Ruby & Sue

"You might live in the Bay Area if...you have more Subaru Outbacks than you do children."

Meet Ruby & Sue. Will liked Sue so much that we added Ruby to our family this week.
Pretty good chance that Ruby will be Will's first car in sixteen years.

-HammerHead

"People much less capable than you..."

"...have raised healthy, happy children." -Our Pediatrician at Will's Day-4 checkup

I recently found out that one of my dearest friends is expecting her first child. She asked for advice. So having recently entered my rookie year of parenthood, I decided to share what I have learned in the past twelve months. I also borrowed heavily from the tone of Kurt Vonnegut's "Trust me on the sunscreen" address.

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I am not sure which is more simultaneously terrifying and exciting:

-The thought of my son hanging out with your son while chasing girls and playing the "I'm more Irish, and I can prove it!" game.

or

-The thought of my son chasing your daughter.

I was discussing it with him recently on the changing table. He smiled largest at the latter. Kid's got his priorities straight already.

Food is key to surviving the first several months. A good community will line up meals for y'all for several weeks. If people even hint at this, enthusiastically say "yes!" One of the smartest things my wife did was making double recipees of all of our favorite meals several months before her due date and freezing half of them. We still have not really needed to cook a meal. Blessing.

The Baby Industrial Complex is the best friend and channel partner of the Wedding Industrial Complex. It promotes more useless gear than Sharper Image.

Register. This makes gift management much easier for people throwing you showers...and lets you return stuff you don't like / need easily in exchange for stuff you really do want / need.

Shop at Target. Target has most of the essentials without the fluff (wipes warmers, electronic kick counters)

You will get conflicting advice. Take that which empowers you. Disregard that which does not.

Pick a pediatrician with some gray hair and an interesting undergraduate major. Ours graduated from Berkeley in the early 80's with a BA in Rhetoric. We discussed that and his favorite novels at Will's first check up. Very useful for the sanity of two neurotic but literary parents.

"Many people less capable than you have raised perfectly healthy, happy children." Our pediatrician's parting comments during that first visit.

Anesthesiologists can be your best friend in the 10th month, and there is nothing wrong with that. More on that in my most recent blog post "Jet Pilots and Left Tackles."

Boy or girl really doesn't matter. Lindsay wanted a boy. I was hoping for a girl...even after we found out we were having a boy. And I completely forgot this as soon as he showed up.

And trust me, don't forget that people much less capable than you...

-Wallace

PS - Don't forget the Butt Paste - http://www.buttpaste.com/

Jet Pilots and Left Tackles

When Lindsay and I walked into Lucile Packard Children's Hospital to introduce Will to the world, I knew that I was a rookie. Although I had completed the LPCH Preparing for Birth classes, I did not feel prepared. I felt more like that novice triathlete I was when I checked my 30 lb mountain bike into the transition area for the Olympic-distance race at the Wildflower Triathlon in 2000. But I was prepared to not matter to anyone in the building except Lindsay. The classes didn't teach me this, but Michael Lewis' book HOME GAME did.

Once Lindsay was admitted, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that I did matter (for now.) The labor-delivery nurse looked at me and said, "Make sure you get some sleep. And eat. It's going to be a long day, and we need you sharp." I was surprised by the comment, and even more surprised that our room had a daybed that resembled a new international business class seat (think Singapore Airlines). So I napped a few feet from Lindsay and snuck off to the cafeteria to eat breakfast and lunch. Although the food was not as good as Singapore Air's, it wasn't bad...though my body may have just known that I was carbo loading.

One of the first roles I played was assisting with the decision process to request an epidural. While this had not been a foregone conclusion in our (brief) birth plan, it was an option. Inviting the anesthesiologists into our room was one of the better decisions we have made together...ever. It also gave us an interesting insight into roles in a hospital. Up to this point, every doctor or nurse we had worked with was a woman. The anesthesiologists were all men. Confident men that walked with a swagger that I expect resembles jet pilots on an aircraft carrier approaching their planes or firemen approaching an emergency call. But this is not surprising given what they do - insert a needle next to the spinal cord of a woman who is in the greatest pain of her life...between contractions. When they finish their mission, the pain disappears.

Delivery was a process that I was pleased to have a meaningful role in, but for the sake of modesty I am not going to describe it in detail here. Following delivery, I would describe my role as that of a left tackle. Lindsay was the quarterback, the most valuable person on the field with the greatest responsibility. I was her left tackle - the offensive lineman responsible for protecting her blind side.

I haven't defined the role of the OB yet. Head coach? Offensive coordinator? I can't decide which to assign to our OB and which to our labor/delivery nurse. But I will simply say that both of them were tremendous people and players. Truly outstanding athletes that I was very glad were on our team.

-HammerHead

A Few More from Week 1

Here are a few more photos.

Laughing / yawning with Mom

Catching a quick nap

Wondering what the person behind the camera is thinking

We caught Will with his eyes open when he wasn't ordering lunch, so of course with took a picture.

-HammerHead

Introducing William Patrick Holland

Will joined our family this past Tuesday (February 9, 2010) at 1.55 pm. He weighed in at 8lb 14oz and 20.5 inches. He has provided many smiles and adventure for his parents in a mere six days. He (and the process of his arrival) will provide months of blog posts to follow. But for now, I am just going to share some photos. -Proud Rookie Dad

Swaddled and ready for a nap

First nap in our room at LPCH

Another nap...sporting the team colors

First nap at home. Sensing a trend here...

Everything I Need to Know About Newborn Care...

...I Learned from Triathlon Training.

Well almost everything (hedging for the unknown...and the fact that I am writing this after only one newborn care course.)

Still, as I settled into my first "Happy, Healthy Baby Class" at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation, I was oddly comforted to read the first bullet point on the handout - "Watch the color of the urine, which should be pale yellow or clear..." I turned to Lindsay, smiled and said, "He should be 'peeing clear!' " I was using a term that we both learned while training for Ironman triathlons that means "well-hydrated," and I was smiling from ear-to-ear.

The Baby Industrial Complex (channel partner and co-conspirator with the Wedding Industrial Complex) can be intimidating -- characterized by abundant, often conflicting and usually expensive advice. I was elated to have a medical professional tell me something that made simple sense and that tied into the passion/obsession that introduced me to my wife.

Some other interesting parallels:

-Full-term, full-size babies are born with 48 hours of fuel reserves. Actually, this is not like Mommy and Daddy when they were doing triathlons...but Daddy is jealous and would have loved to have entered a race with just 25% of that.

-When they are running low on food, babies first burn glycogen reserves in their livers, then fat stores, and finally protein in their muscles. You don't want to get to the protein phase. Nobody is happy. Perfect parallel to the adult distance athlete.

-If the bottle isn't positioned correctly, the baby doesn't get enough fuel. I always wished that the Gatorade I spilled on myself would translate to energy, but it never did. So I learned to latch.

-Babies give visible, civil and manageable signals when they are hungry. If you respond to these initial signals, life is good. if you don't, they bonk, and a meltdown follows. Ditto.

Gear offers some other comfortable parallels, and I certainly need to work on my Pack-N-Play transition times. I fear that my current 3:07 break-down time will be insufficient in the face of an accelerated-boarding-to-beat-incoming-inclement-weather situation at SFO. More on that to follow.

-HammerHead