Those Things Forgotten

I have a very good long-term memory. I try not to be a very proud man about most things, but that is one area in which I am proud. I can remember my first day of kindergarten. I can remember at least something about every single teacher I had throughout grade, middle, and high school. I remember when they brought my baby brother home from the hospital - when I was two-and-a-half. I remember facts that I will probably never use again in my lifetime except for playing Trivial Pursuit. I freely admit that my short-term memory is horrible, but that is more than made up for by my long-term memory. I'm okay with that. However, I have recently discovered that there is a gaping hole in my long-term memory, and, if nothing else, this article will serve as saving for posterity these things so that I'll never forget them again. Even though I'm fairly sure that I'll never need to use them again.

For those of you who don't know, we've recently added another child to our family. This is child number three for us, so we're quite busy with a four-year-old, a one-and-a-half-year-old, and a two-week-old, as I'm sure you can imagine. It's been hardest on my wife, but for the most part, we're getting settled into being a family of five and a cat. However, there have been a few things that I've discovered that I had forgotten from the first two kids along with a couple of new lessons. I had forgotten:

• How much fun it is to stay at the hospital after the baby's born. I'm only being mildly sarcastic here. On the one hand, you have all of the "expected" factors that come with a new baby. However, there are also the factors of having cable TV (2 hours of "Who's Line Is It Anyway?"), people visiting with bringing gifts, and being in a place where you have someone (i.e. a nurse) who is willing to help you out with most of what you need. I only cleared away one of our meal trays for the three days. Which brings up another point.
• Hospital food is definitely not fine cuisine. Granted, I can't do much complaining when it's included with the room, but there were a few meals where we were settling for what looked "acceptable" as opposed to what looked "good." That's not exactly high praise. The best part of the meals were the fact that I grabbed a couple of chocolate milks with each meal. It was like high school all over again for me. Except for the screaming baby and the wife in a great deal of pain, of course. Other than that, though, just like high school.
• How little newborns are. Now, granted, we had a monster of a newborn (22", 10 pounds 7 ounces, future linebacker), but at the same time, I've been used to dealing with toddlers again. This child is completely tiny compared to them! I'm starting to get back into the groove of automatically making sure that the head is supported, but I admit to being a little bit nervous at first.
• The poop. Oooohhhh, the poop. First of all, the meconium that begins the whole process is horrible. They really should collect the stuff to use as a natural replacement for paving tar. Then comes even more fun. We (and when I say "we," I mean the one of us with functioning mammary glands) have breast-fed all of our children. As such, we get very "seedy" poops (and when I say "we", I mean the one of us that currently can't walk and has a bowel control-control problem. Notice how I had to specify "can't walk"). One of the big problems with these poops is that they're unpredictable. With the 1 1/2 year old, once he's had a poop, you can be fairly certain that another one isn't coming any time soon. With the baby, there's absolutely no predictability. In fact, at times, the change seems to make things come along again quicker. Then, because of the consistency, it's very possible that if you're not careful, the newly-minted poop will roll up the back of said baby making a clothing change necessary (if it wasn't already).

Of course, there are the very positive things about a newborn. The awe of looking at them and realizing that I had some small part in the birth of this little miracle. The site of a sleeping baby in my arms. The little grunts and sighs that are generated by the baby (often in conjunction with the afore-mentioned poops).

All things considered, I'm excited to find out what this new little one is like. That, and I'm excited to catch up on sleep. At least at some point this decade.