what's in a middle name?

Well, it didn't quite turn out to be Kids Falling Off Things Night in the ER as I had anticipated, but its first cousin, Teen Boys Getting Hit By Things Night. Hit by things like baseball bats. And fists. And trucks. So we were kind of busy after 8pm. Luckily, I wasn't working an overnight shift, so I was spared the full extent of the melee.

On the non-medical front, Joe and I have finally chosen a middle name for Cal. We were looking for a Chinese middle name and had enlisted the help of my parents in finding one, but my dad was taking a REALLY LONG TIME choosing because he was doing so much research into the historical and literary significance of various characters that we were just like, PICK THE DAMN NAME ALREADY. Given how much effort he was putting into choosing this name, I think he was a little disappointed with our own name choosing strategy.


(Three months ago)

MICHELLE
So, we decided on the name "Cal."

BA
Calvin?

MICHELLE
No, just Cal.

BA
What does it mean?

MICHELLE
Uh, I don't really know.

BA
What made you decide on Cal?

MICHELLE
I don't know. We just liked the name.

BA
(Masking disappointment in the lack of greater cosmic significance)
Oh.


In the end, I suggested what is probably the easiest and most crowd-pleasing option of them all, which was to make a middle name which is an amalgam of the names of my two grandfathers. My mom's dad was named "Han-Ping," and my dad's dad was named "Wai-Leung," so after some shuffling around of characters and seeing which combo sounded the best, Cal's middle name is going to be "Leung-Han," which roughly translates (I'm told) to mean "great scholar." Sounds right by me.

I figure that aside from being reasonably easy to pronounce (as opposed to Chinese names with a whole messload of "X" and "Ng"-type sounds in them--or, for example, my own Chinese name "Hsiao-Yu," which has been mangled at every graduation ceremony to date) no one can give me lip about a family name. Or if they do, I'll tell them that both namesake grandfathers are DEAD and then the naysayers will feel like total jerks.

Currently reading: Re-reading me some "Jimmy Corrigan." I know I've gone on about this book enough times in the past, but seriously, it's genius. After I finish that, though, I'll still have some time to kill before the release of the new "Harry Potter" book, so maybe I'll look back in the archives for some old reader recommendations.

and now you know...the rest of the story

Hey, David Sedaris is going to be making an appearance at the Barnes and Noble in Union Square this Wednesday! That's like, a fifteen minute walk from my apartment! I am so there. I only fear I will be trampled flat by the other rabid Sedaris fans. Not that I would really classify myself in the rabid category--for example, I think his latest book was kind of weak--but I do kind of have a crush on him. Even though he likes the boys and will therefore never return my love.


* * *

So we finally saw the new Star Wars movie on Friday night. Yes, it was better than the first two, but obviously that's not saying a whole lot. A little draggy for the first 45 minutes or so, but then it got pretty exciting. Some thoughts--and though I refuse to believe that there exists a subset of the population who has not yet seen the movie and eschewed all media coverage in order to avoid learning some major plot points (Guess what? ANAKIN SKYWALKER BECOMES DARTH VADAR!)--I guess you shouldn't read this next part if you have been trapped in a well for the past three months but have since escaped and plan to rush to your local multiplex tonight, Wookie costume in tow:

• So Anakin goes to the Dark Side so that he can learn how to save his wife from dying, right? But then she dies in the end anyway. So why didn't he just kill Palpatine then, instead of just screaming "Noooooo!" in a James Earl Jones voice and then just figuring, "Oh, what the hell, I just alienated and/or killed everyone I know, I guess I'll just stay evil." Well, here's what I really think: he should have made Palpatine teach him how to cheat death and everything BEFORE he promised to do everything that he said, like go on some rampage and kill all those "younglings" and such. And maybe he should have made Palpatine teach him how to do that electricity-shooting-out-of-his-hands thing too, because that's some powerful shit right there.

• How come everyone keeps getting all their arms and legs chopped off? I guess that's the danger of light-saber swordplay, but seriously, it's like George Lucas has some sort of amputation fetish or something.

• How come no one in the Senate noticed that Palpatine suddenly changed all wrinkly and haggard and yellow-eyed overnight? I mean, clearly the man is EVIL. Even his room was evil, it was all filled with these ominous black sculptures and things. So clearly the Senators are idiots for voting him in, because JUST LOOK AT THE GUY.

• Amazing, wasn't it, how Padme barely looked pregnant, yet in the end managed to deliver a set of what appeared to be four month-old twins. She must have some extra trunk space up in there that we don't know about.

• OK, so in the end, they had to hide Luke and Leia, right, so the agents of the Dark Side wouldn't find them. Giving Leia over to Jimmy Smits was a reasonable option, but giving Luke over to Anakin's relatives? On his home planet? And keeping his name "Skywalker"? Is that really such a good "hiding" place? Plus, it seems that people in this movie are lousy at keeping secrets--Padme and Anakin's marriage was supposed to be all hush-hush on the D-L, but hello, they're practically making out in front of EVERYONE, and when Anakin goes missing, Obi-Wan goes straight to Padme's apartment to ask her where he is.

* * *


Pulling a 12-hour shift in the ER today, noon to midnight. Beautiful weather out, three day weekend, looks like another great day for Kids Falling Off Things: The Greatest Hits.

Currently reading: Nothing at the moment, I still have to figure out my next move.

if only they did actual knitting at the knitting factory

Hey look, that issue of Wellesley Magazine with the article about "blogging" (I do kind of hate that word) finally came in the mail. You may remember that I was called all the way back in the fall for an interview for said article. It's been so long that I almost thought they scrapped the idea or something.





