like a tricycle horn. His body regulated the rapid intake with frequent spit up, mocha schmears, and adult-sized farts. At first I assumed that adults have more ferocious gas and poops, but then I stopped to really consider the theory. I would hold Wyatt on my hip as he let out a big roar. I stopped to think: Did I ever fart so big that it made my whole body vibrate like a cell phone? Did I ever fart so hard that it woke me up? Or have I ever taken a crap so suddenly and powerfully that it turned a crying fit into a smile. OK, well maybe that one we’ve all experienced, but Wyatt was releasing unprecedented gas in our house. He forced us to second guess each other when the thunder erupted. Was that you? That was Wyatt? Seriously though. Are you sure?

Wyatt would eat and poop. Eat and fart and sleep. Another fart would wake him up, then he would eat and sleep, and wake up later so that he could eat and poop. Nature’s cycle fell happily in line with the sun and moon, the changing tides. And then one day he just stopped – stopped pooping. He continued to ingest milk, but his body was no longer expelling it. Breast milk bloated his soft body, leaking out where it could as pee, or small milky drops that escaped as tears. Farts whined and squirmed their way out, white clouds of excess. No poops. Days went by, and then a week. Wyatt seemed content and hungry. He continued to feed. Deep creases formed around his wrists and ankles, and his chin jiggled atop a stack of Michelin tires that functioned as a neck. Two weeks passed. No poops. We began to remember fondly the burnt brown taffy of earlier days, the surprise chocolate soup that could make Wyatt and the person holding him have to change their pants. Wyatt was inflating fast with no release valve, no overflow hole. I worried that he would swell until he exploded.

At almost 3 weeks Wyatt seemed a little fussy and we consulted a doctor. She seemed overly nonchalant about the whole episode. Perhaps she failed to complete the math that projected Wyatt’s rapid expansion. Or maybe she just wanted to hustle us along so that Wyatt wouldn’t explode inside her office. She did offer one possible solution, if we decided that it was necessary. She unraveled an old cloth like a black market jewel dealer. Inside was a small clear rock. Small for a clear rock, not for a hard item that might get placed into an infant’s bum. It had a tear-drop shape and a soft shine. It was a beautiful royal heirloom, hanging from the gold chain of a princess with hereditary constipation. The magic crystal promised to solve all of our problems. It was the object of fairytales, a magic bean that would turn Wyatt into a golden goose: except this magic crystal wouldn’t make Wyatt drop golden eggs, it only promised to make him drop something.

The following weekend we decided to take Wyatt on his first mini-vacation. We went away for one night, about an hour from the house, sort of a test run. I looked at maps to pick a random city that was a short hop from San Francisco, a quiet escape from the big city that would have shorter must-do tourist lists and cheaper motels. I booked a motel deal online, settling on Petaluma. We would spend hours in a dark motel room with brightly covered beds, considering Wyatt’s predicament. The Casa Grande Motel. Roughly translated, The Big House. As good a place as any to consider sticking a suppository in your son’s butt.

From the time we checked in, Wyatt seemed fussy and backed up. This was probably a common response to the bathroom facilities at the Casa Grande. But Wyatt’s blood runs thick with love for questionable roadside motels, and we suspected that his crankiness was unrelated to our reservation at the Big House. In fact, when we first entered the room, Wyatt playfully rolled around on the carpet-covered bureaus, perhaps sensing my excitement. Soon Wyatt began to stare at the vinyl bathroom floor like so many constipated truckers before him. He whined and growled, and pushed a couple of thick farts through, but nothing that stained the diaper. We searched for signs of poop to come, begging for a small stool sample like a Kaiser nurse.

We walked to the park across the street, catching the end of a street festival celebrating the town’s farming industry. A parade of kids passed by, dressed as eggs and giant pads of butter. They were hustled along by a giant scary cow, snapping its utters at pads of butter to keep up with the eggs in front of them. Wyatt continued to fuss, and the effect that this surreal nightmare would have on Wyatt’s bowels was hard to say. We returned to the security of the Casa Grande, trying to think of something besides giant dancing pads of butter.

Wyatt made tense, red faces and began to cry. We worried that he needed help, but didn’t want to resort to the suppository. We were told that the magic crystal would magically disappear on impact, but I couldn’t help thinking that we were using Wyatt to smuggle a balloon full of drugs back from Petaluma. Our infant son was in made need of a poop, but we worried that the cure was as bad as the constipation. Or worse, we might prematurely torture Wyatt when all he really needed was a little patience. We had heard that some infants can go a month without pooping and not have any real problem. But that seems a little ridiculous. Stuck in a cheap motel with a bloated baby and a magic crystal, we considered our options.


I would like to take a moment to formally apologize to my dear son, Wyatt. With all the compromising details and images I have set forth in these pages, all the wrong things I have said about you in your first year of life, I apologize specifically for this: You were grouchy, and all backed up, stuck in a strange roadside motel about to be impaled by a crystal. For this I apologize. If we were about to follow through, I apologize. If we did not, again I apologize. Regardless of our decision and the outcome, you lay constipated on cheap, starchy sheets, with visions of a ragged cow yelling at bratty eggs and butter pads, while your insides screamed to get out and your body was in violent conflict with itself. After spending almost a year sloshing around in another person’s body, and enduring a few weeks of hospital bureaucracy, this was your first vacation. I am sorry.


Meanwhile, back at the Big House. We used the tip of a Q-tip, saved the magic crystal for another desperate bottom, and Wyatt left smiling. Most people leave cheap motels with more than they came with: a greater sense of self, a stolen towel, or a splotchy rash. Wyatt left a little piece of himself at the Casa Grande Motel, returning home in better spirits, and a few pounds lighter.

 

Neck cheese

Back in the comfort of his own house, Wyatt flourished – he slept and pooped and cried and giggled; but mostly he ate. Wyatt’s bony frame focused on fattening up, a skinny gremlin with a voracious appetite. The five and a half pound old man took to eating like most old men do, sneaking salt and candy and cigarettes when their wives are not looking. As the weeks went by Wyatt’s contemplative thin face was replaced by a chubby, silly, much younger looking creature.

Wyatt mocked the literature warning about fussy babies unwilling to feed off the breast, or from a bottle. He fed from two boobs, countless bottles, syringes, with no hesitation. He would have slurped breast milk from a spoon, an old shoe, and puddles on the kitchen floor had we allowed it. I read a book that discussed the importance of matching the rubber bottle nipple to the mother’s nipple, easing the child into the bottle by impersonating his mother’s boob. What struck me most about the nipple matching was not the concept or the article, but a diagram of pencil drawings, almost 40 individual shapes and styles of natural nipples and the rubber scabs which counterfeit them. Nipples ranged from manhole covers to pencil erasers, tapered leg or boot cut. But a few varieties were beyond my experience. One rubber nipple in particular had more sharp angles and sudden curves than San Francisco’s Lombard Street. I felt a sudden desire to seek out this gifted woman, with a bizarre nipple that bent around itself like a dancing flame, a jagged piece of coral resting awkwardly atop a round breast.

But Wyatt’s food supplier had no such irregularities. With my newfound spectrum of nipple shapes, I began to realize why the nurses were so impressed with Diane’s. They were simple, elegant, and functional. Wyatt had no complaints. Diane alternatively fed Wyatt and then the breast pump. Wyatt and the machine were constantly attached to Diane. At times they would feed together, Wyatt nursing comfortably next to a plastic horn with a lawn mower engine, man vs. machine.

