Friday, July 28, 2006

First Week Home

Suddenly we were three. We got home last Saturday and realised that somehow nothing will ever look the same in our house again. What was once a cool little Buddha statue is now a potential choking hazard! I know I am getting ahead of myself here, Ailish won't be picking anything up for a while, but it's true your entire existence on this planet has taken on a new flavor.

I've become an orphan and a parent in the space of two months - I don't think that life will ever become anymore emotional than this - I am finally well and truly grown-up with real shite to worry about! Who cares about the price of Guinness or the new release by Johnny Cash now! (Yes, I know he's dead so don't point it out!).

I'm sure it will settle down but in the first week your head kind of explodes with new parent anxieties - one morning in the hospital when the baby was brought back from the nursery she was sound asleep, so much so that I leaned right in to check she was still breathing! 5 minutes later I caught Alma doing exactly the same thing and we had a good laugh!

My Brother said "You spend an our trying to get them to sleep then you wake them up 10 minutes later to make sure they are okay". Yeah, it's going to take some getting used to......

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

When yin draws oot, anither draws in.

On July 18th, at 1129pm our daughter arrived in the world with a fanfare of trumpets and violins, at least in my wife's head anyway as the morphine kicked in and little Ailish kicked out. 9lbs 4oz of joy.

Let's rewind a little...

On July 17th at 9pm she was scheduled to be induced but Mother Nature had other plans. It was a 103 degrees outside and we showed up at the waiting room in the hospital only to find it filled with pregnant women all breathing heavily and attempting to stave the impending babies off for a few more hours. It seemed like the heatwave put everybody except my wife into labor and the delivery rooms were full... all 11 of them.

Can you come back in a few hours? Turned away from the inn like Jaysus, Mary and Joeseph we trek off into the NYC night. Sure. 3 hours later after a disgusting meal of mashed potatoes and shite we come back and still they are full. We eventually get into a delivery room at 3.30am where they start the induction procedure.

According to the docs something has to happen in the next 12 hours, this is it, the moment of truth... yeah right!

10 episodes of Law and Order on the hospital telly with a few god-awful reality shows thrown in but this baby ain't coming out!

Eventually they break the waters artificcially and the contractions start. 3 hours of contractions without an painkillers and Alma has had about enough. She asks for an epidural and when the docs check up they discover that the head is still high up in the pelvis, big-Irish potato head that it is, so we decide that a c-section is the best option.

It all happens really quickly after that, doctors scrub up and I am given a operating-room outfit in an unappealing blue color with a shower cap that is 2 sizes too big!

A big hit of morphine that has poor Alma shivering like she has just been put in the freezer is administered and I am invited to stand up if I want to see my baby being born. Her stomach is pulled back with clamps and looks like John Hurt in the movie Alien. Next thing I know, the doctors are reaching in and pulling out a baby. It is strange and amazing sight that I'll never forget! I thought I'd be squemish but I am too excited by the baby's cries.


Saturday, July 08, 2006

Lessons

Caught in the headlights of a car. A startled rabbit. Emotionally paralysed. Nowhere to turn and nowhere to run. Heart broken breathing hard. The last moment has arrived. You can't fight if you can't move. The car's gonna getcha no matter what you do.

Do you accept it? Will you die bitter? Hating? Do you say "I had a good run!"

Do you shed a tear for yourself? If you are startled, what goes through your mind as you realise that you are taking your last breath? Strange things like this have occupied my thoughts lately as I play over my Mum's last days in my head.

My Mum died bitter. She was a lovely person but she was unable to accept that she had a good life and succesfully raised 6 kids. She always thought that somehow things should be better than they were. She put her hopes in things like the lottery and the Catholic Church. Somebody had to offer an alternative, be it money or religion. When they didn't pay off she felt cheated.

We all think this kind of stuff - the idea that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence - and that somehow true happiness is eluding you. Well, a lesson I think I have learned from all this is that true happiness does not really exist and you will probably only be happy when you stop looking for it.

Another thing I've gotten out of all of this is my total lack of belief in any kind of afterlife. As I sat with my family with our Mother after she had passed, it just seemed final. The body was there but there was no breath in it. No overwhelming feeling of spirituality or of the supernatural. No presence of any kind except the energy left behind by what had happened in her life and the effects it had on ours. Memories like fading photgraphs that everyone was at that moment playing in their own heads.

It makes me sad that I feel this as I'd love to think that there is a heaven and a hell and that we meet all our long lost relatives and pets when we get there. Again, I guess this is the promise of true happiness that religion promises us.

I think that it is very important that the energy you leave behind be a positve one. If there is one lesson to be learned in life then that is it.

Tuesday, July 04, 2006

What do you do?

The World Cup is almost over and my ability to make a day disappear without doing anything constructive because I have been watching football all day will disappear with it. Damn, I was hoping to hide in my little shell for a few more weeks before having to face reality again.

Oh well, it seems like that won't be possible. Alma's due date is next Sunday, also the same day as the world cup final. Aaaarrrgh! I have been refering her to Christian websites that offered advice to pregnant Christian women who wanted to avoid having their babies on the sixth of June this year (06/06/06). Maybe we can hold it in until after the final whistle!

Alright so I'm joking but a greater danger awaits if, like first babies usually are, the bambino gets here on July 12th. In the rest of the world July 12th is just a normal day but in Scotland and Northern Ireland it is a day when every sectarian eejit in the world gets out and marches/throws things at marches and proves to the rest of us that 1690 was not as long ago as you thought it was.