From Here to Paternity

Earlier today I saw a toddler -- 2 or 3 years old -- with a T-shirt on that said "Obama Rocks!" Odd, I thought. I wonder what that little kid thinks of universal health care. Or the war in the Middle East. Or the federal government's financial bailout.

The answer, of course, is that he has no idea about any of those issues. He might have some semi-coherent response regarding the issue of the right to drool. "Yeah!" he'd yell. He's probably in favor of high-fives (an issue where we all can find common ground). On the environmental front, he's likely indifferent. Disposable or washable diapers, it doesn't matter to him.

Why do people do this? Why do they use their children as fashion statements? You realize that you've just turned your kid into a car bumper, right? His body shouldn't be a whiteboard on which you espouse your political views. Wear your own Obama T-shirt if you want. You wouldn't put a "Vote McCain" T-shirt on your elderly parent with Alzheimer's, would you? I hope not.

Which brings me to the other class of kids' clothing. Also today I saw a two-year-old girl with a Johnny Cash T-shirt on. When I saw it, I immediately thought, "Wow, that girl's parents must be the coolest!" Listen, if you want to talk about Fugazi's place in the post-punk rock music scene, I'm up for it. You don't have to dress your kid in a "This is not a Fugazi onesie" onesie to show us how hip you are. The horn-rimmed glasses and Doc Maartens already told me everything I need to know.

And finally, the issue of kids' clothing with provocative sayings on them -- written across the backsides. I would be a happy person if I never again saw another 6-year-old wearing sweatpants that say "Juicy" across the butt. And people wonder why Chris Hansen has done so many installments of "To Catch a Predator."

Disclaimer: Included in this post is discussion of foreskin carving, head cheese and Charms blow pops. If you're sensitive to this kind of thing, please keep on reading. But be prepared to squirm.

If you have a son, there will come a time when you have a decision to make: What would you like your son's penis to look like, a rocket ship or a snake hiding inside a sock? These are questions that soon-to-be parents don't often think about ahead of time.

This is not an easy decision to make. On the one hand, you might not want anyone to slice into your son's genitalia like it's an episode of "Nip/Tuck." On the other hand, maybe you want your son to have a chance to date Nicole Ritchie, who apparently won't date uncircumcised men. Equally strong arguments, right? Err.

There are serious arguments in favor and against this tradition, which dates back to the Bible when God decreed that men should slice up their sons' penises, never cut hair from their temples, and stay away from pork due to an outbreak of trichinosis and lax regulation by the FDA.

Arguments against it include supposed loss of penile sensitivity, supposed loss of penile sensitivity, and most importantly, supposed loss of penile sensitivity. Arguments for it include religious doctrine, hygiene, and because you don't want your son to be laughed at in the locker room after gym class.

Doctors, nurses and medical personnel in general don't help in this regard. They say it's your decision, and of course it is. But in our case, we didn't really get any guidance as to which is the general medical opinion on the matter. The American Academy of Pediatrics says that it's medically unnecessary.

In the end, we decided to get our son Matthew circumcised. It was a difficult one. For me, the decision hinged on two stories, one from a friend of ours and one from my mother.

The friend told us of someone he knew that had not been circumcised at birth. When he turned about eight, he was having some hygiene issues. One thing about being uncircumcised is that you have to keep it clean in there. You've got to pull back the turtle's shell and scrub away, if you catch my drift. Otherwise you might unintentionally make some new kind of cheese that stinks worse than a top-of-the-line French fromage. But the thing is, when you're eight years old, shining the inside of your foreskin isn't exactly a priority. There are bullfrogs to catch, skateboard ramps to be conquered, and video games to be defeated.

Back to this person that our friend knew. Because of these hygiene issues, his parents asked him if he wanted to be circumcised. He said yes. And to this day, he still remembers the procedure. I'm not sure if this is true, but I picture him waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, moaning, his hands over his crotch like he's setting up a defensive wall for a free kick in a World Cup soccer match.

Now for the second story. My mother is a nurse, and told us of the many times elderly men would come into the hospital for the procedure. Because they had grown old, cleaning the foreskin was more and more difficult, and like the eight-year-old boys, it fell by the wayside. Just imagine a line of 80-something men at some health clinic, shuffling along, waiting to get circumcised. At a time when you should be living off your pension, catching a weekly bus from the senior center to the casino, and reading "Hagar the Horrible" for a good laugh every morning, you've instead got to head to the hospital to have your manhood hacked up. Ah, the golden years.