So nice job out of Jen for securing the cover story! I would link to the article, but the magazine ironically doesn't make itself available online. I'm just glad I didn't sound like a damn idiot in the quotes they ended up choosing. I have a tendency towards idiocy under fire.


* * *


Had another nightmare of a call in the PICU last night. I guess I'm going through a bad stretch. I don't usually have a black cloud per se (ResidentSpeak for "cursed with perpetual bad luck on call"--come for the webpage, stay for the lessons in medical lingo) but seriously, my last few calls have been assy, even taking into account that, duh, it's the PICU, your patients are going to be sicker than usual. There comes a point in the night, though, around 4am, when you just have to realize that you're not going to get any rest, and once you come to terms with that, a sort of inner Zen sets in. It's just the dashed potential for rest that's really painful.

Post-call, I came home and slept for about four hours and then headed back uptown for Joe's Resident Research Day reception, which turned out to be a much smaller deal than I had anticipated. (I thought it was going to be a sit-down dinner kind of affair, whereas in actuality it was more of a cheese and crackers kind of deal, with one lone, sad caterer walking around with a platter of chicken skewers.) Afterwards, we met up for dinner with Joe's friend Forest, in town from San Francisco. Dinner was good, but by 9:30pm Joe and I were both practically comotose with exhaustion, whereas Forest was ready to head out for part two of her evening, meeting up with some old friends at The Knitting Factory. Honestly, I know I shouldn't say this, because I'm still in my mid-twenties and should be living it up, dancing on tabletops and snorting cocaine off a hooker's naked ass, but the thought of staying out past midnight is just about as appealing to me as...well, the idea of snorting cocaine off a hooker's naked ass. At least we know this parenthood gig isn't going to cramp our style.

Currently reading: "The Namesake." I'm digging this book. It's a fast read, and an interesting first-generation American narrative. My favorite parts, though, are when she writes about the food. Mmm, Indian food.

in one arm and out the other

I had a nightmare of a PICU call on Sunday. Two kids on oscillators, three on conventional vents, one kid who was clearly succumbing to peer pressure and looking to join the crowd, and some kid who was stroking out. To top it all off, the last six hours of my shift I was doing a manual exchange transfusion--literally going into a kid's room and drawing out 150ccs of blood from his art line every half hour as reconstituted whole blood was running into his other arm. Since it took about ten minutes to set up and draw off the blood each time, what it really meant was that I was in that kid's room every 20 minutes. I'm sorry, but in this day and age, what's the deal with doing a manual exchange transfusion anyway? I mean, I can understand if it's a little baby that we're exchanging, but this was a grown-ass teenager. The blood bank has MACHINES for this kind of thing. Real answer: Good luck getting anything in the hospital done efficiently on the weekend, especially overnight, for anything requiring specialized equipment. Other real answer: The resident is the machine, don't you know that by now? A machine with very tired arms. I, Robot. The PICU fellow told me that he would take over a few blood draw shifts from me so that I could, you know, actually take care of some of my other patients, but the PICU fellow is a damn liar.

Aside from learning how to exchange transfuse someone, I did learn something else new about the PICU that night. There's another set of PICU call rooms over on the older wing of the hospital! Jen showed them to me on our way out the door Monday morning, and wouldn't you know, it's a pretty nice call room--it has two bunks and a carpet and everything. I mean, I'd heard about these call rooms in the past, but no one ever really showed me where they were, and sleep wasn't really an option much of the time anyway so the need to find them was less urgent. The only downside to these call rooms, I'm told, is that the clowns sometimes use that space to change. So sometimes if you go in there during the day, you may catch a clown or two in various stages of undress. Which may be reason enough to avoid that whole area altogether.


* * *


Our cable modem service was down for a day and a half because someone forgot to pay the cable bill uh, of technical difficulties, and we only just got ourselves back online. I didn't think it would really be such a big deal, but not until our connection was taken away did I realize how much we actually use the internet. When I got home post-call, I couldn't check my e-mail. I couldn't read the newspaper. I couldn't check the weather report. I couldn't log in my work hours. And I couldn't update this page, which means that whole thing with Joe going to his conference was the lead story for a little bit longer than I would have liked. (We talked about it some more, and result of that is that, like everything else in life, we'll just cope with it. I'll enlist outside help if needed, and call Joe at the hotel at 2am if I need some actual adult interaction and sympathy sleep-deprivation.) I mean, I just don't think I would be a very good Unabomber, because I depend on technology way to much in my day-to-day life. What did people do before the internet? Am I to believe that they had to go to the store and write letters on paper and have to look things up in the library and actually INTERACT WITH OTHER HUMAN BEINGS? Quelle horreur!

Luckily, we got everything sorted out, and obviously we're back up online. Thank god. Now I can finally return to the important things. Like looking up forgotten song lyrics and browsing through various online shopping venues for products I may consider purchasing in the future. Which, as we all know, is really what the internet is best used for.


* * *


I just looked at my calendar and realized that I only have four Peds calls left before the end of the year--three in the PICU and one 12-hour shift in the ER on Memorial Day. Four more Peds calls. Ever. Despite the fact that I'll be a resident for the REST OF MY LIFE, the idea of being done with something is exciting nonetheless. The third-year resident who was also in the PICU with me on Sunday actually just finished up her last call EVER ever, and was a little upset with me that I couldn't head out with her the morning post-call for a Blood Mary. Just her luck to be in celebration-mode and post-call with the one resident who can't drink.