Sometimes he cried when he wanted milk, but mostly he quietly mouthed for it, made a circle with his mouth and searched around for it, a goldfish trying to catch food flakes. If Diane was holding him and he was hungry, he would push his tiny head around in search of a well-shaped nipple. Then he began to squirm around other people’s chests, trying to find sustenance. Mostly mine. Signs of hunger became very clear. Wyatt would begin to roll his head around on my shoulder, then start gently banging his head against my chest. When that failed to provide him with an appropriately shaped nipple he would squirm until he found some flesh and begin to suck. Our once miniature figurine was quickly turning into an insatiable baby zombie. A flesh eater. If milk was not immediately available he wouldn’t cry. He would warn me with a brief head banging and then wrestle his way to my neck. I would rush to find Diane’s boob or a suitable replacement or become the meal myself. Of course countless studies have in depth research on the benefits of breastfeeding. But has anyone ever considered a possible connection between breastfeeding and a tendency toward cannibalism. Waiting for Diane to come from the bathroom, or rolling over in the middle of the night, I would detach Wyatt from my neck, or arm, or chest. One morning I awoke with three tiny hickeys on my neck, and found a fistful of my chest hair in Wyatt’s clenched fist.

Wyatt’s undead appetite soon surpassed his capacity for processing food. Wyatt swelled just as big as his newborn frame could hold him, and then began to reject the excess. I suppose babies tend to spit up a lot. But he began to spit up mid-feeding, and then continue on, like his body had agreed to a weight limit but his appetite refused to sign the deal. He always seemed unfazed by his spontaneous throw up. It was a quick interruption in the middle of a casual sentence, a slight cough not worthy of changing the flow of a conversation. We called him the Spit Up Master. Little gurgles were harbingers of dangerous lava flow. We bought more spit up rags, then moved up to towels. Clothes that were strewn about the room were regularly checked for puke smell before being sorted into piles of dirty and sort of clean.

Wyatt began to rapidly grow out of clothes, increasing his neck size at a rate normally attributed to steroids. Fat rolls emerged where there was previously no fat. Our cute little Michelin baby was rapidly bloating into the Michelin Man. Neck fat became a common subject for discussion in our household. Specifically how to care for it. Cleaning Wyatt now included moving furniture, separating flaps of skin where old milk tended to hide. Breast milk, spit up and drool had a habit of slipping down Wyatt’s chin and disappearing into his newly formed neck fat. The milk would find hairs and produce lint, trapping other strange objects in its sticky string. We found forgotten household items there, like moving a couch after 8 years.

I have heard that the cleaning of those wrinkle dogs can be a very time consuming affair. I wondered too about Marlon Brando’s late years and if someone had been kept busy cleaning food that was hiding where his neck used to be. Perhaps Brando used the area for storage, a convenient place to store snacks for later. As I lifted the skin to wipe shiny milk from under Wyatt’s chin, I wondered if he too had a secret purpose for storing this neck cheese. With the disappearance of his neck came a rapid improvement in his ability to hold his own head up.

The littlest patient

When we arrived at the San Francisco hospital, a 300 pound nurse immediately tried to grab Wyatt out of Diane’s arms. I called it the SF big butt takeover. With a little resistance we were able to stay with Wyatt, but she exacted her revenge by giving him a catheter. He seemed surprisingly unfazed. Another procedure that is harder on the dad than anyone else. The nurse explained that we were not required to stay with Wyatt and that we could go home and get some rest if we wanted, leaving our 5 ½ pound baby with 300 pounds of mischief – it seemed an unfair fight. Adding our combined weight to the mix leveled the playing field, one united family against the big butt of hospital tyranny.


Our fiasco in Daly City followed us to the new hospital. Just before the failed spinal tap, the hospital had taken a vial of blood which could be tested for infections. This would be a valuable sample because it was the only blood taken from Wyatt before he received the antibiotics, which still enabled doctors to determine the source of the infection. Unfortunately, we found out later that the vial had been broken in the lab, requiring more elaborate methods to determine the source of the infection. I guess the best thing I can say about the Daly City ER is that all of the nurses had on their white sneakers, and they were a nice, bright white.


The SF hospital continued a battery of tests and began to introduce medicine into Wyatt’s IV, referring again to a list of unlikely diseases which could be life threatening. The big butt nurse explained, for example, that they wanted to give him a medication just in case he had herpies.

"Herpies?" I replied. "You think he has herpies?"

"Well, it’s possible. And for a baby his size herpies can cause brain damage; it can be life threatening."

I somehow felt that the nurse was making vague accusations about my two week old son’s sexual relationships. "Don’t you have to contract herpies from another individual?"

"Yes, that’s true."

"And so you think he could have gotten it from?"

"His mother."

Diane scowled. "I don’t have herpies."

The nurse sighed. "It’s possible to pass it on to your child without being aware that you have it."

I stepped between the nurse and Diane, knowing however that I was no match for the big butt nurse. "OK, thank you," I said, then tried to explain to Diane that the nurse was not calling her a slut. Sure I’ve picked up scabies before from a hippie’s couch, but we have a clean record when it comes to STDs, and Wyatt hasn’t even really dated a whole lot yet.

My confidence in the doctors’ ability to determine Wyatt’s illness was fading quickly. The basic philosophy seemed to be try a medication, and if he gets better, then we know what was wrong. If nothing happens, try another one. We could have gone instead to a high school kid with a chemistry set. The potential diagnoses were getting more far fetched. How can we be sure he doesn’t have polio, or shingles? Let’s treat him for the Gout, just in case.

In addition to blood tests and close monitoring, the hospital yearned again for urine, and feces. The fascination they had taken with Diane’s output before the birth was now transferred over to Wyatt. They charted his pees and poops, and confiscated his dirty diapers. Another nurse arrived for a pee sample, this time suggesting that they could try touching Wyatt’s penis with a cold cloth to make him pee, rather than giving him another catheter. I applaud more casual medical techniques like trying a cold cloth first, especially when it involves not shoving a tube up my son’s urethra. Sadly, they shot down my idea of putting his hand in a warm glass of water while he slept. As soon as the cloth touched Wyatt, he shot a long stream right into the cup the nurse was holding. "Oh by the way," I told the nurse, "it looks like my son is able to pee a foot in distance."


Our night in two ERs turned into several days back at the San Francisco hospital. We stayed in a children’s wing, and Wyatt was by far the littlest patient. All the nurses were going crazy over Wyatt, some of them sewing him hats and doting over him, others anxious about his tiny size and having difficulty performing the necessary tests on him.

Diane and I settled back into our hospital motel mode. The first night we were told that only one parent could stay in the room, and that Wyatt would have to sleep in his clear plastic crib. The nurse who explained this policy had no knowledge of my mom’s ability to negotiate, using sit-ins to earn mileage at airport counters. The easiest way to overcome authority is to completely ignore it. I returned with a blow-up bed, and Diane slept with Wyatt on her chest in the one pull-out chair. The nurses were initially upset about Wyatt sleeping with Diane, claiming that her potential to roll over and crush him was a liability for the hospital. Eventually they agreed to allow it if Wyatt was attached to a heart rate and pulse monitor. He slept with three wires attached to his chest with round, sticky patches. Together with the giant foam hand and his IV, Wyatt and Diane slept tangled in a web of tubes and wires. The sticky patches would move about as Wyatt tossed and turned during the night. They would end up stuck to blankets or each other. One morning a nurse rushed in loudly to check Wyatt’s irregular heart beat. Diane rolled over with a sticky patch on her forehead, the wire hanging like a strand of hair across her face.