So let me give you an idea of what infant circumcision is like. You're in the hospital, or at least we were. When the time comes, the doctor comes in with a big, over-exaggerated smile on his/her face to take your baby away. Most people let their sons be taken into the other room without watching, but I wasn't having it. Bea and I felt that maybe, just maybe, my presence would help Matthew emotionally during it all.

My presence didn't mean squat.

They brought him in another room and laid him down. They removed his diaper. The nurse held his arms down. At this point, Matthew started giving a puzzled look, like, "What the hell are you doing to me now?" Then the doctor put Matthew's penis in a contraption that looked like a miniature version of the neck clamps that some African tribal women wear. Except it was my son's penis in there, the foreskin hanging loose.

The doctor then took a scalpel and started cutting the foreskin off like it was an arts and crafts project. Matthew's puzzled look morphed into outright screaming and crying.

At this point, the nurse dipped a pacifier into a little bowl of sugar water and gave it to Matthew. Surprisingly, Matthew didn't give a damn. My personal opinion: As long as you put a Charms blow pop in my mouth, you can jam my penis in a food processor. It's only logical, right?

There is blood. The doctor cleans it up. When she finishes, a little circular flap of foreskin is gone, and your son is still crying. He will continue to cry as the doctor puts ointment and gauze over his penis, as you wheel him back to your hospital room, and for the next few minutes as you try to console him while you (maybe) weep a little yourself.

But then he stops crying, and everything is, I guess, OK. With every diaper change over the next couple weeks, you have to change the gauze and put fresh ointment on your son's circumcised penis. Then your son is fine, and it's time to look up Nicole Ritchie's telephone number.

I have heard the sound of God laughing. It is the sound of my child jerking awake just as he is about to fall asleep. It is the Moro reflex.

The Moro reflex is a sign of a healthy baby. If your baby isn't displaying the Moro reflex regularly, it indicates a serious problem and/or disorder. Nonetheless, the fact that it's a sign of a healthy baby leaves me belting out crazy, overtired cackles. The Moro reflex is when an infant is startled or feels like he is falling, and it often happens just before he falls asleep, waking him back up in fear. Some experts say it is the only natural fear of humans. To which I ask: a fear for the infant, or the parents?

A description of this startle reflex I found online nailed it: The mom said it was like throwing out your arms and legs "as if you were riding a big ol' Harley" and that the infants resemble "mad little orchestra conductors getting after the second violins for missing a cue."

Here's a nice little video of the Moro reflex, which I have since renamed "The Chuckle of the Holy Spirit."

This, of course, is one of the reasons why I love and hate YouTube, all at the same time. Love it because I can link to it to give you an idea of what the Moro reflex is. Hate it because there are idiots out there purposely scaring the crap out of their little infants so they can capture it on video and post it online.

See, when you've had 15 hours of sleep in the past week, and you've got bags under your eyes and a huge greasy zit in the middle of your forehead, and you haven't had a chance to floss in three days, and you're starting to feel like an extra from the "Thriller" music video, when all of that happens, you'd just as well have your baby fall asleep when he's about to fall asleep. But just when it's about to happen, the Moro reflex rears its ugly head.

And this is about the time when Jesus giggles like a little schoolgirl.

"Oh ye of little faith," He might say. "Dost thou possess the strength to father children? I shall test thee."

The following thoughts then course through your head: Is this a test from high above, or just nature's cruel joke? When in the world will this Moro reflex stop? Did someone visit the county courthouse and legally change my name to Job?

Fortunately, I read online that the reflex subsides after four or five months. A month or so later, your baby starts to crawl. Ha ha, God, very funny.

So I'm in San Jose, Calif. for a few days for work, staying at The Fairmont, which is a nice hotel. This morning I had to use their lobby restroom and noticed this picture attached to the handicapped stall:

First off, it has always seemed kind of weird to me that the forces-to-be decided that baby changing stations -- which basically consist of a fold-down piece of plastic from the wall -- should be made available inside bathroom stalls. Why not in the bathroom, but a little farther away from the toilet and all its various germs?