Currently reading: "The Namesake." I figure I might enjoy it, because one of my med students lent me her copy of "Interpreter of Maladies" to me last year, and I liked that a lot. So she got Honors.

you know we'll have a good time then

So yesterday, to cleanse the cultural palate of the residue left over from "America's Next Top Model" (though I don't have any apologies for that), Joe and I went to watch a performance of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" at the Longacre Theater. Because we are so classy like that. The audience was, I think, extra pumped up last night, because the Arts and Leisure section of the Times had just that day featured a front page article about the three big name "divas" currently playing on Broadway (Jessica Lange, Natasha Richardson, and Kathleen Turner in "The Glass Menagerie," "A Streetcar Named Desire," and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" respectively) and declared Turner the unequivocal winner of the smackdown. Everyone loves to watch a play pre-approved by the critics. Makes me feel like I'm getting my money's worth. And it was very good, though at times exhausting to watch. Also, Kathleen Turner has some crazy husky voice. Seriously, it's like she gargled with whiskey and cigarette butts and then sanded down her vocal cords with a couple of 2 x 4s. Jessica Rabbit gone horribly wrong.


* * *


So Joe just found out that he has this national ophthalmology conference that he has to attend in the middle of August. The conference is a week long, and is taking place in Annapolis, Maryland. Let me say this again: Joe's going to be out of town for a week, leaving me at home alone with our three week old child. He said that if there are any complications with the delivery or anything, he won't go, but the unspoken part is that if everything is fine with he delivery, he almost certainly will go. Which, you know, OK, whatever, he's supposedly REQUIRED by his residency program to attend this conference. But still, being away for a whole week? When your baby is only three weeks old? How would he feel if I left him alone with the kid for a week that early on? More than a little panicky, I would think.

He figures I'll have Georgia (our nanny) around during the day to help out, and at least I won't be back at work yet so I can "get more rest during the day," whatever that means--but I don't think he quite understands how much work this is going to be, even with the perfect delivery room circumstances. And I am not thrilled about this. I mean, yes, I know and appreciate that we're very lucky to have a nanny and a family support system, and I can always--horror of horrors--ask people for help if I need to (when it comes to asking for help, I'm kind of like the stereotypical male driver who never wants to ask for directions). But I don't want him to go to Annapolis for a week and stay at a hotel and go to a bunch of lectures and meetings and actually get to sleep at night. I want him to suffer and be haggard with me.

Which is why I've been singing "Cats in the Cradle" in a pointed and meaningful way all afternoon.

Currently reading: The "ACLS Provider Manual" from the American Heart Association. I have to take my certification course post-call on Monday, because I never actually got certified in ACLS as a Peds resident. PALS and NALS, yes. ACLS, not so much.

follies

Yesterday evening we went to the Peds Department end-of-year party. Like most work-related parties, it was basically a clone of the party from the year before--same venue, same food, same people, even the weather was the same, and I got lost in exactly the same manner as last year trying to find the restaurant. (Because of the campus, it's complicated to navigate that particular part of Morningside Heights, so really I'm not as stupid as that makes me sound. And please ignore the fact that no one else got lost but me.)

So there was open bar (wow, free water!) and there were hors d'oeurves, there was dinner and there were speeches. Awards were handed out, and at the end of the night, there were "housestaff follies," which were basically skits put on by each resident class lampooning life at the hospital. This is the part where I really started to pity the spouses and significant others that were dragged along to this dinner, because given that the skits were just a mess of in-jokes and references, they had no idea what they hell we were all laughing about. In fact, many of the civilian spouses who came last year opted out this time around, because they just couldn't handle any more skits about the ABSOLUTE HILARITY of getting called by Larry from Pharmacy at 3am to get ID approval for vanc. Ah ha ha! Larry! From Pharmacy! We're cracking ourselves up here! Ah ha ha...what, why aren't you laughing?

I did (kindly, I thought) offer Joe the option of skipping the Peds end-of-year dinner, but he insisted on attending, probably in the spirit of spousal solidarity and obligation. Also probably because I promised that I'd attend this Ophthalmology "Resident Research Day" dinner with him next week, which is probably going to be even more esoteric and less amusing than our dinner. "I got called for a retinal detachment, but turns out with was a vitreous hemorrhage! Ah ha ha! Vitreous! Oh man, I'm funny. Pass the wine."

I partially expected this, but I actually got an end-of-year present from the Chiefs at the dinner. Usually the Chiefs give out presents to all the graduating third-year residents, but I guess they figured I was leaving too, so what the hell, throw something in the shopping cart for her too. My gift was a baby book (some kind of guide to the baby's first year with cartoons in it) and this ceramic smoking baby figurine. Wait, I have to show it to you:





The funniest part about this (aside from the fact that the baby is just sitting there with a cig in it's mouth) is the disclaimer printed on the box, which reads, "REAL babies should NEVER smoke." Aw, man. And here I was thinking that plugging a ciggy in his little yell-hole might be a nice way to shut the kid up for five minutes.

