Look who’s learning
The day I told my brother that we’re having a baby, he and I spent a lot of time talking about the changes you can see in your kids on an almost daily basis. They learn things, pick up habits, figure out how to communicate — all in a matter of months. But then he cautioned me: “The kids grow up so fast. But pregnancy takes forever.”
I’m starting to understand what he means. Ever since my wife reached, say, the five-month mark of pregnancy, things have generally settled down. She’s no longer feeling the aches and pains she did during the first trimester. And the size of her belly hasn’t really changed all that much in the last few weeks, to be honest. We’re almost at a point where we take this whole pregnancy thing for granted.
It’s not that I want things to move faster. All of our friends have told us how important it is to enjoy the next few months — go out, sleep in, read books, watch movies, and enjoy one another’s company. That’s exactly what we’re doing, but it’s hard not to feel a bit antsy.
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As I mentioned in my Week 23 post, I’ve been spending a lot of my time lately digging into our massive pile of baby books. But rather than focus on one topic at a time — brain development, sleep, etc. — I’ve taken the tack of reading each of these books up until they reach Week 5 of the baby’s life.
There’s a reason for this. Nearly every one of these books has the same message about a baby’s first month — just get through it. If the baby is hungry, let him eat. If he’s tired, let him sleep. If he’s crying, do whatever you can to make him stop. Don’t worry about establishing bad habits. He’s 20 days old. He won’t remember.
So, in an effort not to get too far ahead of myself, I’ve decided to learn more about what happens before our little guy’s birth. And, by that, I mean the delivery.
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Here are just a few of the crazy things I’ve learned about delivering a baby. Maybe this is common knowledge to most, but it wasn’t to me (or to most men, I would suspect):
- Over the course of labor, the mother’s cervix dilates from 3cm to 10cm. Now, I know that most people already know this — and I suppose I did, as well — but have you stopped to think about how big that is? This means that the cervix grows from the size of a banana slice to the size of a New York bagel in the time it takes to fly cross-country. Bonkers.
- Labor itself takes, on average, 12 to 17 hours. This is way longer than it seems to have taken in Look Who’s Talking, which is my working reference for how children are conceived, birthed, and raised. I’ve obviously heard stories of labor taking many hours, if not days, but I had assumed that this was the exception rather than the rule. The other rule? Don’t make sequels of Look Who’s Talking.
- When the baby gets home, the mom doesn’t produce breast milk for about 3 days. Until that time, the baby sleeps about 19 hours a day. And when he is fed, his meals are 100% colostrum, which is a super-concentrated high-protein version of breast milk that prepares their digestive system for the real thing. And just when the baby is ready to graduate from the colostrum to proper breast milk, the mother starts producing on cue. Again, bonkers on bonkers on bonkers.
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Kids are certainly complicated, but how they get here is f’ing crazy. I can already imagine the day when I look at our son and say: “There is nothing you can do to shock me. I’ve already seen too much.”
Which is actually a pretty dad thing to say.