Now take a look at the picture. Maybe this is the universal symbol for a baby changing station, but to me, it doesn't look like this adult is about to change a diaper. It looks like he's about to strangle his child. Look, you can even see that the baby knows what's coming, as he has his feet up and bent as if he's going to try to kick mommy/daddy away because, like the rest of us, he doesn't like getting strangled.

By the way, I can't really think of a better picture to symbolize a baby changing station. Maybe the baby could be laying down flat with the parent behind him. I don't know. Just please get rid of this choking symbol.

I remember the good old days, when I used to think I knew what sleep deprivation was. Back then, sleep deprivation was cramming all night for a final, or going on a bender over the weekend. But here's the thing about that kind of sleep deprivation: You could always catch up the next night.

Nowadays, catching up on sleep means being able to take a cat nap for 45 minutes on a Saturday afternoon while my son Matthew plays with his feet in the crib. It's amazing how fast you can slip into REM sleep if you really need it (more on that later). So here are two stories of sleep deprivation, one each for my wife Bea and me.

Story 1: Where's Matthew?

It was about 11pm on a Saturday night, my wife and son asleep in bed. Matthew woke up and, don't you know it, he started crying. It's kind of odd. Whenever Matthew wakes up, he starts crying. I wonder when in the development of a human being this phenomenon stops. After all, if I began bawling every time I woke up in the morning, it's fair to say that Bea would give me some funny looks. She most certainly wouldn't offer up her boob every time like she does with Matthew. Am I jealous of my son in that regard? Perhaps.

I was in the other room and heard Bea pick up Matthew and take him to the living room area. But she forgot to shut off the Babysense, which is a sensor pad you put under your child's crib mattress to detect small movements. It's supposed to help prevent sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) and gives us some peace of mind when Matthew's asleep.

Anyway, when the Babysense senses no movement, an alarm goes off that basically sounds like Mariah Carey caught in a bear trap. Not the most pleasant of sounds, but hey, there's a reason why carbon monoxide detectors don't play Barry White music.

So Bea had taken Matthew out of the crib and out of the bedroom, and the alarm went off. So I went into the bedroom to shut off the Babysense. No problem. I went back the computer to see how the Red Sox were doing.

A few minutes later, Bea speaks up. She's still in the other room.

"Where's Matthew?" she asks.

Hmm, how to respond to a question like this. Let's see, you just picked him up and took him into the other room. If you can't find him, we're in trouble. I started worrying that Bea had lost our son in the same way people lose car keys. But just when I was about to say something, she chimed in.

"Oh nevermind," she said. "I'm holding him."

Um, what? I realized my error. Bea hadn't lost our son in the same way people lose car keys. She lost our son in the same way people lose their sunglasses, only to find out five minutes later that they're on top of their heads. At that point, I decided that it was time to give Bea a little break from Matthew.

Story 2: The windowsill

Here's my gem. Middle of the night, don't remember if it was during the week or not. Bea and I had been asleep for a whole 90 minutes or so when Matthew decides to play a little practical joke on us by, you guessed it, waking up and crying.

My sleep deprivation, however, had started to resist such efforts. Kind of. I ended up in this half-awake, half-asleep stage where I was still dreaming about something, but also somewhat aware of my real surroundings.

In this case, my dream had something to do with Bea planting some flowers in a window box out on our deck. So here's how it went:

Dream world: Bea is putting together flowers for the window boxes.

Real world: Regarding Matthew crying, Bea says to me, "Can you get Matthew?"

Dream and real world: Carrying on conversation in both universes, I say, "Just put him on the windowsill."

Real world: Bea says, "What?!?"

Real world: I wake up fully to the real world, realize what I said and how stupid it sounds, understand why I said it, and reply, "Yeah, I'll get him."

So they (by "they," I mean the evil baby product marketeers) have this product you can buy that looks like a little paper cone. They call it a Pee-Pee Teepee. Its purpose is to prevent a warm stream of your son's urine from shooting you in the eye like a cruel joke. The ones shown in the picture here are in the style of the "Wild West," according to the company that makes them, as if this is the OK Corral and your only hope to prevent a gunfight (of pee) is to buy these.