As the days wore on, we played house in the hospital wing, watching movies and ordering take-out. The hospital provided food for patients only. As Wyatt dined exclusively at Diane’s boob, she was given special permission to eat the hospital meals. This luxury meant that the hospital’s international cuisine was available to her at no cost. However, Diane claimed that the hospital only served one meal: rubbery chicken. Different ethnic foods were differentiated only by the color of the sauce which smothered it. Mexican food was rubbery chicken in a brown sauce, while Italian rubbery chicken came with a reddish hue. We were happy to have a cart of movies on our floor, but we were almost the only adults sleeping in the children’s wing. People are always willing to rent worse movies than they would see in a theater, and will watch almost anything that comes on TV. Planes are also notorious for their poor selection, leaving movie snobs to say: "Yeah I saw that movie, but I was on the plane." or "It’s not that bad for a plane movie." The category of hospital movies established a new low for me, and we watched a few brutal ones that had found their way into the children’s wing movie cart. Perhaps the worst one was Mercury Rising, a political thriller featuring Bruce Willis. The plot untangles around an autistic kid that reads code and has infiltrated a code which protects U.S. government agents all over the world. Sounds pretty good so far. Bruce Willis is trying to protect the little kid’s life, while the government wants to kill him to protect the lives of their agents who could be exposed. The movie roots for Bruce Willis to stand against the odds and protect the boy. About an hour into the film, the movie is so bad that I start to think: well, the code does protect all sorts of CIA and FBI operatives, maybe they should just kill the little brat and roll the credits.

But back to our little brat, who we were protecting against the gang of nurses -- they were convinced that Wyatt was excreting some kind of top secret code into the diapers they were confiscating. After several days of tests and close monitoring, we were told that Wyatt had a bladder infection. All the spinal taps, blood tests and viral medications turned up nothing more than a rather routine bladder infection, which was cured by the initial antibiotics that he was given on his first night. Apparently, the infection was caused by ecoli, probably some feces getting into his urinary tract. This was rather common, we were told, "with everything being close together down there in the diaper." I had heard about ecoli mostly in relation to the fast food industry, and I wondered where Wyatt may have picked up a shitburger.

Wyatt was finally allowed to disconnect the IV that had been attached for about 5 days. He flailed his arms around while I danced him along Diane’s belly, singing "I got no strings to hold me down . . ." We had spent most of a week wheeling an IV next to him, and he was free again, wireless.

We were a few routine check-ups away from going home again, and I headed downstairs to deal with the latest fallout from our trip to Daly City. We had been informed that they were having trouble verifying our medical insurance, and that our trip to the ER, ambulance ride, and 5 night stay may not be covered. I went downstairs to member services in a t-shirt, pajama pants and slippers. They sent me across the street and a few blocks down to another office. Cold grey clouds choked out the last blue light as I shuffled down the block in my slippers. A friendly employee looked over my case and told me that we almost got snagged on a technicality, and that we had a couple more forms to fill out to put Wyatt on the insurance under his own coverage. For the first month, we were still allowed to file the charges under Diane’s insurance, but in a few days Wyatt would have been uncovered without the new forms. Somehow in the mound of insurance paperwork we filled out at Wyatt’s birth, adding him to our insurance had not been covered.

I thanked the hospital worker, who admonished me for going outside in the cold with no jacket or socks on. Luckily, we had slipped into a loophole just before another loophole could swallow us up financially. I scuffed my slippers along, smiling at the dark steel sky, looking a bit crazy and homeless. I had a credit card tucked into the string of my pajama pants, and I wandered into a nearby flower shop. As I considered the flowers, thunder showers shaded the street. The store had a high credit minimum and I filled my arms with flowers. I pushed through the doorway. The rain had frozen to hail, and I could barely see the hospital behind the curtain of ice. I ran between the shop awnings, then under the plastic bus stop. Ice pelted the clear roof overhead. I watched for a minute then raced across the street, ice chunks crashing against my bare arms and nestling in among the flowers. I stepped through the automatic hospital doors and turned to watch the hail. Streaks of light blue pierced the sky and halted the storm. Wyatt had been alive only 3 weeks, but had spent almost half of that time in a hospital. I headed upstairs to show him everything else.

 

More fun with Kaiser

Just three weeks after he was born, we were rushing Wyatt off to the emergency room. He was running a high fever, so I called the hospital advice line. Considering his premature birth, a high fever was called potentially life threatening and we were told to bring him in immediately. I asked the advice nurse which of two hospitals we should go to; she said that they were equal and she would recommend the closest one. The hospital in Daly City, just on the edge of San Francisco, was a bit closer to us than the San Francisco hospital where Wyatt was born. We knew that the Daly City hospital didn’t have pediatricians, but we had been told that the emergency rooms were equivalent. We bundled Wyatt and I sped down the highway, a little indecisive about which hospital to drive to. I decided on San Francisco because it seemed like a bigger, more legitimate facility which was only another 5 or 10 minutes away. A construction detour appeared, blocking our way to the San Francisco hospital. I turned toward the closer one, the Daly City ER.

As it turns out, that was a big mistake. After excessive stacks of paperwork they admitted Wyatt and took his temperature. The nurse introduced Wyatt to his first rectal thermometer, which is usually more uncomfortable for the dad than the baby. His temperature continued to rise. As we passed through the waiting room into the guts of the facility, professionals in white coats reacted as if they had never seen an infant. Nurses were scrambling around the hospital looking for equipment small enough to use on Wyatt. We were taken to a small room where one nurse explained the difficulty of finding an infant’s veins while another repeatedly stabbed Wyatt’s arms with failed attempts. A doctor arrived and tried to reassure us by suggesting that they didn’t have all the appropriate tools for an infant as small as Wyatt.

I offered to take him to the other hospital but the doctor was adamant that they follow through with a spinal tap. We were given the following scenario which would be repeated with minor variations over the next several days:

Dr: Your son is a premie, and less than a month old, which means that many diseases could be potentially life threatening. He has a very low chance of having this particular disease, but if he does have it and it goes untreated, it could quickly lead to his death. We strongly urge you to conduct this test so that in the unlikely event that he does have this disease, potentially life saving measures can be taken.

Me: What percentage of infants with his symptoms have this disease?

Dr: About 6 to 8 percent.

Me: And what makes you think that he may have it?

Dr: He is running a high fever and high fever is one of the main symptoms in newborns of this life threatening disease. You should also know that the test itself carries a low risk of infecting your son with dangerous diseases.

Me: I’m thinking maybe we should forego this test.

Dr: It is my strong medical opinion that the test is necessary under these circumstances, and bypassing the test could prove fatal for your child.


This rationale was used to justify continued torture of our two week old infant. In truth, not all of the tests were that bad. But it is difficult to watch your 2 week old baby shrieking while nurses continually test for low risk diseases with seemingly little cause. Then again, how can you reject an educated doctor’s advice when he claims that skipping a test may prove fatal for your child? With all the hospital’s exaggerated concern for Wyatt being a 2 week old premie, it crossed my mind that perhaps constant, invasive testing could prove detrimental to a fragile premie still two weeks from his original estimated birth date.


The result of a CBC showed that Wyatt had some kind of infection. His symptoms were now an infection and a high fever, which we were told is common with any infection, and both could be the result of a minor bladder infection. Antibiotics would likely cure the infection, but the doctor wanted to wait because the success of the antibiotics would prevent accurate test results for meningitis. Meningitis was one in the long string of scary, potentially fatal diseases that Wyatt was showing very little symptoms of, but the doctor claimed there was a standard battery of tests in this situation. The concept of withholding the antibiotics to ensure a successful test began to seem a little ludicrous, and I wondered if it was more an issue of hospital procedure than patient care.