Currently reading: The New Yorker, because I needed something I could read on the subway that I could throw away after I was done, since no book was small enough to fit in my purse. Unfortunately, I didn't finish the whole issue before I got to the party, so instead I was just carrying the magazine around all night.

clearing the air

First off, I just have to say this, because there has been some commentary, and I want to make something clear here:

Maybe I should have said this more plainly from the outset, but we created Cal's website for friends and family. Because not everyone lives right next door to us, you see, and the power of Al Gore's "internet" brings us together. Right now it just has some ultrasounds and belly pics up on it, but when the kid joins us on the outside, we plan to add more photos of him doing interesting things like breathing air and looking at things. Many friends and family have asked us where we are registered, and therefore there is a link on the website to our baby registry (which, like a bridal registry, is fairly common in this day and age). This, again, is for friends and family who actually know us and will know the baby when he comes out. We set up a similar website for our wedding two years ago, and most people found it to be helpful and fun. If you are in any way offended or feel the need to say snarky things about the fact that we have a baby registry, then by all means, do not click on the link to Cal's webpage, click on the registry links, click to view our registry, and then get mad that we have registered for baby washcloths. And in exchange, I will not go seek out your bridal registry and deride you for registering for a breadmaker, because lord knows, you will never use that thing. Trust me on this one.

You may have noticed a link on the sidebar to Cal's Amazon wishlist, which I put up in response to the surprising number of reader e-mails and comments I have received asking if they could get a present for Cal. Which is, of course, insanely nice, you guys are nuts (in that good way), but thank you so much for even thinking about us. Not wanting to put a link up to his actual registry registry (because again, that's for--say it with me--friends and family), I instead created a list of children's books that I thought Cal might enjoy someday. Because lord knows I like to read, so this kid will probably pop out with an Itty Bitty Booklight already strapped to his head. Books from this wishlist are an option for those interested, and we deeply thank those who have already contributed to Cal's growing library. Another option, and I might say an even better one, is to just think nice thoughts about Cal and to donate time or books to Reach Out and Read, a program promoting early childhood literacy through community-based Pediatrics clinics. Or don't click on either link. It's all good.

But if the fact of us having a baby registry upsets you, by all means, don't look at the registry. Think it looks like we're just making a list of things that we need for the baby and would be thrilled to recieve? That's right, because that's what a baby registry IS. But if it makes Great-Grandma Rita happy to buy our kid a nightgown with a picture of a duck on it, we're damn well going to let her buy our kid a fucking nightgown with a picture of a duck on it. However, if it offends you for some reason that we have registered for said nightgown, please just look away and let Great-Grandma Rita do her thing.

Seriously, usually I don't let the errant comment get to me, but the insinuation after almost five years of keeping this website that suddenly I'm whoring our future kid to the faceless online masses for a free baby gifts is...well, more than a little silly. Hell, if I wanted free crap, I would have started demanding presents years ago. Like all Rolexes and shit.

OK OK OK, group hug! We're done with this topic. Now run along and play, Mommy's gotta go watch her stories.

Currently watching: The finale of "America's Next Top Model." Last night, I mean, not right at this moment, because I don't have TiVo. Hey faceless internet masses, buy me a TiVo! (Heh, kidding, kidding, now I'm really really done.) I hadn't actually watched this show all season, but luckily they had some sort of season-ending recap on the night before where they showed the highlight of each episode, so by the end of Tuesday night, I was all caught up and ready for the finale. And the girl I liked won! You know, little Mohawk girl! I mean, not little, since she was probably seven feet tall, but you know what I mean. However, on a slightly different note, who knew that Tyra Banks's boobs were so ENORMOUS? I guess anyone that gets the Victoria's Secret catalogue.

romy and michelle's high school reunion (minus romy)

So yesterday I exercised the supremely bad judgment of watching that new Britney Spears and Kevin Whatshisface reality show on UPN. And lo, it was kind of vomit-inducing. Not just so much for the skankiness factor, or the extremely closeups of greasy grimy skin, or all the sad, sad sex talk. I mean, that all was vomitous too, but oh my stars, the camerawork. If you're going to make a whole show consisting of someone's hand-held camera footage (which every five seconds would vertiginously whip around 180 degrees for a mega close-up of the filmer's face as she interjects some saucy comment and then laughs with her mouth VERY WIDE OPEN) at least make sure that the camera has one of those motion-stabilizer things. That was some Blair Witch shit right there. The room, she is still spinning.

So the next big thing looming on my calendar (aside from a smattering of PICU calls and ER shifts) is that my ten-year high school reunion is coming up in about two weeks. First of all--my TEN YEAR high school reunion? Holy crap, how can it be ten years already? When you think of it like that, all in a chunk, it hardly seems possible that time could pass so quickly. But then I sit down and think about my four years of college, four years of med school, and two years of residency, and how long each of those individual experiences seemed, and then ten years starts to sound about right.

I am very excited for my high school reunion. Well, first of all, I'm excited that the lounge that they picked for the reunion is only a ten-minute walk from my apartment--but aside from that, I'm also psyched to see everyone. Let me say right off that, unlike many, I did not hate my high school experience. Most of the people I know that profess hatred for their high school years say they felt trapped by their high schools and saw college and beyond as a chance to escape and be with a cohort of people that could actually read, or, barring that, occasionally hold an intelligent non-intoxicated conversation. I don't know about that, or how much of it is exaggeration to make a point, but I do know that when I offered to go with Joe to his ten-year reunion three years prior, he blanched and said he didn't think he could handle a whole night of discussing lawn care and gun collections while standing around with cups of spiked punch in the high school gym. So anyway, my point being that I have no idea what other people's high school experiences were like, but I really liked mine. I liked the school, and I liked the people. They were fun and cool, and to this day, still some of the smartest people that I know. So the thought of seeing everyone in the same place again, with minimal effort on my part (see: the ten minute walk) is a happy one.