Pee-Pee Teepees come in a pack of five for $12. We use something similar. It's called a paper towel. You can get a roll of them for about a buck.

And thus begins the battle. Americans spend $7 billion a year on baby products, and if you think all of those things are necessities, think again. The only necessities for a baby are the following: clothing, diapers, and a boob or two. The rest is just gravy. Here are a few other ridiculous baby products that Bea and I have come across in our travels.

Diaper genie says, "That's all you want?"

One of the newest rages is a glorified trash barrel that the genius inventors have nicknamed the "Diaper Genie." Here's a one-act play I just wrote about the Diaper Genie:

Enter a young mother into a bedroom where her baby is laying in a crib. A mysterious lamp sits next to the crib. The mother rubs it and a genie magically appears.

GENIE: Hello, I am the diaper genie. I have come to grant you one diaper-related wish.

MOTHER: Could you get me a trash barrel?

GENIE: That's it? I could grant you the wish of having your child magically changed anytime you wanted. The Diaper Genie could do that for you. Or I could give you a lifetime supply of diapers so strong that they never leak. Think of the possibilities.

MOTHER: No, just the trash barrel. Maybe you could make the bags in the barrel smell nice so it kind of blocks out the smell of my baby's poop, though not really. I want it to smell like a mix of potpourri and crap. Pretty please.

GENIE: That's all you want, just a stupid trash barrel to put diapers in? Fine, here you go.

Diaper genie makes barrel magically appear in the bedroom, then disappears.

MOTHER (while looking to the audience, smiling and giving a thumbs-up): Thanks Diaper Genie, you're the best!

Creepy pillow hands

The picture says it all. This contraption is supposed to fool your newborn into thinking that you're holding him, putting him at ease and making him fall to sleep in a snap.

Instead, it fools your newborn into thinking that for some reason, Mickey Mouse and his huge, goofy hands have picked him up and are holding him awkwardly. Look at the picture, for crying out loud. Does anyone hold a baby like that, ever? Oh, and by the way, is this baby product listed on the sex offender registry board? Seriously, it's just creepy.

Raising Tony Hawk: knee pads

Aw, your little baby is crawling around and might get a little scratchy boo-boo on his baby knee-knees?

These particular ones, from Snazzy Baby, claim to "have allowed parents to enjoy their babies, no longer having to worry if their baby is crawling 'properly' on any floor surface or asking themselves, 'What do we do with our baby when we want to be outdoors?'"

I have an answer to both of those questions. The first answer is, "Is there a correct and incorrect way to crawl? If he's crawling in any way, you're all set." The second answer is, "When you want to go outdoors, take your baby with you outdoors. He'll probably be able to handle it just fine."

Unless your 5-month-old son is hitting the skateboard vert ramp doing a frontside ollie to 540 fakie bigspin, and ESPN Outside the Lines is filming him for an upcoming feature to be shown during the X Games, take the knee pads off your kid. Thanks.

Baby shoes

Is your baby walking?

"No, but he looks soooo cute in those shoes."

That's true. Maybe you should strap a pair of Speedo goggles on his face and stick a Wilson glove on his hand. After all, he doesn't know how to swim or play baseball yet, but gosh darn, he looks so cute when he's wearing them. Or maybe you can just carry your baby around without any shoes, just like you would carry your baby around with shoes.

The Baby Keeper, aka a new interrogation technique at Guantanamo

OK baby, this is what we're going to do. You're going to come into the bathroom with me. I'm going to suspend you from the inside of a dirty bathroom stall. You will hang there powerless and be forced to watch me pop a squat.

Word on the street is that Christopher Hitchens recently subjected himself to The Baby Keeper and only lasted about 25 seconds in the thing. Perhaps a slightly less horrible "interrogation technique" than waterboarding, but it runs a close second. According to Hitchens, that is. Read about it in an upcoming issue of Vanity Fair.

The WhyCry Baby Crying Analyzer

This product claims that it will be able to decode the various meanings of your baby's crying. From the Target listing: "The WhyCry baby crying analyzer interprets the various reasons for why your baby cries and displays the answer on an easy to read LCD screen. This device teaches new parents to distinguish the different types of cries of their baby."