After witnessing several failed attempts to give Wyatt an IV, we were asked to wait outside for the spinal tap. "This is usually too hard on the parents, so for your sake I think you would be more comfortable outside," the doctor told me.

"That’s okay, I understand that he will be uncomfortable and in pain, but I would prefer to sit in the room," I replied.

The doctor then asked us to wait outside.

Just outside the door, I comforted Diane as she cried on my shoulder, listening to Wyatt scream. He wailed louder than we had ever heard him for several minutes, and then the door opened. "I’m sorry," the doctor said, "but the spinal tap was unsuccessful."

"Meaning?"

"We were unable to accurately access the spinal chord."

Meaning that we were listening to Wyatt getting repeatedly jabbed with no progress.

"And the antibiotics?"

"We will give them to him now and then complete the spinal tap at the other hospital."


The doctor finally came to the conclusion that had been evident to us since we walked in the front door: this facility was not equipped to handle a tiny infant. We were sent to the hospital in San Francisco where Wyatt was born. We were not allowed to drive him, but were told that he would be transported in an ambulance.

We were allowed to enter the room and console Wyatt. We watched as nurses searched for something to help keep an IV in Wyatt’s tiny hand so he could receive his antibiotics. They settled on a soft arm brace, a small cushioned board meant to isolate a small hand. It surrounded Wyatt’s hand and ran down past his elbow, almost to his armpit. He waved it around his tiny body like a giant foamy finger at the Superbowl.

I was instantly reminded of the first night Diane and I ever fooled around. We went with a few friends to this rustic town in the woods that has a tiny mountain and a cheap snowboard and motel package. Diane fell on her hand on her first run of the day. The mountain medic took a look at it, put her arm in a sling and sent her to the lodge for a pitcher of beer. She seemed satisfied, and the rest of us snowboarded for a few hours before taking her to the local hospital. The hospital took x-rays and decided she had a small fracture requiring a cast. Unfortunately, they said they were unable to give her a cast at that facility and that she would need to go to the big city to get one. This seemingly full functioning hospital did not make casts. I made them in art class in the third grade. I thought we could probably whip one up in the motel with a couple of supplies from the AM/PM. Not only did they send her along without the cast, but they made a temporary soft cast for her which looked like a second grade school project, and I began to comprehend their reluctance to attempt cast making. Diane’s arm was wrapped in a couple of small towels, covered with a cloth sling and plenty of medical tape. She looked like a victim of some overzealous boy scouts anxious to get their good Samaritan badge. I called it the giant foam hand, and the man hand. Diane was hopped up on vicodin and found my jokes hilarious, and we made out while assorted friends were lying about the bed and floor of our divey motel room.

And from that first kiss we had come full circle, so proud to see our 5 ½ pound son now wrapped in a sports fan giant foam hand, receiving the same poor hospital treatment that had brought his mom and dad together years before. Wyatt and his man hand were placed in our car seat, which was then strapped down to a long board. Diane took her seat in the ambulance as they raised the board. Wyatt’s head and arm were strapped down to the board, leaving him almost immobile. I kissed his forehead and he looked toward the EMTs that were passing him into the ambulance. Wyatt’s middle finger was slightly raised above the rest of his hand. I nodded to the EMT, "He doesn’t like this."

She pretended to smile back at me, "Yeah, I know."

I kissed Diane and headed toward our car to meet them at the other hospital. I felt proud of Wyatt’s early defiance. Two weeks old and already flipping people off. He’s very advanced.

Hindenberg 

Boobs

These days a fine line separates new moms from spring break girls. I guess in our case Wyatt is that fine line, creating the distinction between a girl who is flashing, and a mom who is breastfeeding. Attach a hungry infant to any wild co-ed and suddenly topless in Cabo becomes an act of nurturing. But men can be easily confused, especially when boobs are present. Diane is a laid back mom, placing Wyatt’s needs way above any hesitation toward public nudity. Some of our male friends aren’t quite sure how to react. They enter the house to meet the baby, and discover Diane breastfeeding in the living room, or sitting casually in some state of undress. The reaction typically goes something like this:

Whoa, hey there. I wasn’t really looking. I mean it’s totally natural, a beautiful thing. I’m not purposefully looking away. I just didn’t want you to think that I was looking, like really looking. Keep doing what you’re doing. That’s great . . . for him. I just, I don’t know. I’ll go sit over there. Just let me know if I’m doing something wrong.

People that have been around a lot of babies have extremely casual reactions. Boobs. Good job. Whip ‘em out. I don’t see what the big deal is. They’re just boobs. Inexperienced friends look away from Diane as she takes her boob out, or suggest that they’ll wait to hold Wyatt until his neck gets better, scared about the way his head seems to flop around. Giving birth just weeks after the Janet Jackson half-time nipple scandal was convenient. Most people had recently thought long and hard about their personal opinions of public displays of nipple, or the act of flashing one boob. A lot of people feel that one boob at a time, in the appropriate circumstances, is comfortable. But flashing two boobs simultaneously is definitely sexual, and possibly vulgar, depending on the scenario and I suppose the boobs themselves.

My friends were mostly comfortable with Diane’s newfound exhibitionism. One friend confessed that it was a little sexy. Another felt weird trying to have a normal conversation with Diane while her breast was exposed. Our gay friend Baby Boy, who often tells us how much he hates women’s breasts, declared that he actually likes watching the baby breast-feed, because it’s like watching a nature show. Mostly she just took them out to feed Wyatt, but in her exhaustion sometimes Diane roamed the house with one breast exposed. She looked like Spartacus with her shirt pulled diagonally across her chest, wandering aimlessly after a heated battle at the Coliseum. As Diane’s boobs became sore from breastfeeding, she spent more time with them exposed. She would let them both hang over the top of her shirt, like torpedoes, waiting for them to dry or letting a fan soothe her sore nipples. I began to feel my friends’ confusion as the scenarios got more weird. Watching your girlfriend massage her nipples with lube, for instance, takes on a strange meaning when her parents are in the room.

The last and most intriguing aspect of Diane’s breastfeeding was our introduction to the breast pump. Because Wyatt was born premature and less than 6 pounds, ensuring his quick weight gain became more significant. Even though he took to breastfeeding immediately, the doctor wanted us to supplement those feedings. Diane used the pump to fill bottles with additional breast milk, which I then squirted into his mouth with a syringe, like feeding a baby bird. It was a slow process but a pleasure for me, as close as I could get to breastfeeding without embarrassing contraptions or illegitimate science.

Our first breast pump was a loaner from the hospital, an industrial grade pump. While it lacked the warm, comforting style of home models, it made up for it in sheer size and strength. The giant, metallic, industrial pump connected through skinny tubes to two, roughly boob-shaped cones. We would later see all kinds of fancy, portable breast pump models: from leather briefcases to flowery handbags, small contraptions that tried to disguise the idea that you were strapping a motor to your breasts. But with our first pump, I felt like we were hooking Diane up to a car battery.

The concept is simple, a machine that pumps the breasts and releases milk into a bottle for a later feeding. But closely watching a breast pump work is one of the most bizarre elements of becoming a new parent. The breasts are placed in plastic cones, and the nipples look out a frosted window, poised and ready, and a bit scared when they see the power of our industrial grade motor. As the pump starts the nipples begin to perk up and then relax, like twin soldiers. The nipples begin a synchronized dance, behind frosted plastic, which is accentuated by a rhythmic pounding sound as the nipples pop back into place. The pounding of the nipples. The perfectly synchronized dancing. Like little soldiers saluting on command. Pop. Pop. Forceful yet graceful. I was enthralled. It’s not sexual, though it has a sensual element. I like to think that science and nature have transcended sexuality and motherhood, finding an artistic motion, a poetic rhythm: the nipple dance.

