Nilda's Baby Shower

Nilda's baby shower was last Saturday and I hear it was great. I wouldn't know because I bailed after about 10 minutes. My job was to park my mom's car after she arrived with my sister and my aunt. I came back to an apartment full of women and had to get out because the estrogen was suffocating me. Here is Nilda with the grandmas. One's "Abuela," the other is "Mom Mom." I'm going to let you guess which one is which.
Here is Nilda with her cousin Kristen and her best friend Aura, both of whom I am told were a big help during the day. Look at how beautiful my wife looks!
They played the baby shower game where the women have to guess how many toilet paper sheets it takes to wrap around Nilda's belly, and whoever gets the closest wins. This means that I'm stuck with this crappy one-ply roll of toilet paper that I will never get rid of.
This is Nilda's cake. It's a Dominican cake, which means there's no "s" on "Congratulations." Con-grad-you-late-shun! On another food-related note, Hispanics make way too much rice. The population of Thailand went hungry for a day because Nilda had a baby shower.
We have wonderful and generous friends and families who got Baby C many wonderful gifts and toys. Here are a few examples. This is the MamaRoo, which is essentially the Ferrari of baby seats, a bouncy-seat and jumper in one. I first saw this in the store and said to Nilda, "Who needs all this?," to which she replied, "We registered for that." Check out my new Ferrari, bitches!
As expected, most of the baby stuff is adorable. Check out this adorable elephant humidifier. You know it's adorable because it says so right on the box.
This giraffe sound machine is so adorable that I want to punch it in the face.
This is a collapsible tub for the baby, which Nilda says proves that we didn't need to get the tub that I wanted, and that we could have installed the standing shower that she wanted. Thanks, Matt and Mary! (Yes, I'm a dick.)
I'm ridiculously excited. I'm also suffering from a drop in testosterone (which is completely normal!) that makes me overly emotional. I look at 12-year-old boys on the subway and wonder what our kid will look like at that age, and hope that he makes it to that age okay. I choke up just thinking about that god damn Google commercial with the dad sending emails to his daughter. Hopefully I'll feel better after I watch Beaches and Terms of Endearment.

P.S. - It's been less than one week and Nilda is 90% done with her thank you cards. Weirdo.

Alex Honnold

Alex Honnold is a free solo rock climber, which means he climbs vertical walls of rock by himself, without any ropes or climbing gear. That means that if he makes one mistake, he falls to his death. He climbs up huge walls by sticking the tips of his fingers into tiny cracks and twisting them, resting his entire body weight on this little amount of contact with the rock. This motherfucker is crazy.

Here's a video showing his free solo ascent of Half Dome. Half Dome was first climbed in 1957 over five days, an expedition that was a remarkable achievement for its time. About 50 years later, Honnold free soloed that same route in about three hours.



At about 20:00 minutes into the video, you can see him start to freak out while standing on a ledge thousands of feet in the air. He says to a guy holding a camera off to the side, "I'm kind of freaking out here." Then he pulls his shit together and finishes the climb. Idiot. A redeeming factor about him is that he's a total dork.

He also has set records in speed climbing. In 11 hours, he both climbed Half Dome one morning in 2 hours and 9 minutes, and then climbed 3,000-feet up The Nose of El Capitan in only five hours and 49 minutes, a route that normally takes two to four days.

Hey, kid inside of Nilda, YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO GO ROCK CLIMBING!!! EVER!!

The Birthing Class

On Saturday, Nilda and I went to a birthing class at the hospital, with 11 other couples. Here's what I learned:

• This shit gonna hurt.
• Nilda is going to be a pain in the ass and I, as the father, have to deal with her.
• If you put ice in your hand for 30 seconds, it hurts. But if you concentrate on your breathing and focus your eyes on one point, the pain becomes slightly more tolerable. This is the point of Lamaze.
• I do not want Nilda to have a c-section. It is major surgery that can exponentially increase your recovery time, right when you have a newborn at home. About 75% of the class was about ways to avoid a c-section.
• When you actually go into labor, stay at home for as long as you can. Once you get to the hospital, an imaginary clock starts ticking by when you have to get a c-section.
• There was a section on how to talk to doctors and nurses without sounding rude. For example, ask general questions instead of saying what you don't want. It was very comforting to be told how we have to be delicate with the hospital staff, because they're sensitive and will retaliate.
• Some couples will come up with a birth plan, setting forth their desires for the birth. The doctors and nurses at the hospital will ignore you, so don't even bother.
• You are not allowed to see the doctor perform the circumcision. This wasn't such a big deal to me, but one father there really wanted to see his son get circumcised.
• Labor is the contraction of the muscles in the uterus and abdomen. It is caused by a hormone called oxytocin, the synthetic version of which is called pitocin. Pitocin is a bad word.
• There are more c-sections on the east coast than the west coast, which is related to the fact that the east coast relies on pitocin more than the west coast.
• I thought that monitoring the baby before the birth sounded like a good idea, but this means strapping sensors to the mother that prevent her from getting out of bed, which may slow down the labor and lead to pitocin and, if the pregnancy still does not progress, a c-section. Once again, stay at home for as long as possible so that the hospital can't fuck you up.
• Wait for as long as you can before you get an epidural. If you get an epidural too soon, you will be sitting for too long and your labor may slow down, so you are more likely to get a c-section. If you wait too long to get an epidural and you're ready to push, it will be too late and you're fucked.
  
• One nice mother called an epidural an "epidermal." I'm sure it was an accident. It had to be an accident, right?
• If you are reading or seeing anything about labor, you are going to see female nipples. Not movie sex scene nipples, but massive, saucer size nipples.
• 10:00 am to 6:00 pm on a Saturday is a loooong day. I don't have to read any more books about labor, right?
  
• We have one more Saturday of classes in both newborn care and breastfeeding. This time, I say we do NOT take mushrooms beforehand.
  

We've come a long way and I am now anxious about the labor. As difficult as I know it will be with a newborn, I just want to have the kid home and know that he and Nilda are both ok. Just to see how far we've come, check out Nilda at 4 weeks and now, at 31 weeks:

Porn For Mommies

All mothers take pride and enjoyment in setting up a baby's room. It's a combination of design and functionality, requirement research and forethought. It's the female equivalent of packing the suitcases and bags into the trunk. Here's the perfect little boy room that Nilda has put together so far:

I tried to prevent Nilda from putting flowers everywhere, but since I've failed at that in my own life, I don't see how Nilda's son is going to escape flowers, either. Notice how the lamp and rug are Penn State's colors. And Nilda has advised me that the little ottoman from Target is, in fact, staying, which apparently was a matter of much debate. For the record, the chair rail was my idea. It's not something I'm proud of. Later on, I'll post pictures of furniture and crib, but this is all I can take for tonight.

Speaking of little boys, this is a video a guy shot of his son watching Empire Strikes Back and learning that Darth Vader is Luke's dad. Look at the disbelief and shock this kid goes through.

P.S. - Someone please get this out of my head.