The listing goes on to say that it distinguishes between the five different feelings of "Hungry, Bored, Annoyed, Tired and Stressed." Here's how I separate those feelings myself:

• Tired: Baby yawns a lot.
• Hungry: Baby hasn't eaten in a while and keeps moving his hands to his mouth.
• Annoyed: Baby keeps looking at the WhyCry Baby Crying Analyzer and frowning.
• Bored: Baby has watched the same episode of "The Wiggles" about five times.
• Stressed: Baby just worked a 12-hour shift at the steel mill but still needs to fix the gutters on the roof at home.

Though I skipped a few posts, let's go back a few weeks to the end of Bea's delivery of our son, Matthew. Mainly because it was so much fun and stress-free.

Last I wrote, it was 9:30am and Bea had her bag manually broken. A nurse had already asked her if her pain was "acceptable to her," which garnered some glances to one another from Bea and me, and we had other women arrive later and deliver earlier than us, which was a joy.

We had gone into Prentice Women's Hospital at 1:30am to get induced. They do this to you, by the way, if you have to get induced. Bring you in really early in the morning so that delivery might come late morning, early afternoon. For us, it came at 7pm that night. So here goes:

10am: Breathing through contractions, which are varying from 1.5 to 3 minutes between contractions.

When measuring the time between contractions, you measure from the start of one to the start of the next one. So if your contractions last one minute and they're 1.5 minutes apart, that means you have a whole 30 seconds to relax, work on your sudoku puzzle, watch The Price is Right. Whatever you want to do, really. Your options are endless.

10am (continued): One thing that has helped is squeezing pressure point in shoulder during contractions. Sitting up is the best position but still not comfortable at this point.

This squeezing I did during contractions is what Star Trek nerds might call the Vulcan death hold. I'm sure I'll get plenty of emails now from the Star Trek nerds on the correct terminology. Hopefully Paul Dailing will write about an upcoming convention of theirs to smooth things out.

10:40am: Nurse Bridget said she wants to keep an eye on Bea's fluids because some of it looks like it might be a little brown, so it could actually be baby poop. There's some possible concern that the baby might inhale some of it.

If you deliver your baby late, there's a chance he could poop while still in the womb, and inhaling their own poop can be dangerous. Great, my kid's not even born yet and he's already going to have a Jenkem addiction.

11am: Bea almost at 7cm and still no epidural. Nurse Bridget says she's "doing awesome."

I still can't believe how long she held off without one.

12:30pm: Doctor comes in to check Bea and says that actually, she's still at 5cm and labor could be another 4-5 hours. Bea's exhausted and leaning toward getting an epidural just so she can rest in the next few hours.

That was a setback. We felt like she was on the brink of delivering, and then all the sudden, nope, four more hours to go. It's like if you were driving to Detroit, and when you got there, some Star Trek nerds beamed you back to Chicago because you kept calling them nerds. Oh yeah, and pretend that your entire body is spasming in excruciating pain the whole time. Oh, and reverse that trip, too, because getting beamed back to Detroit would be much, much worse.

2pm: Epidural, Mark leaves to get lunch. Bea's not happy Mark has to leave. For food, Mark gets roasted pork, rice with curly parsley and artichoke hearts. Not bad, but pork is dry.

Let me explain why I got so detailed on the lunch menu. When you get an epidural, you have to stay perfectly still while a doctor sticks a long needle into your spine. It made me nervous to know that Bea would be in there getting that and I wouldn't be there to hold her hand. Detailing lunch items in my notebook helped me take my mind off the situation.

2:45pm: Go back to room. Bea has had the epidural and is very itchy all over (this is a common symptom). She has a contraction monitor attached directly to her uterus. Bea has a lot of tubes going in and out of her now. Seems rested, though, and relieved of pain. Eager to relax/nap/sleep.

Another note on the epidural: After you get it, you're bound to the bed. You can't get out. Before that, Bea could take walks around the room or in the hallway. No more.

And that, folks, are where my notes ended. I'm not sure exactly why I stopped taking them, although I think my exhaustion and worrying about Bea just caused me to stop caring about it, to be honest.

But basically what happened was:

Bea got some rest. The baby still didn't come down. The doctor suggested a C-section around 6pm. We agreed.