I know that the conventional wisdom is that high school reunions are the place to spot how everyone got fat and bald, but I don't really think this is going to be the case either, given the sampling of high school friends with whom I've kept in touch. In fact, I'll probably be the real outlier, being knocked up and all, but of the classmates I still see around the city, everyone looks...pretty much the same. Some of the guys I've seen out and about have started to tend towards the habitus of the middle-aged (a little softening around the waistline, maybe a slight retreat of the hairline), but on the whole, everyone still basically looks like--dare I say--teenagers.

I blame this on New York. Outside of New York, I think that people are pushed towards marriage, home ownership and family much faster than within the city. Most of the people I graduated high school with are about 28. (I happen to be a year younger with a June birthday, which is why I'm only 26--though not for long.) But in other parts of the country, most of my high school class would be married with children, like Al and Peg Bundy. However, the majority of my high school friends are not married. Everyone rents. Many people work, but have not settled into "career" mode yet. Many are still in various stages of graduate education (mostly law, though there's some medicine and business scattered in there). And no one has kids yet. I don't know what it is, but there seems to be something about living in a major metropolis that delays your ascension to "grown-up" status. Sure, we get there eventually, but we just take our sweet time arriving.

Oh my god, I'm going to be a freaky square breeder-girl at my own high school reunion. How terminally un-hip.

Currently reading: Finishing "Bergdorf Blondes." Well, that was mindless. Next up, "The Namesake."

not wholesome enough for whole foods

Yesterday, on my last day of sick call, I got pulled again for the PICU. This time, both NPs scheduled to work that day had called out sick. On a beautiful, warm Monday. After a beautiful, warm weekend. Am I reading too much into this? All I know is, most residents would have to actually be dead before they called in sick. Seriously. There's an IV pole in one of the call rooms, left over from a night when one of us, felled by mid-winter gastro, was receiving IV hydration and directing patient care from the bottom bunk. Just like there's no crying in baseball, there are no frivolous sick days in residency.

Anyhoo, we're having our future nanny over for dinner on Saturday, for the purpose of getting to know each other better and hashing out some of the finer details of Cal Care. Joe and I will be cooking, which is a big enough deal in and of itself, but in addition, Georgia (not her real name, but close) is a vegematerian, which involves a little extra planning on our parts. Joe actually used to be herbivorous during his Berkeley days (there's apparently something about the Bay Area that turns you all crunchy and green and eco-freaky--and my apologies to the Bay Area contingent, I don't actually think you're freaks, unless you play hackey sack and wear Birkenstocks WITH SOCKS, and then I'm sure you'd find that consensus is pretty universal that you're Not Quite Right), which has at least left us with a nice stash of vegetarian cookbooks to work with. We chose an Indian food menu, as it was comfortably vegetarian and didn't require the I substitution of bulger or soy gluten chunks in lieu of meat. Why do people do that? Make things that look and (supposedly) taste like meat, but don't have meat in them? Soy products molded into the shape of a turkey just comes out spongy and unnatural. Just eat the animals. Circle of Life and all that.

So anyway, today I was enlisted with gathering up all the stray items that we couldn't order from Fresh Direct. I headed over to the Whole Foods in Chelsea, which I figured was the best place to locate freaky vegetarian ingredients. I had only been in there once before, sort of accidentally (I was on my way home in the middle of a snowstorm and needed a place to warm up), but had never really tried to buy anything there before. But it looked beautiful and gleaming inside, filled with fresh, exotic produce and hip urbanites with various au courant accessories (workout gear, babies in Bugaboos, very large sunglasses and the secretively smuggled small-canine-in-a-bag) so I figured chances were good that I'd be able to find the ingredients that I was looking for.

What I didn't count on was the fact that shopping at Whole Foods would be so annoying. Seriously, for such a big market with the word "Food" in the title, there wasn't actually a lot of actual food in there. I mean, yes, there was food in the supermarket, but they were all these super-pricey organic brands, and not a whole lot of staples. Good luck finding a box of Cheerios in Whole Foods. Crunchy Whole Grain Organic O-shaped Cereal (now with 75% more fiber!) is the closest you're going to get. And there were so many restrictions on the food there. In the bread aisle, where I was looking for a dry ingredient kit for our bread maker (they only had a whole wheat kit, of course, no white bread anywhere in sight) literally half of the products were labeled as "gluten-free." Gluten-free bread mix. Gluten-free pancake mix. Gluten-free muffin mix. Call me ignorant, but...what's wrong with gluten? Does everyone now have celiac disease, or is "gluten-free" some sort of new fad diet that I don't know about?

I finally finished my shopping and was ready to check out when I noticed something else weird about Whole Foods. You know how in most normal supermarkets, the impulse buy rack (usually flanking the line to the register) has stuff like magazines and candy and chapstick? Well, at Whole Foods, the impulse buy rack was stocked with 1.) yoga mats 2.) yoga blocks 3.) yoga magazines and 4.) gluten-free brownies. What kind of strange alternate universe is this? And where are the Skittles?

See, and this is why Fresh Direct is awesome. Just cut out the middle man and the entire supermarket experience. Just get all the good stuff delivered right to your door, and minimize all that pesky human interaction to boot.