Then again, I don’t see what the big deal is. They’re just boobs.

 

Poops

The early days of diaper changes were a breeze, small deposits gently pushed onto a diaper. A generous portion of mocha shmear from Noah’s Bagels. It fascinated me that Wyatt would do his poops all in one moment. I am quite the opposite, really taking my time. Wyatt shot them out in a single burst of thundering poop. We nicknamed him Thunderpants. When I held him, I could feel the reverberation like a shotgun. His body would kick back into my shoulder with a soft squishy sound and I knew immediately that the job was done. Pretty simple. Then after one week Wyatt created his first poop explosion. I came home to find both Wyatt’s and Diane’s clothes in the tub.

We began to use a diaper service that drops off cloth diapers and picks up the dirty ones. The cloth diapers are supposed to reduce diaper rash, and seemed a little softer for Wyatt’s fragile, thundering bottom. As in most decisions, we found ourselves floating somewhere between my yuppy brother and hippy brother-in-law. My brother’s kid had plastic diapers, like most kids these days, and the hippies were washing out their own cloth diapers. I wanted Wyatt’s bum to stay fresh, but not bad enough to rinse out poo shmear in the kitchen sink, not bad enough to throw his khaki stained cloths in with my khakis.

The diaper service came with a video and a monthly newsletter, to welcome you into this cloth diaper community. The video featured a woman talking about the diapers, standing in front of a landfill dump site to show their concern for the environment. Her huge mane of hair and white jacket with giant shoulder pads showed me that they had been around for a while, at least since the mid 80s. The newsletter provides parenting advice to comfort your child in a soft, cotton, environmentally-friendly kind of way. The first one came with a two page cover article called Handling Unwanted Advice. It provided practical tips for dealing with friends and family that give too much input on how you will raise your child: "You can respond to unwanted advice in a variety of ways" . . . "simply smile, nod, and make a non-committal response, such as ‘Interesting!’ Then go about your own business . . . your way" . . . "If your brother is pressuring you . . . then distraction is definitely in order, such as, ‘Would you like a cup of coffee?’" Under the section titled Memorize a Standard Response, they even provided complete reactions that could be cut and paste from the newsletter into your head: "Here’s a comment that can be said in response to almost any piece of advice: 'This may not be the right way for you, but it’s the right way for me.'"

I thought about writing a letter to the editor, a thoughtful article that thanked them for the advice and showed how I made use of it in a practical situation. It would go something like this:

Dear Editor,

Thank you for your recent, brilliant article on Handling Unwanted Advice. I wanted to share with you the success that I have had with your methods.

Recently my brother Ray came over to visit and see how things were going with our new son, Wyatt. Wyatt was just coming out of the bath tub when he arrived. Wyatt was laying on the bed, about to get his cloth diaper on. Ray walked in and I got distracted for a moment.

"You better get a diaper on that kid before he squirts," Ray suggested.

I smiled, nodded, and made a noncommital response. "Interesting." Then I went about my business, my way. I moved some clothes, restacked a few books, anything to keep from falling prey to his unwanted advice.

Ray continued to badger me, pressuring me. "Do you want me to put a diaper on him? Usually, if I’m going to leave my kid naked for a minute, I at least hold a cup above him to protect myself from getting soaked."

I looked around the room for some kind of good distraction as Ray reached for a cup to shield himself.

"Would you like a cup of coffee?" I blurted, just as Wyatt began to shower the coffee cup, my brother, and our bed with his golden fountain. My brother looked concerned as he headed to the bathroom to rinse out his shirt.

"This may not be the right way for you," I called after him, "but it is the right way for me."

Again, thank you for your support and ideas. Armed with soft cotton and solid wisdom I think we are prepared to raise our son in a healthy and positive environment.

Sincerely,

Pat Carey

P.S. Do you have any suggestions for a memorized response to this kind of harassment: "Why are you asking me if I want a cup of coffee? I already told you no, and we’re nowhere near any coffee right now."


Most of the advice we got came from the hospital, keeping in close contact with us because Wyatt was born premature. An English nurse came to the house for a visit. After a brief hello she moved right into the questioning like a harsh detective. "How are your nipples?" she barked at Diane. "Have you been peeing and pooping?" she demanded. "So your output has been normal?" she continued.

Then the focus shifted to Wyatt. Again she grabbed one ball as she counted the other. "1, 2," she counted. "So he’s got everything there." She saw a picture of my mom and her eleven sisters on the cover of my book. She looked over the lot of twelve girls dressed up with their parents: "That’s a real kickpopper!" She went on to tell us about her family of four siblings in England, and how they all shared the same bath water to save money.

"Five people in one bath?" I asked.

"No, one at a time" she said. "Really, you wanted to get in near the top of the order, before the bath got real dirty."

Before she left, she had a list of specific questions about all of Wyatt’s stats: his eating, peeing, pooping. There became so much interest in his daily input and output. All the former interest in Diane’s output had shifted to Wyatt, as he became the Dali Lama figure.

The hospital gave us forms and charts, wanting us to keep track of Wyatt’s poops and pees, and Diane’s medication. Check this box when Wyatt poops. Diane can have a Vicodin every 4 hours. Make a mark when Wyatt pees. Diane can have a Motrin every 6 hours. Our friends and family helped us monitor and keep track, and nothing was too private for other people to know about. Except for Diane’s stool softener, which I later learned I shouldn’t bring up in front of company.

 

Ethiopiar

I should explain the absence of my parents. They have taken a year long sabbatical to teach in Ethiopia. My dad has spent almost thirty years teaching history and coaching track at the same Catholic high school where he attended. My mom joined the school about fifteen years ago as a chemistry and biology teacher. After never traveling more than 30 minutes for a job in 30 years, they have decided to move to Africa for a year.

My mom has pushed adventure into their lives in recent years, a sort of Xtreme educator constantly looking for opportunities to travel. My dad is a reluctant participant, eager for the experience but often missing the comforts of home. When my mom says she really wants to experience the local culture, she means that she hopes to sleep on a mud floor, even if most of the locals are snoring away in soft beds. While my mom assumes that culture and comfort are opposite destinations, my dad is always hoping that the two can collide in some way. He has no desire to stay in a Hyatt in the middle of Ethiopia, but he wouldn’t mind seeing a Sealy mattress in the center of his remote shelter. We worry that our mom, in contrast, will be living in a bustling city and refuse to sleep in the comfortable room that has been provided for her.

They were initially placed by a program to live in two separate cities in Ethiopia: my mom was placed in the bustling city, while my dad was put in remote village hours away. My mom quickly renegotiated her position and found herself living with my dad after a couple of months.

My dad has a dual reputation at the Catholic high school: he is a solid part of the foundation that the school is built around, and a constant rabble rouser who is revolting against the school. He brings social consciousness into a conservative school and they accept it grudgingly. When he started a gay-straight alliance and a Jewish club at the school, they applauded his openness and compassion through gritted, Catholic teeth. Then he started a race and gender course, initiated a diversity committee, and brought in openly gay guest speakers. When he invited a comic into an assembly who alluded to the high number of gay priests in the Catholic church, they mostly ignored it, and went about their gay business with a watchful eye on my dad.

