Sorry for the extended absence. I've been super busy with the job hunt and marking roughly a billion undergraduate essays. The job prospects are heating up, and I've been forwarded by a recruiting agency to a significant BC employer. Keep those fingers crossed.

So Lis has been out of town this week, and it's given me more time to reflect on the baby and what it all means. I have to say that I'm getting really excited. We're at week 31 as of yesterday, and at this point the baby has a very high likelihood of being healthy even if born tomorrow. I've been thinking about what it's going to be like to have this little person in the house all of a sudden. It's hard to describe, but I just picture him in all of the spots where he'll be. I see the crib, and I imagine him looking up at me. I wonder if he'll be as chubby-cheeked as I was when I was a tyke (pictured above). My parents nicknamed me Diefenbaker (pictured below right). What a solid little dude I was.

Most of all I just can't wait to welcome him to the family. I think We'll be a good little bohemian bunch. Our place is just a tad chaotic at all times, and I feel like this will be the perfect environment for a young person. He's going to be surrounded with books and art and smart people with PhDs. He's going to see his parents living in a great city with great people, and he's going to have a wonderful family across the world. I can practically see him there in the morning, cheery eyed and with his whole life ahead of him.

Ah, but I wax poetic. I can't make any promises as to how many posts I'll be doing over the next while, but I wanted to write one while I had time and let you know that this thing is still going on!

So we went to a breastfeeding class Saturday morning, and got some great tips and pointers on things to watch out for. I never thought I'd be so completely up to speed on cracked nipples and the signs of a good latch, but so it goes. I was super proud of Lis, who basically knew as much as if not more than the nurse who was running the show (largely, she tells me, from Dr. Jack Newman's A Guide to Breastfeeding which you can see here). Even though my wife's amazing, the people at BC Women's and Children's Hospital are actually really good. It's a top research facility, so they're always cutting edge in their practices there. I feel extremely lucky that this is the hospital we'll be delivering at.

One issue that we've encountered before and ran into again during the class is the question of maternity leave. The World Health Organization recommends that women breastfeed regularly for two years, until the baby's immune system is fully developed. This is a noble and worthy goal, particularly for such pro-breastfeeding parents as ourselves, but there's the ideal and the real. The facts are that Lis will likely only be able to take four months off before she has to return to work. This is a strictly economic decision. She could keep breastfeeding the baby at regular intervals, but the milk wouldn't be that good if we weren't eating.

What I really didn't like in the class was the subtle but unmistakable implication that we were somehow irresponsible parents for not committing to two full years of breastfeeding. She reiterated it in several ways, including discouraging mothers from taking the occasional night off and letting dad do a bottle feed. I think this was more than just a kind of paranoid guiilt at the nurse's lecture on our part. Lis and I were mulling it over, and there's something a bit weird going on in the way things are framed. Basically, a while back -- say the 1950s -- a woman would be considered irresponsible if she went off to work and left her baby to a caretaker. Her irresponsibility was framed in terms of neglecting her natural womanly duties. Then the feminists of the 60s and 70s fought their asses off to buck the oppressive categories of what was "natural" and "not natural" for a woman to be and do. Women went to work if they wanted. They stayed home if they wanted.

And yet, here we are, in the 2010s, suddenly hearing all of this discourse about how women should really be staying with their kids long term again. Now it's framed in terms of baby's health, and yet it seems to be potentially serving the same oppressive function that the "woman at home" did in the 1950s. Obviously babies and their health are extremely important, but at what point do the mother's rights and needs start to weigh in? Must she commit to total sainthood, or face the wrath of social judgement? (Interestingly in Bringing up Bebe, the French mothers are much more nonchalant about discontinuing breastfeeding after a few months, if they start at all. Did feminism do better in Europe?)

A few times in the past, I've been taking the bus somewhere when a parent hops on with a kid who is losing it. It starts with some fussing and furtive attempts to hush him or her up, but the efforts to soothe seem to make things progressively worse. In no time the bus fills with inescapable wails of dejection.