Currently reading: "Bergdorf Blondes." I honestly don't know what possessed me to start reading this book, as I abhor "chick lit" and any type of literature that cites more than three brand names per page (see: chick lit). And it's reading pretty much as expected. That is to say, outside of the name-dropping and various tongue-in-cheek observations about the Manhattan socialite scene, there isn't anything in the way of an actual plot. Oh well, it'll be over soon.

high roller

So as I mentioned before, we just had our second-year resident retreat this weekend, which we spent in Mystic, CT by day and at Mohegan Sun by night. Mystic was like any other seaside northeastern town--quaint, populated with a preponderance of olde-timey occasionally maritime-themed shoppes selling either salt water taffy or flowing beach caftans. Mohegan Sun was something else entirely. I hadn't been in a casino since I was in Vegas almost six years ago, and the fact hasn't changed since then that I really don't like casinos. It's such an overwhelming experience stepping into one--the noise, the sights, the cigarette smoke, the masses of old people with cups full of quarters and baseball-hatted Asian tourists--that the truth is I really wanted to leave the second I got there.

But I wanted to be a good sport. This was our big annual retreat, after all. Good times! Party on! Yeah! So I gamely joined my co-residents at the bar (matching their boozery with glasses upon glasses of water), and dinner at The Summer Shack. And afterwards, fortified with corn on the cob and steamers, I followed them onto the floor to watch some gambling.

I didn't mind sitting on the sideline just watching--in fact, I was pretty curious about it, having never played any casino table games myself. Slot machines I could well figure out, but aside from my limited exposure through "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" and "Ocean's 11," I had no idea what the hell people were doing standing around the roulette wheel or the craps table. There was something with numbers, and betting your chips on the table. And then sometimes the dealer would move all the chips around with a little stick. Occasionally, dice were thrown, and people would make noise. That was pretty much the extent of my understanding. So it was fun having the rules and strategies explained to me, and it was fun watching my friends playing, and occasionally winning. I just didn't really want to play myself.

Aside from not understanding any of the rules of the games, I generally don't like to gamble because I don't like playing with money. In fact, if pressed to choose one two-word hyphenate for my personality, risk-averse would be an excellent choice. (Yes, "anal-retentive" is also a good one, thanks for bringing it up, but not the two-word hyphenate I was thinking of.) Gambling doesn't jibe with my personality. Anyway, it made me sad to see all the old people with the cup full of quarters, compulsively pushing at the buttons on the slot machines. It reminded me of those neuro experiments with dopaminergic receptors in rats, how the rats would keep pushing at the lever stimulating the brain's "pleasure center," forgoing even food and water, until they DIED. I know it's all just for fun, and it's just basically like a big arcade for grown-ups, but still, something about casinos freak me out.

It was 12:45am and we were waiting for the shuttle bus to the hotel when someone pointed out that I hadn't yet used my complimentary casino voucher. See, they gave us these free vouchers for food and games at the door, one of which was a $10 in "casino bucks" that could be used at the "Wheel of Fortune," a game situated right near the entrance not unlike most of the other games. Spinny wheel, bunch of numbers, if your number is picked, you get your money back and then some. I hadn't planned on using my voucher, but hell, the bus wasn't there yet, and the game was right there--sure, what the hell, I'd play for one round of "Wheel of Fortune." Hell, it wouldn't cost me anything, so who cares if I lost.

I put my $10 voucher down. Two seconds later, I won $100.

I cashed in my chips, not quite believing that what happened would translate to actual legal tender. But sure enough, they handed me a $100 bill, no questions asked. Were they kidding me? Did they just give me $100 for doing nothing? That's awesome! And then I started to understand the psychology of the gambler's fallacy, and why they put the Wheel of Fortune right by the entrance. Win $100 right off, which makes you want to gamble more. Hell, it's $100 you didn't have before, why not see if you can win again? And you keep playing and playing, figuring you're due for another win at some point, until finally the casino has all of it's money back, and maybe a substantial chunk of yours. And then you get back on the bus, kind of sheepish, but no sweat, what's losing a couple hundred dollars, you had fun anyway.

Not for the risk-averse, though. I took my $100 and ran away. Because baby needs a new pair of everything. And I was scared of Gamblor and his neon claws.

Currently reading: The New York Times review of "Star Wars, Episode 3," which is (surprisingly) being touted as the best of the four episodes directed by George Lucas ("That's right, better than 'Star Wars'"--and by that, I think they mean the first one). Not that it really matters what the review said, because we were planning, however grudgingly, to see it anyway. But what the review made me realize is that aside from the whole Anakin-becoming-Darth-Vadar part of the story, I have no idea what the last two "Star Wars" movies were about. The Trade Federation? The Senate? "Attack of the Clones"? Even after watching that movie, I had no real clue about who the clones were and who or why they were attacking. And not that I really cared that much either.

and they call it puppy love

Yesterday, Joe mentioned over dinner, "The tent is up." I didn't have to ask him what he meant, I knew he meant the graduation tent in the garden of the hospital. It's not only a graduation tent for the med school, of course--there are plenty of other graduation ceremonies taking place in series under that tent, for the nursing school, the dental school, the Ph.D.s, what have you. In fact, if I remember, they were shooing us out after our own graduation ceremony because the Public Health school was lining up to graduate right on our heels, and they needed the space. It's just hard to imagine that we graduated from med school almost two years ago. I think about the difference between then and now and it's just mind-boggling.

Still, two years later, and only now am I finally, finally settling into my role. Such that I feel comfortable making the big decisions alone. That I'm really starting to trust myself and my own clinical judgement. That I can really feel comfortable differentiating a truly sick patient from a going-to-be-OK one. That when I hear someone calling "Doctor?" I reflexively turn around to see if they're talking to me. About damn time.