Once in Ethiopia, my dad began sending me journals, detailing the experience. He continued his battles against the high school administration, waging them now on an entire country. In one of his first journals he told me that the program training had advised against open discussion of homosexuality in Ethiopia. My dad’s response: "So I have taken every opportunity to bring it up since my arrival." My dad’s journals reveal his struggle to learn the culture and become a successful educator. They are marked by his unique sense of punctuation, most notably an overuse of quotation marks. Like the rumors of CIA involvement in Peace Corps programs, everything my dad is involved with seems suspect. He has been talking to the "Dean" of the school about "classes" he will be teaching, and is writing this journal at the table in his "home" where he now lives with my "mom." Everything I thought I knew about my dad has been thrown into question by those delicate quotation marks. I read the journals for subtext, and spy references. I have learned a few solid details about their stay. My dad writes: "So far I’ve seen a camel, a dead hyena, an ostrich, an African cat, and a foot and a half long bird that I took a picture of just outside the house."

I still believe that they are probably "teaching" in a remote part of Ethiopia, but I worry that my dad will be regarded as some sort of "gay missionary."

 

Year of the monkey

Of course our roommates were at the house waiting for our arrival home. My sister Julie, the cat Akasha, and the dog Spartacus. Having spent weeks lounging with Diane in front of animal birth specials, the pets were anxious to meet and lick the newest member of the family. Spartacus greeted Diane at the door, lunging with long nails at her fresh C-section wound. Then our roommates sniffed the baby a bit and walked off, not overly impressed. Well, Julie was pretty impressed and sniffed the baby a bit longer than the other two.

I thought about Akasha’s bad attitude, Spartacus’s general lack of training, and Julie’s willful independence. Wyatt would be our smartest pet. Just imagine a small creature that will eventually walk and talk. What kind of tricks can Wyatt do? Well, he can dribble a ball, or start his own business. He can come home drunk after his curfew and call me an asshole. We have so much power over this tiny, beautiful new life. He’s like a really smart pet monkey.


Our first days home blurred together with blissful exhaustion. I woke up hard in the middle of the night when Diane tried to get some assistance. "Yeah, yeah, I just changed him," I murmured, a sleep talk lie that I wouldn’t remember in the morning. Diane caught me consoling a pillow, and rocking a folded blanket to sleep. Diane’s hormones were in an equally confused state: laughter turned to tears and back to laughter with soap opera speed and intensity. All the little reminders of Wyatt made her cry. Phone calls from family, cards from friends, his cute expressions in bed, the socks that kept slipping off his curled feet, his little knit hat that read Baby Girl.

Those few days rolled around each other in a soft haze. We barely left the house, wandering to the corner store in our pajamas, roaming around in a happy, confused state as if we had all been pushed out of the womb together and were just finding our way.


The best advice I can give an anxious parent is to stay away from statistics. The doctor will stress the importance of the baby gaining weight, but won’t tell you that most babies experience a few days of weight loss before they start to fatten up. Beef eaters will try to scare vegetarian moms into steak dinners to help the baby gain weight. The largest baby I have ever seen was the hippies’ baby, nursing off of a vegan boob. He was enormous to the point where I was glad his mom was not eating meat, worried he would have developed into some kind of flesh eating monster. My yuppie brother was told at one point that his son was in the 98th percentile for head size. If you continue to keep a 98th percentile head into school, you will not only be at the top of your class, you will be the top of your class.


DOCTOR: I’m sorry Sir, but your son is currently operating a 98 percentile head on top of a 2 percentile body. If he keeps growing at this rate he’ll never walk correctly. In fact, he’ll surely fall over.

PARENT: Is there any hope?

DOCTOR: Maybe he could drag his head around for short distances.


I assure you, my brother’s kid has grown into a normal sized head, and my brother-in-law’s kid is not a vegan monster, he is a regular sized vegan in training. The doctors will also warn you about the baby’s color, worrying if they are too yellow, threatening that they will become just like Billy Reuben or John Dis (also known as jaundice). After talking to many parents with newborns, I have this to announce to the medical community: Babies are born small, and a little yellow. After they eat, they get bigger. If you let them get a little sun, they get less yellow. Some people run into complications, but basically newborns are small yellow creatures with sometimes disproportionate body parts. That’s what happens when you get shoved out of a small tunnel. And in a few days, they are just fine. There is one more question which seems to fascinate the doctors, which we were repeatedly asked: Is he peeing at least a foot? If anyone is sitting around and watching how far their newborn can pee across the living room floor, the baby’s health is probably the least of their problems. But I would like to think that Wyatt could do it. I want to be a proud dad. I looked one doctor square in the face and said, " Oh, I think he could pee at least two feet."


Despite my aversion to baby stats, I would like to mark a couple of Wyatt’s major developmental events during the first week or two, the moments that I found most significant. At about 8 days he lost his belly crust. We woke in the morning to find his chunky, dry belly nugget missing. After searching the sheets, we decided that the dog had probably eaten it. Hey, a lot of hippies eat the baby’s placenta, so the belly nugget is like a nice snack alternative. And two days later I noticed that Wyatt had little round nipples, which up through day 9 were merely slits in his chest, space savers for nipples to come. Our pet monkey was coming along quite nicely.

 

Back home

It is a strange and incredible feeling to leave the hospital with your own child. We bundled Wyatt up against the cold outside wind, which painted his fragile cheeks pink for the first time. I drove home with two hands on the wheel, like a nervous student driver, ready to start our new family.

Getting back home I remembered we were already part of a big family, a motley crowd of insane blood relations. My dad’s side of the family was generally pretty relaxed. My uncle Kevin left a message saying "Give me a call when you have some free time, which will probably be in about ten years." My mom’s family mostly wanted calls back in about ten seconds. My Aunt Jane’s message said, "Call immediately, I want all the details. Call collect. Now!" She followed up several phone calls with some emails, written in giant bright blue font. It was the first time I had seen someone yelling in an email. Mostly the family calls and cards carried the same message of love from the Boston area, 3,000 miles away: Congrats on the baby. GO PATRIOTS!!!

My favorite reaction came from my friend Ben, in response to a naked picture of Wyatt that I had emailed. He sent one email saying that he was confused because Wyatt looked like a girl. Apparently the picture was a little fuzzy near Wyatt’s balls. A couple of days later I received an apology email, saying that the first one was sent in a drunken stupor and he was very sorry. At the time I couldn’t remember what he was apologizing for. Days later I recalled that he had ridiculed my son’s genitalia. He had not only called Wyatt a girl. In essence he had said: Congratulations, but your son’s penis looks like a vagina.

Diane’s family had been in town, transforming our bedroom into a nursery and giving the house a surprise make-over. Diane’s mom, Garryann, has asked that I refer to her as Ruby to protect her identity. Ruby is convinced that our messy lifestyle is simply due to a lack of shelves and baskets. Somehow she thinks that more organization will make us more cleanly. Towels, for instance, are always lying about the bedroom. We returned from the hospital to find four towel racks hanging in the bathroom.

Diane’s dad, Nick, who I will refer to as Nick, is an accident prone handyman taking blood thinner medication. We arrived home to find both of them with fingers covered in band-aids. Nick had put together an attractive wooden Ikea toy chest, which had the slightly morbid design of human blood smeared along its side.

The day they were leaving, Ruby sat me down for a quick lesson in priorities. "Now remember, Wyatt is number one, Diane is number two, and you are number three." My first desire was to be number one, or even two, just for a little bit. Later I found myself more concerned about protecting my status as number three, wondering who could enter the line-up and take over my spot. Akasha the cat, Spartacus our dog, or maybe Ruby. She would later call the house and leave messages as Number Three. By the time they left, the number I was most conscious of was seven, seven towel racks hanging in our messy bathroom.