My mind goes through a similar thought process each time I'm witnessing this. First I blame the parent. then I chastize myself for being so uncompassoinate. Then I start to wonder what it would be like if I was in that situation. Then I start to wonder about why the kid is actually being fussy. Then I ponder briefly that it's because the parent doesn't know how to discipline the child. Then I feel bad for the kid. Then I realize the kid's probably just uncomfortable or hungry or tired. Then I start realizing that I'm a little uncomfortable. Then I start to empathize with the kid. Then I realize that I wish I could be screaming too. Then... I am serene, and my heart fills with the goodness of the universe. I have once again come to the realization that I am a mature adult and have repressed my tantrums to the point where they only exert themselves through eye twitches and uncontrollable inner monologues (and sometimes dialogues).

Now that we're having a kid ourselves, I've started to ask what I would do differently than said struggling parent. I think I've come to appreciate the paradoxical parenting dictum that to have freedom you have to stick to a schedule. If the kid expects a nap at a certain time, and it doesn't arrive, it's like a balding man with a bad hairpiece. There's going to be hell toupee...

ahem...

As I was saying, it's going to be a bad situation. I think that most parents realize this, and the ones who are struggling on the bus have usually found themselves in some unavoidable scenario where they simply had to be out during tired time. This is going to be tricky for me, I know, because I tend to push myself for hours and hours past the point of being hungry and tired, and I somehow don't think our baby is going to be able to keep up. I'm sure his exacerbated screams keep me in check, though, if I don't keep his routines in check.


PS I am so happy to hear that the Amber Alert that was out across BC found a happy(ish) resolution.

http://www.theprovince.com/sparked+Amber+Alert+found+sleeping+Montana/7560464/story.html

No, this isn't a post about people like Donald Trump throwing tantrums on their social media accounts. I'm talking about babies in the more literal sense. A few years ago, say 2006, all of my friends suddenly hopped onto Facebook and stated sharing the funny and bizarre (and, yes, banal) details of their lives. It was all so innocent at first. We announced our political views in single-word statements. We told the world that our relationships were either official, or blithely stated that they were complicated. We even dared state our religious leanings. That was until the big social media hangover kicked in.

Flash to 2008. There was this huge rash of breakups among my circle of friends. Chalk it up to an age thing. A lot of people in their late twenties started to hear the passing years telling them things were either going nowhere with their partners or that they needed to be locked down more definitely. I noticed that, following the breakup wave, people stopped posting their relationship statuses until they were wither engaged or married. It was frankly embarrassing for people to have to announce their life disasters. We became wary.

This (somewhat arbitrary) moment gave many of us our first direct taste of the online privacy issues we'd been hearing so much about on Fox news (yeah right). I remember when I accidentally announced that my seven year relationship had ended (it was an accident because I didn't mean for the change to immediately go up on everyone's feeds). From such events, many of us experienced just how voyeuristic and invasive social media could be.

Now flash to 2011. Suddenly it seems like all of our friends are having kids, and we're preparing to hop on the bandwagon ourselves. But we've all been burned by over-sharing on our networks. Many of us have added at least a handful of vague, distant friends from our distant pasts, people we'd barely say hi to if we walked by them on the street. Do we really want these people seeing our kids? Maybe we're fine with posting a very select few photos here and there on the 'book, but what's to be done about all those unintended privacy consequences?

I wish there was an easy answer. The fact is, my kid's going to be so amazingly fantastic that it's going to be difficult not to share his life a little. I guess the smart thing to do is to manage what info gets out. Keep high privacy setting on your Facebook profile, choose who can see your albums, and use all of those acquaintance and list settings that are available if you're not sure about someone but aren't yet ready to completely sever the ties. If you're a bloggy-type, like me, be sure to protect your identity and not give out unnecessary details (mostly I just use first names, and though it would be easy enough to figure out who I am, it would be much more difficult to track anybody else that I've mentioned). Technology enables such a wonderful, rich, textured exchange of our lives, and it can connect us with like-minded individuals we'd historically have never had the chance to meet. It would be a shame to limit ourselves just because there's the possibility of a creep here or there. I suppose, as with may other things, it just boils down to knowing your personal limits and being smart about the way you interact with the world.