Everything after that happens in a flash. Bea gets wheeled away to the operating room. I take our belongings and carry them into a recovery room where we would go afterward. I don scrubs and a mask and get ready for my debut television appearance on "ER." A nurse informs me that actually we would be attending the birth of my own child, and proceeds to lead me into the operating room. Because of all the anesthesia, Bea is shaking like a leaf. Doctor slices into Bea's stomach like it's a roast of lamb. Matthew comes out all bloody and crying and, God, so beautiful. Doctor tells us that Matthew had three "necklaces" on, meaning the umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck three times, although not tightly. I briefly think that during Fat Tuesday Matthew must have wanted to get in on the Mardi Gras action and decided to don his own beads.

It's 7:04pm on May 21, 2008 when Matthew comes out. It's 7:04pm on May 21, 2008 when I become a father.

Last week my wife asked me to pick up a couple things on my way home. My son Matthew seemed a little warm to the touch, and we thought that he might have a fever.

For those who don't yet know, doctors recommend that the best place to take a baby's temperature is right up the old poop shoot. Most accurate spot. It probably is still the most accurate spot for everyone, but once we become adults, we don't randomly stick things up our own backsides. At least most of us don't. Those who do likely have their own little private parties, and that's just fine with me, as long as I don't get invited.

So yes, that's right. Our instructions were to place a thermometer inside an orifice of my son that spurts like Buckingham Fountain, except with far less predictability. Sorry if you might be grossed out by this, but whatever. My son's poop -- its color, consistency, and frequency -- is something that my wife and I are fairly obsessed with. We believe it will tell us how well he's eating, if he's healthy and growing as he should, and whether he has the potential to win the 2032 Olympic decathlon. Basically everything.

Back to the story at hand. I was out, my wife wanted to take Matthew's temperature. So she asked me to buy some AAA batteries for the digital thermometer. No problem, right? Yes, no problem. We said our goodbyes and I made my way toward Walgreens.

The phone rang again. Oh yes, she said, and KY Jelly. KY Jelly? Apparently doctors recommend that you use a water-soluble lubricant when taking a baby's temperature rectally to help get the thermometer where it needs to go. Vaseline, folks, is not water soluble. KY Jelly is.

(By the way, I don't know how my wife knows all these things. It's like she was born with this magic knowledge of the right thing to do at the right time. Mother's instinct. Or, perhaps, all those books she was reading during her pregnancy that I neglected so I could watch "American Gladiators." Either one.)

So here I stroll on up to the counter at Walgreens. In one hand is some KY Jelly. And here in the other hand are some batteries. Hmmm, the cashier was probably thinking. I wonder what power tools this guy has at home. Oh, but don't worry, Walgreens employee. We had no plans of inviting you to that party.

There was a column in the Chicago Tribune recently defending the necktie as a good Father's Day gift. Hogwash.

It's true that when fathers are asked what they want for Father's Day, they'll probably say nothing. That could be because they think you're asking what material thing they want. And as for material things, most fathers couldn't really give a damn.

But when they say "nothing," that is also hogwash. They're not looking for a necktie, or some new DVD, or the latest David McCullough biography. They're not looking for anything that you can get by pulling out your credit card. But they would like something: your time.

Now that I'm a father, I realize this. I would rather do nothing else on Father's Day than hang out with my son. That's it. Maybe I'll take him for a long walk in Museum Campus early in the morning, while the sun is still coming up. Midway through, maybe by those Earth globe sculptures, we'll take a rest on one of the benches, and I'll read the Tribune to him. He seems to like that.

When he gets a little fussy, I'll try to give him his pacifier, and most likely he'll arch his back like an Olympic gymnast in a futile attempt to avoid it. But eventually he'll calm down and take it. Then maybe he'll give me one of his looks -- Matthew has a lot of looks. He'll purse his lips, lower one eyebrow, and then raise the other, which causes about five wrinkles to form on the right side of his forehead. This will make me laugh.

I want nothing more tomorrow than to be able to change my son's diaper. Weird, but true. I want to hear him cry tomorrow, as I'm sure he will. And I want to be able to get him to stop crying, although his mother has proven to be much more adept at that task. I'm just looking forward to hanging out with him tomorrow. You know, mano a mano, even though he's not even a month old.