 

Kaiser motel

Our first three nights were spent in that hospital room. Our days were filled with nurses taking tests and assigning numbers to all of Wyatt’s behaviors. He breastfed at a 9, and his color dropped to an 8, but he kicked and screamed during some of the tests at a perfect 10. And at 2 days old, I believe he was reading at the level of a 3 week old baby, which is to say, absolutely nothing at all.

The nurses were generally sweet, but office politics were evident in many of the shift changes. "Hello, and how are you?" a nurse would ask, smiling as she arrived. "Oh, I see that your last nurse didn’t bother to change the sheets."

Diane would try to remain neutral. "Yeah, well, I’ve been in bed all day."

"Yes, dear, but any good nurse can change a bed while the patient is in it."

The shift to shift bickering seemed unnecessary, but I was impressed by the idea that a person could change the sheets of an occupied bed. Some of the comments were a little more disconcerting, like "Hey, who put that IV in there? That’s no good."

But our hospital stay was pretty enjoyable, about a 6 or 7. Visitors came through to bring us a touch of the outside world. The hippies arrived with bags of nuts and grains, and my brother showed up with a duck pillow and a cigar. By the second night, some of our adrenaline had faded to exhaustion. Diane suggested I had been sleeping a lot, referring to a 3 hour block where I was allowed to sleep non-stop. The third day we were rejuvenated by Wyatt’s first fart. I wrote this note to myself:

audible, stinky
followed by a little poop –
first green brown after 3 black tar offerings

Somehow Diane accused me of not being excited enough. When farts inspire poetry, I think any more excitement should be diagnosed as an emotional problem.


Our last night I fell into a comfortable deep hibernation. The alarm went off, Diane called the cell phone next to my head with the hospital phone, and then she began to throw objects at me from her bed. I got up briefly to address the ambush and help with Wyatt. Diane made me move the chair closer so she could whack me if she needed something. Somehow I slept a little less peacefully after that. The threat of violence has a strange effect on my sleep.

Hours later I woke suddenly as Diane reached out from her hospital bed, with Wyatt latched onto her boob, and smacked me repeatedly in the leg. She pointed just above me to the window, where an old woman was pressing her face up against the glass. Old faces were not meant to be pressed against glass, late at night where my headboard should be. I tried to talk to her through the thick window. It seemed that she had walked through the wrong door and found herself locked outside in the courtyard. Diane buzzed the nurse for help, as I tried to figure out how to let her back in.

The overnight nurse brushed through the room to the window. "Don’t worry, we have security. She won’t get you." She reached over me to shut the curtain.

Humanitarian considerations aside, I had no real fear of this 80 year old woman. Even with such little sleep, in my weakened condition, I think I could’ve taken her.


By the next morning we were anxious to bring Wyatt home. We had served out a mandatory 72 hour stay for premie births, and were hoping the doctor would clear us to leave. The last test performed on Wyatt was the most brutal; it seemed almost barbaric. And Wyatt screamed like we had never heard him before. "He’s got quite a pair of lungs on him," said one of the nurses. A very upbeat student nurse replied, "He’s the most alert baby I’ve seen all morning."

It was a state mandated tests for diseases. Sounds normal enough. The test sheet had 5 nickel-sized circles on it which need to be completely filled in, with the baby’s blood. The nurse pricked Wyatt’s heel and then squeezed his tiny foot to use it like an ink pen, carefully filling each of the 5 circles. It’s the devil’s scantron, coloring in circles with newborn baby’s blood. We wanted to get back home before they brought out the leeches.

Perhaps the state mandates a brief period of art, and torture, to convince nervous parents to take their baby home. And so we did.

the pope meets furilla 

First night

Having Wyatt all to ourselves in the hospital room was miraculous. It feels as if nobody has ever done this before. Finally the swarm of nurses settles in for the night, the visitors go home, and you are left alone in a room with a small creature.

Wyatt spent his first night almost exclusively in his mom’s and dad’s arms. We had no desire to put him in that little plastic box, a microwave tray on wheels that looked like the future of baby production. We held him while he slept, and even as we changed him. Late that night I lay in the dark on a brown pull-out chair. Wyatt slept on my chest as I thought about being a dad, and my dad. It felt funny not to have our parents, or any other adults around. I had the strange feeling of being the adults in the hospital room, the start of a new generation. This is our little creature, and we can do whatever we want with him. Who will tell us not to misbehave?


Neither of us had slept much the night before, and our first night with Wyatt didn’t start until about 4 a.m. The next morning arrived rather abruptly, and the events unfolded in a sleepy haze. (The following events are recollected through a few scribbled notes on the back of an envelope. I appeared to be an overly conscious spouse with all of my dutiful note taking. The nurses didn’t realize that most of my notes were less about the care of my baby and more about the quirks in their personalities and hair styles.)

7:45 am
I was woken up from a deep sleep by a frenetic doctor. He rummaged through a pile of papers. He spoke real fast like the voice on the end of radio ads muttering disclaimers. "Great . . . sign here . . . and here. I’ll be back in 15 minutes to pick up the forms." I crawled off of the chair, just now realizing that Diane had already taken Wyatt and was feeding him. The stack of papers were birth certificate forms. 15 minutes to officially write down our baby’s name. The name Wyatt had been decided for months, but the rest of the name had been frequently debated. We had talked about giving him my middle name, Joseph. But the last name was definitely a matter of contention. We each envisioned a beautiful baby boy that shared our last name. Wyatt Joseph Nicola or Wyatt Joseph Carey. Diane was still hopped up on medication, and weak from her Magnesium IV and recent surgery. I took full advantage. As two nurses came in, and the phone was ringing, I slipped in a suggestion of Wyatt Joseph Nicola Carey, and she agreed.

The last page in the stack was a paternity form. I immediately thought of all those cheap talk show formulas that involve surprising a guest with paternity test results. It made me pause, but I signed on as half of Wyatt’s gene pool.

8:50 am
This scrawled note again took the form of a short poem, an almost haiku:

First poop!
My brother warned me
Black tar, sticky taffy, clinging to his bum

9:40 am
A head nurse arrived with several students at her coattails to perform Wyatt’s health check. She instructed the trainees in a long, strange series of tests. It involved a lot of poking and bending poor little Wyatt, naked and helpless in the plastic box. The head nurse sat him up, held his hands and then dropped him backwards. "Wow, he did great with that," she declared. It seemed more a test of the room’s gravity, which apparently was up to par. Then she began a full body inspection, which included an inexplicable titty twister, and a careful count of his testicles. "Check one at a time to make sure there’s two," she advised. "Hold one while you check the other." Apparently you can easily recount the same one several times. The policy of holding one while you check the other was probably a procedural change put into place after some careless miscalculation by a student nurse. Perhaps she scared a new set of parents by yelling out, Hey, this kid has seven balls.

 

A man intact

Even in the emotional blur of seeing your son for the first time, you quickly notice his enormous balls. For some parents, who don’t yet know the sex of the baby, it’s almost the first look you take. I have heard all sorts of claims about the large size of a newborn boy’s testicles. Someone told me once that boys are born with fully grown balls, and that the rest of the human body sort of grows around them and catches up in adulthood. Dads seem to talk far too much about their newborn sons’ balls, and there is always a strange pride that goes along with it.

Wyatt’s were no disappointment. He arrived pink and screaming, with big flat balls and a little uncircumcised penis in the middle, like a lily. I emailed some of my friends an early picture of Wyatt naked, getting his sponge bath. The balls were so big as to almost disregard the penis that lay atop them. In fact, a friend of mine named Ben actually responded with this message: "Congratulations. But I’m confused, I thought you said you were having a boy."