* * *


An update on the whole paternity situation (and not in that Ricki Lake paternity test way):

I'm hoping this will be like the whole dog thing. What I mean by that is that I hope that Joe will fall into the fatherhood role as naturally and readily as he has fallen into dog ownership, because...well, there are many parallels. See, getting the dog was kind of my idea. Even before we moved in together, I had campaigned for getting a dog, and Joe sort of just went along with it. I mean, he liked dogs, and did want to get a dog at some point ("...for our kids to play with"), but I doubt we would have gotten one at the time that we did if it weren't for my relentless obsessing.

On my side, I'd been researching the details of dog ownership since my senior year of college. I'd researched different breeds, the breeder vs. shelter dog choice, the cost of dog food, vaccination schedules, read this book about dog training (along with countless online articles about every topic dog-related under the sun). I was ready for this dog. I was practically willing this dog into existence. And when we got turned down for puppy adoption the first time we applied, I was heartbroken. Seriously, there may have been tears. (Of course, now I understand that the rejection was MEANT TO BE, to tear us from the bum dog that we had originally tapped and to set us up for our REAL dog, Cooper, two months later. Close call there. As well as here.)

But even the day before we ended up getting Cooper, I was hesitant about Joe's mindset for getting a puppy. Was he really into the idea, or was he just getting steamrolled by my enthusiasm and going along for the ride? He had barely glanced at the dog-training literature I left around for him. He hadn't been combing through the roster of available shelter animals. He hadn't really thought about the logistics of actually having a puppy in our home. The day before we finally adopted the Coop, he even expressed some last-minute doubts about the whole enterprise, leading us to delay our trip to the shelter for a day. I was worried, basically, that he was only going to be peripherally involved with the dog.

But obviously these concerns ended up being groundless, because once we actually brought the dog home, he completely fell in love with her and now if anything is twice as crazy as me about this animal. He dotes on her. He spoils her. He trained her to sit, to give paw, to...actually, those are the only two real tricks she knows. He thinks he is the dog's biological father. They are IN LOVE.





So I guess what I'm saying is that I hope Joe ends up liking the kid as much as he likes the dog.

On the advice of some, I did end up buying Joe a copy of "The New Father: A Dad's Guide to the First Year" for his birthday--sandwiched between some other more fun gifts, of course. He says he even read a few pages of it during lunch at work the other day, which, to anyone at all familiar with the length of time the average resident actually gets to eat lunch, really means that he read maybe a page and a half. So he's trying, at least. I know that when the kid gets here, he's going to be just as involved and loving and proud and supportive as any other non-deadbeat dad out there.

Still, part of me wishes, why can't he be more like this guy?

Currently watching: "Spanglish." This was a surprisingly good movie. What happened, ever since "Punch Drunk Love," Adam Sandler is becoming, like, this real actor. I'm so proud of him! Just as long as he promises not to make any more movies like "Little Nicky."

fresh from the netherlands

Our strollers and carseat got here today! Call me uncool, but I have been super-excited about this all week. We've been tracking the progress of the packages via UPS, as they left Drachten (in the Netherlands), landed in Philly yesterday morning, traveled to Secaucus by the afternoon, and finally arrived in New York, right on time for delivery this afternoon. Not too shabby. Thanks, babycare.nl!





Here's a picture of the boxes after I transported them up from the lobby. They look kind of big, but none of them were really that heavy. Which is good, because the whole point is that we didn't really want a stroller that was built like a tank or anything like that.





I first cracked open the box with the carseat, since I knew at least that didn't require any assembly. Cooper was extremely interested in the proceedings and was sniffing like crazy, leaving big wet sniffmarks everywhere. I was pleased to see that the carseat also came with a free gift box (cadeau box gratis) that contains some sort of weird squeaky chew toy (Doudou knuffeldoek of Kniipspeeltje) a baby grooming kit (Manicuurset) and a bib (Slabber--great word for bib, by the way). Loving the Dutch.





So I took out the carseat and played with it. It looks very plush and comfortable, and with a seat slightly larger than the U.S. infant carseats I've seen (which makes sense, since the upper weight limit is almost 10 pounds more). But I was getting antsy to see the strollers. So I paged Joe and told him to get his ass home to help me assemble them. I paced around. I sat on my hands. Then I realized, for chrissake, I have a fucking medical degree, surely I could assemble a stupid stroller without having to wait for some boy to do it for me. So I did.





I was mildly intimidated at first by the sheer number of little parts, and the fact that the assembly instructions were entirely pictorial as the booklet was written in something like ten different languages. But once I got started, I realized that it was actually pretty easy. For one, there were no tools required--everything snapped into place like Pipeworks, Pipeworks, Playskool Pipeworks (give it the works!). And, the design was refreshingly clear and intuitive, unlike much of the hospital equipment I have to deal with. To this day, depending on the model of hospital bed, I still have to struggle to figure out how to get that siderail down.





And there it is, lovely to behold. I assembled it with the seat facing the parent, but you can also flip it around to have the seat facing out. So far as I can tell from my limited trials around the apartment, this seems like it's going to be one smooth ride for Cal. Lucky. I don't see anyone offering to wheel me around. The fun part is that you can also remove the seat, snap on the (included) carseat adaptors, and...





