So, um, you’ve probably noticed that I haven’t posted any comments in approximately forever here on good ol’ Pocky.

That’s because I’ve been being a dad!

Let’s get the catch up over with, if you haven’t been following this all via other means (Internetty and otherwise):

February 4. 6 AM. Mannie and I are lying in bed on a snowy morning. Mannie had stomach pains all weekend, we thought it might be some mild irritable bowel or just sore muscles from the heft of the belly… Mannie stretches and

POP

“Dan… my water broke…!”

I’m pretty certain that the time elapsed between the sounds reaching my eardrums and the point at which I’m running around was, oh, 17 microseconds? In any case, totally unprepared we were off and driving to the Peter Lougheed Centre as our OBGYN, Dr. Tran, was based out of there. On the way we called our families and work while sitting in rush hour traffic on Deerfoot.

Once we arrived, we waited and eventually they got us a spot in the pregnancy triage, which is sort of like where you put cattle but with a lot more women going “Oh my gawd… it hurttttts!!!!” We got Mannie into a comfortable position, hooked the belly up to the machines and waited to see what happened.

Fortunately, Dr. Tran was actually on duty this morning so she came and checked on us. It turned out Mannie needed transferring to Foothills hospital across town since the Peter Lougheed didn’t have any beds… first, though, they wanted to see how far along Mannie was.

5 cm (!!!)

Well, Kieran was coming ASAP at this point, so across town Mannie went in an ambulance with a doctor (just in case) and by the time I caught up with her she was in a delivery room with a nice sunny view of Nose Hill. They monitored her condition as she got to 7,8,9 cm. It didn’t really occur to me that this room was, in fact, a delivery room — I imagined them like what you see in movies, more like an operating room. I was disabused of this notion when Mannie finally hit 10 cm and the delivery doctors and nurses started getting Mannie ready for the big push!

Did I mention our first birthing class started tomorrow?

My parents made it to Calgary and my mom came in to help and provide support. Mannie was totally freaking amazing for the next hour and a half as Keiran started coming to join us. I coached Mannie through her breathing as she pushed and helped motivate her near the end. Kieran’s purple noggin finally started to show itself but the last couple inches just weren’t happening and Mannie was totally exhausted. In the end, the doctors performed an episiotomy* and Kieran joined us, crying and breathing and pretty upset about the whole experience of birth! Basically in shock at this point, I followed Kieran as the code blue team wheeled him to the Neonatal ICU and cleaned him up and got him hooked up to heartbeat and oxygen monitors.

This part will sounds like a totally corny TV show or something, but initally I was like, “whoa — who’s this purple cone-headed thing?” but as soon as he opened one eye and looked at me I knew that he was my son.

From that point, our first two weeks of parenting were basically us going to the Foothills (and eventually back to the Peter Lougheed) every day to spend time with him as he grew. He was 5 pounds 6 ounces and was 32 weeks, 6 days old. During this time nurses taught us how to clean him, bathe him, take care of him. Mannie started pumping milk and eventually got him suckling. While in many ways we had the luxury of learning how to take care of Kieran at a slower pace and getting showed how to do all sorts of things (and also to get things straightened out at home), we really wanted to have him at home.

Eventually we were able to take him home and here he’s been ever since! The truth of parenting is that you are always needed, at any hour, to protect and love and take care of the needs of your little one… this sunk in quickly once he was waking us up four times a night.

As he’s grown older, though, we’ve found that it just keeps getting better and better — not only does he usually only wake up once or twice in the night, but his personality and love for us has developed. We love our son and we couldn’t be happier.

Almost four months later, he’s a thriving and happy baby. He’s 13 and a half pounds and has certainly caught up from his start as a premature baby. We’ve discovered that he likes being outside, he likes Joe Hisashi but dislikes Musicals. He likes Mario Kart better than Grand Theft Auto. I’m looking forward to knowing more about this little boy who has changed our lives in profound and awesome ways and I’m glad I can be his dad.