That's all. It almost sounds too easy, and yet so many of us neglect to do it. You don't need to buy him a card. Greeting cards are just the byproduct of a successful marketing campaign by Hallmark. You could make him a card, though. Homemade cards are where it's at. But most of all, just give him your time. Go out golfing with him and talk about Tiger Woods' incredible back nine on Saturday, or go out to breakfast and debate politics with him, and mention how Tim Russert, a great father and son, died too soon.

There are some of you who won't be able to see your fathers on Father's Day. I'm one of them. I live in Chicago with my wife and son, and my father is back in Massachusetts. This is the way it is sometimes, and you just have to deal with it. But you can still give him your time. You can still ring him up on the phone, and you can shoot the bull and still talk about Woods, Russert, and whatever else comes to mind. My guess is that he would like that.

Don't get too mushy about it, though. Don't go into some monologue about how much you love him, or how much he means to you, or how much of an example he's been to you as a father and a human being. Just give him your time. Give him your time and he'll know it.

As your or your wife’s pregnancy nears the finish line (to the right is Bea about 9 months in), you’ll want to come up with a list of things to bring to the hospital: clothes, toiletries, a digital camera. I brought a book, I guess thinking that in the two minutes between my wife’s contractions, I’d have time to sit back and read James Joyce’s Ulysses.

One thing I did bring was a notebook. A few years back, my dad told me about an interview he saw with Billy Crystal in which Crystal said he always had a notebook with him in case something inspired him to jot down some notes, possibly for some future piece of writing.

So imagine Bea’s surprise when, upon catching her breath after one particularly body-spasming contraction while in the hospital, she saw me reach into my back pocket and pull out the notebook. Yes, that’s right honey, I’m going to document every last minute of your excruciating labor pain!

Being the sport she is, though, Bea just looked away and kept doing her yoga breathing. This was especially impressive considering how, because she was a week late in delivering, we had to go into the hospital at 1:30am so Bea could get induced. So the forthcoming is a sampling of my notes. By the way, some of these notes are a bit, well, detailed, but no worries, I got Bea's approval. Sleeptalking counts, right?

May 21, 2:30am: An anesthesia nurse comes in to talk about the process of getting an epidural. Our plan at this point: wait on the epidural until the pain is really bad.

“…until the pain is really bad.” This is what gets me after the fact, that really, I can’t help Bea in this situation. I have no equivalent pain experience. That wicked hangnail I got a couple weeks ago doesn’t quite compare.

3:30am: We both try to get some sleep. I fall asleep. Bea doesn’t.

I wrote this gem after I woke up. Reading it now, I realize what a jerk it makes me look like. What, you can’t sleep because your uterine wall is pulsing like Ozzie Guillen’s veins after losing to the Rays? Zzzzzzzzzz.

5:30am: Nurse Megan tells us that Bea is still about 2 centimeters and the baby is minus 3, meaning sitting three inches above her pelvic bone. She said they were going to break her water manually at 5am, but didn’t probably because he was minus three – they would like him to be even with the pelvic bone, otherwise there can be complications such as the umbilical cord slipping out. We don’t feel like playing tug-of-war with Matthew via his umbilical cord to get him out, thank you very much.

Yes, I started referring to all the nurses as Nurse Megan or Nurse Jessica. For the record, they had no resemblance to Nurse Ratched or Nurse Annie Wilkes.

7am: Nurse Megan asks about Bea’s contraction pain on a scale of 1 to 10. Bea says 6 or 7. Nurse Megan then asks: “And that pain is acceptable to you?” Awkward pause. Acceptable to her? Oh yeah, bring that pain on. She accepts it with open arms. (She’s actually trying to determine whether she needs pain medication or not.)

This reminded me of a bit by one of my favorite stand-up comedians, Brian Regan. Maybe Bea should have said she was an 8…

8am: Doctor breaks Bea’s bag of water. Bea is 5 centimeters and the baby is minus 1.

8:40am: Nurses go next door to deliver baby that is “complete” and “plus 2,” meaning completely dilated and the baby 2 inches below the pelvic bone.

Bea: “Lucky duck.”

Always able to keep a sense of humor, that’s my wife for you. Another good example:

9:30am: Bea leaking more fluids.

Bea: “You got a bucket?”

Of course, this reminded me of the huge guy in the restaurant in Monty Python’s “The Meaning of Life.”

Next post: Delivery, 10 hours later.