Several of the nurses asked if Wyatt would be circumcised. We told them that he would not be. They were as impressed with his penis as they were with Diane’s nipples. "Good for you," one of the nurses declared. "Well, I mean good for him." The nurses seemed united in their support of uncircumcised penises. I pictured teams of nurses striking at local hospitals against the practice of circumcision. They carried signs like We won’t come in, if it ain’t got that skin. The crowd erupted in cheers of "1, 2, 3 . . . 4skin . . . 1, 2, 3, foreskin." Speakers led a march on the capital building, the whole crowd chanting together: "What do we want? Penis! How do we want it? Covered!"

The nurses referred to it as an unnecessary operation, but I have seen even stronger reactions against circumcision. The most outspoken critics I have ever seen appeared together on a public access, local TV show. It was a documentary about people who had felt violated, almost as if a small piece of themselves had been taken away. They talked about efforts to replace the skin with plastics and fabrics, a false turtleneck for the winter months. They mourned the foreskin’s disappearance and felt it’s absence, the way amputees feel the pain of missing limbs. They invented their own terminology to express their longing for a foreskin: circumcised people were referred to as cut, and uncircumcised penises were described as intact. My favorite quote was a poignant moment in an interview with a man who had been cut as a baby. The camera zoomed in close to his face. "The first time I saw a man intact, I cried."

We couldn’t be sure if Wyatt’s penis would ever illicit such a dramatic response, but as new parents, we can only hope that our children will have a profound effect on the world. We do not have such intense feelings about the decision. Basically, we have heard that medical reasoning for circumcison has largely been abandoned, and that it decreases sensation. So why bother? Outside of cultural and religious rationale, most people today consider circumcision primarily for one reason: they worry that their son’s penis won’t match the penises of other kids at school, and more importantly their own. Matching penises? I’m not much for coordinating colors in my living room or posed family photos, though I can almost appreciate it. But this current trend of matching family genitals seems a little extreme -- matching your son’s penis like a family Christmas sweater. What if the dad has a strange hook shaped penis, or one testicle. Isn’t he just a gorgeous little baby. Oh look, he has his mother’s eyes . . . and his dad’s penis.

At this early stage, I don’t think it matters much if Wyatt’s penis is circumcised, or retains its natural hood. Right now, Wyatt is all balls anyway.

 

Not bad, for a premie

Wyatt was squirming and making noise, looking around a bit. Apparently he was very alert, and the nurses were impressed. He took to breastfeeding right away. A nurse paused by Diane with a clipboard: "He looks good breastfeeding. I would say a 9 or 10."

"Of course he does," I laughed. "He’s got an Apgar of double 9s."

But the nurse was otherwise occupied. She watched Wyatt closely then turned to Diane. "Wow, you got great nipples."

"Thanks?" Diane muttered, then looked at me.

I shrugged my shoulders. "I’d give them at least an 8."

Nurses continued to flutter about the room, gathering around Diane like moths to a porch light. And they were all quite impressed with Diane’s boobs. A student nurse concurred, "Great nipples," then gave Diane’s nipples a thumbs up and headed back down the hallway.

I assumed that her eraser-shaped nipples were particularly suited for the job. I felt Darwin’s evolution creep into the room and settle on my girlfriend’s chest. Then another nurse told Diane, "You’re doing good, you have a nipple for him to suck on." Perhaps these nurses were just easily impressed, handing out 9s and 10s to almost any misshapen pink nub that passed as a nipple.

Later a lactation expert came to verify the nurses’ reports. She was younger than the boob expert that had run our class, and spoke about breastfeeding with a thick, Mexican accent.

"Ah, very good nipples." She showed Diane several different breastfeeding positions. "You might want to hold him sideways, like this." She stood with one arm out, in the classic Heisman trophy stance. Well, a Heisman trophy for breastfeeding, which I began to think Diane might be a strong contender for. The nurse struck the winning combination of boobs and football, perhaps inspired by Janet Jackson’s recent superbowl nipple exposure. She held her Heisman posture and smiled at Diane, "You have big breasts, that’s good. Because you have big breasts, you can do football holder."

My sister Julie leaned over and whispered, "If you have big titties, you can do football players."

 

Panties

For over an hour we stared at Wyatt’s lifeless picture like a little wooden Pinocchio, and then he miraculously came to life. He arrived with soft, puffy features in his face, and long, wrinkled fingers and toes. He looked the tiny figure of a life in its last phase, an old man awaking to find a new vessel for another life. We all cuddled and kissed him before the nurse arrived for his sponge bath.

Then other nurses began to traffic the room again, catering to Diane and Wyatt. The solemn mood shifted for me slightly as nurses began to talk about putting "panties" on Diane. An older woman crossed the room to Diane, then turned to yell into the hallway with the utmost delicacy: "Hey, can you bring in some panties for her."

"Sure, panties are on the way," came booming down the hall, then an echo of "panties for room 12" that crept down the corridor like a soft breeze.

I must have heard the word panties about 10 times in the next few minutes. I have a certain sensitivity to the word panties. However, this crowd of nurses saying panties to each other was, well, not quite how I would have imagined it. When the infamous panties finally arrived, they were not the kind of panties that have earned the word its power and reputation. Hospital panties are actually large, grandma undies that ride low on the hips. They are made out of gauze, and when not in use appear completely rectangular in shape, like a cheese cloth or a dish rag.

Wyatt took his first sponge bath. He whimpered as the nurse scrubbed him down. I’m sure he’ll look back in time and feel that he was misinformed about the concept of a nurse’s spongebath. I believe there is a lot of false advertising that nurses pedal about their panties and sponge baths. And the public has been seduced into using their hospitals.

During the birthing process we experience the collapse of sexual mystery, and the foundation of family that replaces it. I kissed my clean baby as Diane lay snuggling him in her panties, then turned away to call my mom and dad.


I managed to get in touch with my parents, who were in Ethiopia at the time. Talking with my parents on the phone almost brought them into the room. The time and space between us collapsed in the moment, and I felt as if they might be waiting at the end of the hall for the nurses to let them in. The connection had a soft crackling, and a five second time delay, but my mom and dad came through clear enough. My dad was real emotional, passing the torch of being a dad. My mom wanted all of the numbers and details: "What was his height? And weight?" She paused like she was punching them into some formula. "And what about his Apgar?"

"His epcar?" I repeated.

One of the nurses called over, "It’s 9 and 9, and they don’t really give out 10s."

"Oh, wow," my mom replied. "That’s excellent."

"Yeah," I said, "my son has a damn good Nascar rating. And the judges never give out tens."

"No, they usually don’t," my mom responded, as if she had been in the room when the nurse said it. "That’s great news. Double 9s! He must have a good color."

Indeed he did. Nurses had been coming in the room and commenting on his color. "Great color," they kept saying. "Wow, for a premie he has an excellent color." I guess pink covered in white scum is considered a really good color for a newborn.

Smash and grab

The traveling circus packed up and squeezed through the thin doorway: the bleeping and flashing machines were shut off, the gaggle of doctors and nurses stumbled out, and then the lady with the swollen belly that had a person living inside her was wheeled out of the room on a bed. I was left alone in the hospital room, with a neatly folded pile of baby blue scrubs. I had been told to put on the scrubs and I could rejoin the madness. I stripped down and put on the shirt and pants. I looked in the mirror and felt like I might try to perform the C-section myself. Hell, other folks were trying weird shit on my girlfriend, supposed doctors dressed as medical clowns trying to make balloon animals in her uterus. I considered wearing an undershirt but decided to stick with the Dr. Chest Hair look. Then I added the scrubs accessories – puffy blue shoe covers that stre