So we spent eight hours on Friday at the BC Women's and Children's Hospital, learning all the ins and... outs of what to expect in the last few months of the pregnancy. There was a lot of emphasis on labour, which was good because, to be honest, I had no idea what it would be like. I mean, I knew it was going to be bad, but I quickly realized I was basing pretty much everything on movies. One of the key things they don't tell you in the movies is that it goes on and on and on and on for hours and hours and hours. If you've ever seen Knocked Up, you'll know what I mean about false expectations. The characters have plenty of time to have long, important conversations between the contractions. In fact, the director really only illustrates "labour" by conveniently timed pangs at the beginning of each scene. The delivery looks painful, but the scene lasts all of thirty seconds. Apparently, this picture of things is a little... minimalist.

I was impressed with how pro-active and progressive they've become when it comes to pregnancy. They're aware of every potential problem, and can identify any issues early enough to give baby a way better chance than he or she would have had 35 years ago when I was born. They leave as little as possible up to chance, and yet they acknowledge that every parent will have unique expectations and demands. They try to avoid unnecessary "interventions", and encourage parents to ask questions at each stage. Vancouver is an extremely diverse place, and to fit every parent into the same box would be individually and culturally offensive for a lot of people. It's a neat hospital in that it recognizes that birth is so much more than a medical procedure. Rachel, the nurse guiding the class, was a real firecracker.

As a part of the class, we got to go on a tour of the maternity ward Lis will be delivering in. The rooms look very private and peaceful, and it seems like the hospital is really geared towards the baby (apparently it's one of the few in Canada to actually have the WHO-UNICEF "Baby Friendly" designation). They're very pro breast-feeding and pro-natural birth, because they recognize the amazing health benefits each of these has for the baby. After the delivery, it's straight to skin-to-skin time, which is supposed to be good for temperature regulation and getting the baby on board with the boob. It was all very comforting to see. I'm feeling good about this.

I managed to get choked up a few times during the class. I'm so excited and scared, and seeing several deliveries was pretty powerful. It's clearly going to take all I have to keep it together when the big day finally comes along. Anyway, we progress. We're entering the third trimester now. Ready or not, here it comes!

Rawr! I used to love making wooden dinosaur skeleton models when I was a kid. I had Stegosaurus, Pterodactyl, Brontosaurus, and of course, my lovely little companion to the left: Chomposaurus MAX!

Lis and I did a QOL today, ambling around Granville Island for a couple of hours and just soaking in the sun, water, mountains, and uber-crafty aura of the place. A QOL, for the uninitiated, stands for a "Quality of Life" and is used as a noun in place of "constitutional", "afternoon off", or "I gotta stop working or I'm gonna snap break."

On our little jaunt, we came across a part of the Island called the Kids Market, an area that I had previously mentally nullified but that now, suddenly seemed relevant. Attuned to this strange and secret zone, we decided to take a little peek inside, and found a collection of possibly the coolest kids stores I'd ever seen. Each forewent the raucous and intrusive popular capital brands in favor of obscure and clever little toys for the ages -- all sorts of tiny plastic animals, wooden train sets, die-cast toy trucks, science toys, puzzles, and, yes, wooden dinosaur models. It was like the proprietors actually cared about what they were selling rather than just how much. It was lovely.

(Cyndi and Vince be forewarned: When you come here, we're going to the Kids Market).

One of the many ambling topics we covered on our QOL was the speculation that there is now an entire market for parents who want to introduce their kids to the same simple toys that lined the shelves years ago. Seeing a model such as the one pictured above practically breaks my heart, and I can guarantee that when I'm faced with the choice of buying junior a nifty dinosaur model that improves both manual dexterity and curiosity vs. a mass produced, plastic, smack-you-in-the-face-with-advertising, latest greatest whateverthefuck (or, for the initiated, a MPPSYITFWALGWTF), I think the simpler, more refined option will win out. Call me old fashioned, but I think there's something to be said for value and quality.

One of the experiences that I've had that's unique to being an expecting parent is the phenomenon of noticing every other expecting or already bechildrened person. For years, I counted myself among those who thought of children alternatively as a minor annoyance (pun!) or something worth paying no attention to whatsoever. Now, all of the sudden, I am curious as to who all of these parents and parents-to-be are. I want to know their stories. I want to know due dates. I want to know about services. I want to know their plans for the zombie apocalypse (well, actually that one's kind of ongoing, come to think of it).

