Nathan's blog

Sifting through Evernote I found these notes from a talk a friend gave a few weeks ago. It's a bit "The Last Lecture" but I assure you he's neither dead nor dying (though I have no doubt burrito withdrawal took its toll).

I use this blog for personal documentation and reflection, so it only seemed fitting to post the notes here. I expect I'll be coming back to this many times as I begin to learn this stuff for myself.

* Don't confuse passion w emotion.

* Failure is good if you do it a lot because you're trying new things. Learn. Don't get caught up in the emotion of failure.

* Be clear w yourself about excellence. Be clear w others.

* Understand what you want. Tell people about it.

* Just one great thing today.

* If you don't get to great today: Why?

* Let people talk. They might give you what you want.

* Personal integrity. Take credit for your successes and failures.

* You own your career.

* Collaborate w partners. Tell people what you want.

* Communication. Speak to the specific ear.

* Use the company. You give a lot – you should get a lot.

Mission accomplished!

So weird that the first mode of transport his parents exposed him to was the automobile.

Since I’d made daily round trips by streetcar (since taking the car back home to save on parking) I was tempted to ask what people without cars do when the hospital asks to see the baby leaving properly buckled into a carseat (yes, they do this). Because the day nurse was so sweet I didn’t want to pick at policy with her. I’ll have to assume they move your file to the “poor people” drawer and sign you up for the baby care course they send teenage mothers to.

Anyway, apologies about the audio. I think I just have to speak louder or point the camera at things making more noise or use something other than my phone. Many, many more videos to come.

“God, when he gave me strength, to show withal / How slight the gift was, hung it in my hair”

24 hours ago my son Samson was born.

With our local midwifery clinic just 4 doors down, St Michael’s Hospital a 10-20 minute car/taxi/streetcar ride across Queen Street, and our assigned midwife a former RN we thought we had it all worked out from every angle. Homebirth. Quiet. Convenient. The gods hate when you plan shit like this.

The midwives came Wednesday morning to verify that water was as broken as wifey thought it was and to see how dilated she was. The rule of thumb is, when labour’s really on, you gain about 1 cm of dilation for every hour of strong, minute-long contractions, and when you get to 10 cm you’re ready to push the baby out. When the midwives came on Wednesday night wifey was 4 cm dilated, so they were rolling up their sleeves for a typical 8-10 hour shift, albeit an overnighter.

By 5 am Thursday wifey’s cervix had resisted every trick in the book of homebirth midwifery, so the senior midwife asked for a decision: keep doing what we’re doing at home until it’s hairy and we have to go to the hospital for a c-section, or go to the hospital immediately and get some chemical help (with the offer of surgical help on-hand).

Because we are sane people we chose option #2.

But after a few hours in a private room and a generous dose of oxytocin wifey’s cervix was pretty much unchanged. The physician on duty (Dr Mark Yudin, recommended) felt that the only humane way to induce labour in a patient who’d already spent 24+ hours filling her contraction quota was to also administer an epidural, so one was ordered, and after several hours of bureaucratic bickering that our midwife was kind enough to keep us out of, eventually procured.

More oxytocin, more labour, but now no pain. And still, no progress.

Dr Mark then suggested a c-section to get baby out while baby was doing okay instead of urging the uterus to push and push on him until he wasn’t.

So that’s what we did.

To say the least in the most positive self-helpy sense, it was a memorable lesson in non-positional negotiation. The couple planning a home birth were about to go ahead with the surgical solution. But we had never been wrong. It had never been about birthing at home, or birthing “naturally”, or proving some political point; the priority was always the well-being of the most vulnerable parties involved.

Like any couple, we had our preferences, arrived at through lengthy discussion, reading, and mulling things over. We wanted as little intervention as possible. We wanted to let birth happen as a natural process, not a condition to be managed and cured. We wanted to maintain control. But yesterday, with one circumstance after another being knocked out of the reach of preference, we had to get pretty clear about our real interests pretty quick.

Samson, if you ever read this, that’s my first and possibly best lesson to you: be honest with yourself about what you want and be willing to work for those things. (Tip: you probably don’t really want the things you can’t be bothered to work for.) And as you bust your hump in the name of some holy grail be flexible and ready to change course without embarrassment or shame. Look around and you’ll find people everywhere who forgot what they wanted and got attached to a mistaken means to getting it.

As a wise man once said, “New shit has come to light, man,” and you, little man, should be able to deal with it. Happy birthday, Samson.

What?

You can see the Global Pet Foods store, where I’m headed to get my pooch’s monthly supply, in the background.

I’m writing this to kill some time while I figure out how I’m going to get in there.

Some guy named Tim Trow seems to be the object of objection. I think he might run the THS. The lady with the megaphone is reading a diatribe against him in a monotone that leaves pauses for the crowd’s responses. They could use some polish, but I’ve learned not to expect too much from community theatre.

Oh, and this is happening directly across the street from The Beer Store.

Somewhere on that foot of mine there's a splinter, and wifey won't rest until it's out.