Scenes From A Boston Delivery Room

I’m officially a dad. I feel both powerful and wise with this new found human under my watch. She can have anything she wants as far as I’m concerned. Throughout the two days we were in the hospital this weekend I took down notes during every step because human memory is inherently flawed and I didn’t want to forget any thoughts or feelings regardless of how inane they may be. These are those thoughts.

• Being at a hospital during an international health crisis fucking stinks. Maybe the home birth weirdos are right. It’s as if these doctors and medical professionals didn’t see Elon Musk’s tweet. 
• The toilet paper and tissues at the hospital are negative ply. It’s plyless. Sans ply. Sandpaper would have been a more soothing and thorough wipe. 
• They just let anyone have a kid. You don’t have to ask the government. They don’t make you fill out any forms. Anyone can have as many of these suckers as they want. This has to be a mistake. 
• My girl said frogs are more gross than snakes. She said she’d rather hold a snake than a frog. She waited 39 weeks after I came inside her to deliver this information to me. Feels like if I brought this up in a court of law the judge would side with me and grant me full custody. 
• They don’t say no to any ideas at the Chips Ahoy! and Oreos pitch meetings. They’ll jam anything in those goddamn cookies. I think they’re conspiring to eventually have their own full aisle in every grocery store in the nation. 
• Doctor came in to check the cervix. Then looked at me and said, unprompted, “You have a big head.” Ricochet shot like you read about. 
• The hospital wifi has Barstool Sports Dot Com very much blocked. Even the app. We live in a society. 
• Hospital ice is some of the best ice in the game. Also top tier socks you can’t find anywhere else. 
• Uzi’s ear for production is in the highest echelon imaginable. I cannot believe how good this album is. Thankful my daughter never has to live in a world without Venetia and Prices. 
• Being the non-pregnant one isn’t easy and absolutely no one cares. It’s a tough gig. You’ve gotta be an emotional rock. You sit in the most uncomfortable chair ever built. You get zero attention. You can only fuck up. I’m here to be a voice for the voiceless. We’ll never be unseen ever again. 
• Hospitals are such strange buildings. I mean that in the sense that I can’t think of anywhere else with such a range of raw human emotion. Life beginning and ending in adjacent rooms. This is starting to feel like a GREYS ANATOMY voiceover but I stand by what I’m saying. 
• Contractions look miserable. Absolutely miserable. Boy oh boy am I thrilled to not have to experience those first hand. 0 balls. 
• My father was always drilling preparedness into my brain for any and all scenarios no matter how farfetched or outlandish they seemed at the time. Long before I got my license he was hellbent on setting up someone in my life needing me to drive them under poor conditions, ie. no sleep, perhaps under an altered state of mind, Mount Saint Helens 2.0 erupting in my backyard. Well after a 14-hour shift at the hospital on Saturday they sent us home to get some rest, come back Sunday morning at 7:30 and we’ll start the show. Well after falling asleep at 1 am I was awoken at 2 am by my extremely in pain wife and had to spring into action with my eyes stuck on Tracy McGrady. Turns out Pops was right about a lot after all. 
• The farmers really need to cut the shit with daylight savings. Just wake up when the Sun comes up bro time isn’t even real. 
• Anesthesiologist (spelled it right on the first try nbd) is one of the cooler jobs in the game. You’re a doctor and also a drug dealer. Dr. Drug Dealer. And you only deal the danks. You‘re with patients for like 5 minutes max and then move on to someone else like a cool weekend dad. An elite job. 
• They’ve got red velvet chocolate chip cookies in the Au Bon Pain downstairs. There’s a sign right above them announcing each cookie contains over 500 calories. Figure I’ll eat a smooth 24 of these before this is all said and done. 
• I was told I’d be on hand holding duty. They had me do so much more than that. I basically delivered this fucking thing. I was holding legs all over the place, guiding puke buckets to her mouth, ice chips and water at the ready at all times. I think I grew extra limbs somehow during the delivery. I was essentially an octopus for those 45 minutes. 
• Caught a vicious hand cramp about 20 minutes in while propping her leg up. Powered through without complaining. Mostly because I would have been laughed out of the room for complaining with everything else going on. I don’t want to use the word “hero” but you certainly may and probably should. 
• The second it was over I put my hand directly in the goo. I heard it was over because it sounded like someone finish their turn on a rather large waterslide, put my girl’s leg down, instinctively moved my hand and went directly into all sorts of goo. Best goo I’ve ever felt.
• Cried like a bitch. Me. Not the newborn. Baby still hasn’t cried. I haven’t fully stopped crying. It is what it is. 
• No one warned me about that first baby poop. Good Lord what the hell was that. Looked like Keith Richards’ lungs exploded.
• I’m entirely too large to be holding a baby. This thing is tiny. Me? Far too large. Holding her legs to change the diaper is the weirdest feeling in the world. 
• No idea why we stop using binkies at a certain age. I’ve never gotten sleep as good as this baby is getting and it appears to be the binky doing a lot of the heavy lifting. I’m gonna buy one of these for myself and test this theory. Will report back. 
• My girl deserves the world after what I saw her go through these last nine months. Especially the last hour or so. Holy shit what a beast. I could never do that, both because God didn’t design me that way and because I’m a massive weakling in comparison. Turns out women are extremely strong??? Learn something new every day I suppose. 
• I texted Wide Dog and told him to keep his  devilishly handsome son away from my daughter. Same goes for Clancy, Newman and Walker‘s 17 boys. 
• I’m very lucky. Everyone is healthy. Everyone is happy. It’s truly a blessing to have such a strong support system at home and also professionally. Erika and Dave could have easily told me to fuck myself when I asked to move back to Boston but they didn’t. At least to my face, behind closed doors is a different story. But everyone’s been incredible, top to bottom. You go online and you read these stories about people who feel stuck and miserable at their jobs, afraid to take sick days despite living in the midst of an international health scare. It’s impossible to take this company for granted. I don’t know if I’ve ever told this story before: when my father died 6 months after we moved to New York, Erika took a 4 hour train to Boston, followed by a 20 minute uber, to come to his wake. She stayed for 30 minutes, then left to go back to New York. 9+ hours of her time for her least important employee whom she barely knew. Flowers or a card would have been fine. She doesn’t settle for fine. So we don’t settle for fine. That’s why we keep steamrolling everyone who tries to get in our way. We never gon’ lose. #GirlDad