I've noticed Lis is getting a lot of this now, too, from others. She tends to be a tad on the reserved side, but in the last month especially more and more people have been asking her very directly about the pregnancy. It's kind of funny, because at first she was oblivious to why suddenly everyone wanted to know how she was feeling. She's still adjusting to all the attention. Random chats aside, I also see her have these contented shared glances with other mothers. It's kind of cool. They're in the club. One day we ended up striking up a random conversation with a couple in the IKEA, because we both happened to be shopping in the crib aisle (a place that registered in my attention precisely zero times before that day).

When we see little ones on the bus or out for walks, it has taken on this whole new significance. Life is kind of amazing that way. Even though we can technically see and interact with any other person (except invisible people, of course), we all occupy these very different, concurrent realities at any given time. When I was a grad student, I barely had any awareness of what people with other lifestyles were doing. There were all of these people who worked at jobs for a living. Now, I can't remember what it's like... oh wait, I'm virtually unemployed. Regardless, it's amazing to me that we can all overlap on a daily basis and be so clueless as to what one another is up to.

My awesome sister-in-law sent me an article about this great idea: a parental bucket list of things to do with your little one before he or she grows up and moves out. It got me to thinking. I feel like we should have one of these for pretty much every day of our lives. There was that famous Randy Pausch lecture awhile back, where a professor who was dying of liver cancer participated in a series with the theme "what lecture would you give if it was your last on earth?" The talk was life changing. The big takeaway was that it's important to know and do the things you want to do, whatever the context.

So, what are some things that would go on my 'Before He Leaves' list for Junior? These are arranged in no particular order, and the list is not at all exhaustive.

• Teach him to appreciate coffee shop conversations. Obviously it'll be apple juice instead to coffee until a certain age, but I truly hope he can come to appreciate the joy of meandering, enthusiastic conversations about ideas and life.
• Take a family road trip down the West Coast with him.
  
• Visit the Rockies. A more beautiful landscape I have never seen in all my days.
  
• Read tons of books with him. And talk about them. A lot.
• Teach him pointlessly grandiose words (and when to use them). In my humble opinion, a robust vocabulary holds many keys to a subtler and less alienating understanding of the world.
  
• Create an awesome theme room for him. I'm thinking Star Wars. Lis is on board. X-Wing bed? Yes, please.
  
• Teach him to meditate. For a long time, I've held dear the image of a child and I meditating in front of a large, bright window overlooking the sea.
  
• Convey to him the utter importance of building strong family and friendship bonds. Sine qua non.
  
• Teach him how to take courageous risks. I'm not talking about being stupid, but understanding the value of going outside his comfort zone for the sake of personal expansion and personal ethics.
• Teach him how to enjoy both technology and its absence.
• Encourage his active meddling with spaces and technology. Hacked iPhones, self-programmed computer and web environments, all-black bedroom walls... He needs to know that the wild and crazy world is his to shape.
  
• Visit a country of his choosing. This could be challenging when he then proceeds to say Sealand, but hey, you only live once.

There are a ton more, but I'll stop there. Looking over these, I realize that there's a lot of teaching in there, but I am an estranged university professor after all. I'd love to hear about other people's list items of things they must do to complete their human journey (either with regard to kids or not).

So if you’re a regular reader of the blog, you’ve probably noticed that my posts have been somewhat patchier in the past few weeks than they were in the early days of the blog. I feel like part of it is that I’ve processed a fair bit more of the cultural significance of having a baby, which is something I'd never really pondered over. However, today I was thinking that there may also be another reason things have tapered off around here of late. I think I may be avoiding the subject as a way of clinging to our last couple months as child-free adults. Of course I’m excited about the baby, but things are getting very real very fast, and I’m realizing there’s a certain indulgence we’ve been taking in our free time these days. We’re soaking it in. Even if we don't know exactly how things are going to change when the baby's born, we know the change itself is going to be massive.

I’ve also been really busy trying to make something work for work in this crazy economy. I want so badly to be able to provide an awesome, prosperous life for our son, and the thought of this career search dragging on any longer than is necessary is, frankly, upsetting. The last thing I want to be in such a situation is a whiner, so all of my extra time and energy is usually going into actually trying to do something about it. That doesn’t leave a lot of spare time for blogging, sadly.

Still, I’ve made  a promise to myself to try and do the full five posts this week (my long-lost ideal). The juggling act has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember anyway, so it’s time to throw the blog back into the mix more regularly and see how it goes. I suppose I can consider it practice for when things get really crazy in a couple of months.