...voila, rubber baby buggy bumper. You can't see it, but the carseat has a retractable sun-shield that can be pulled up as well. This carseat feature will be handy for when the kid is a kidlet, I think. The stroller itself, though, holds up to 20kg (or 44lbs for us Stone Age non-metric Americans) so hopefully we'll get a lot of wear out of it. Also note the little black bag located between the two big wheels at the front. It's handy for storing the rain cover, tire pump, instruction manual and what have you. You could put your wallet and keys and stuff in there too, there's plenty of room. As some people have noted, however, there is no cup holder. So maybe now's the time to get that beer hat with the two straws sticking out of it.





And let's not forget the coup de grace, the lightweight travel stroller that we also ordered. They're not kidding about that thing folding up small. Look at it next to that pair of scissors for reference. It really is quite compact.




But it unfolds to a regular full-sized umbrella stroller. Magic! Also, it was much easier to assemble out of the box--all I basically had to do was to unfold it and snap on the front wheel. This comes with the carseat adaptor feature as well, but I didn't take a picture of that, because I'm sure you can extrapolate from the other picture how it all works. Also, the stroller really is that orange. Orange like a roadcone. Ain't no one running over our kid in the street.

As for the actual performance review of the strollers, you may have to wait until we actually have someone to wheel around in it before I can give you the full report. (We tried to simulate a Cal-like passenger by dumping a pile of books in the seat and pushing them around the apartment, but I think it's not quite the same thing.)


* * *


This weekend, my resident class and I are headed to Mystic, CT for our annual class retreat. (Last year, as you may recall, we went to the Hamptons.) Even though I'm not going to be in their class in a month, I want to go along just for fun. Unfortunately, the plans for Mystic seem to so far be 1.) visiting a winery, 2.) hot tubbing at the hotel, and 3.) generally getting shit-faced, so maybe it won't be so much fun for me after all. It'll be like that high school Physics class trip to Great Adventure where I was too chicken to go on any of the rides, and was self-appointed coat and bag holder for everyone else.

Currently reading: "Stuck Rubber Baby" touted as the next "Maus," at least according to a review on the back of the cover. Eh, not really.

dreamweaver

Looking at my computer screen in the harsh light of day, I'm noticing it's covered with the remnants of dried spittle and god knows what else, propelled at high speeds towards the glass by my allergy-season sneezing. My allergies are actually slightly better this year than usual--which I credit to the relative immunosuppression of pregnancy, since none of my other allergy-suffering cohort seems to agree with me that this Spring is somehow less pollen-y. Well, regardless of the improvement, I'm still more itchy and sneezy than my wild-type control, hence the spittle screen. Which is gross. Got to get some Windex up on that.


* * *


I had a restless night last night, which I can partially attribute to a number of anxiety dreams that I've been having about The Kid. I can also partially attribute the anxiety to the fact that Joe was on call last night (Ophtho residents take home-call, which means they get paged in for emergencies, but barring that don't have to physically be in the hospital overnight) and every time Joe's on call, I get less sleep because I'm all tense and attuned for that 3am page that will wake us both up. He puts is pager on vibrate, but it doesn't help, because a vibrating pager on a nightstand just makes a really loud VIBRATION noise (which I think is even worse than the beeping) and then an even louder CLUNK as the damn thing vibrates itself off the table onto the wood floor.

Yes, but anyway, the anxiety dreams. I haven't been having too many of those up to this point (unless you count the bizarre dreams where I see the outlines of hands and feet stretching six inches out of my abdomen, like a surrealist performance art piece), but I guess the reason for that is that I was saving all of my real anxiety dreams for last night.

Dream #1: Don't know how to breast-feed baby.
Trying to breastfeed. There is no juice. Baby getting mad. Boobs are dysfunctional. Am bad parent.

Dream #2: Baby is very heavy.
Am carrying baby. But baby is monster baby, or perhaps made of lead, because despite being very tiny, weighs about 1.5 tons. Cannot carry 1.5 tons. Drop the baby.

Dream #3: Baby is mutant baby.
Baby is mutant baby, and not in that hot sexy X-Men way. Enough said about that.

I think I get these anxiety dreams shortly before most big events in my life. They're pretty transparent too, it doesn't take Sigmund Freud to interpret my dreams of forgetting to book a florist or neglecting to pick up my dress shortly before our wedding two years ago. So I think I'm nervous about the baby. Duh, you think?


* * *


So our downstairs neighbor smokes pot. I know because we can smell it quite strongly in the computer room when he lights up. I don't know if this is a quirk of the heating system or how the windows are arranged or what, but apparently all the pot smell is channeled up from his apartment into our computer room, establishing an olfactory herbarium. There could be worse smells, I suppose, like the time that mouse died under our floor, but it's still pretty strong. I was worried that the smell might actually channel up into Cal's room too, since his room is right next to the computer room, and might therefore spend his formative years in a pot-smoke haze, all mellow and giggly with pseudo-profound insights. But so far as my nose can tell, his room is a drug-free zone. At least until his teenage rebellion years.

Currently reading: "The Trixie Update," a website kept by a stay at home dad chronicling the feeding, diapering, and sleeping habits of his kid. Aside from being fantastically informative data-wise and very graphically snazzy, I love these people because the mom returned to work 5 weeks after the kid was born during the first year of her pathology residency at UNC. Thus normalizing my entire existence, you see.

le big mac

Yesterday I decided that I was going to try my first Big Mac. I know it seems unlikely that I've lived in the United States my entire life and never had a Big Mac, but that's the truth. (I have eaten several Whoppers, however, for what that's worth.) What I really craved were some McDonald's fries--whatever crazy oil they cook those fries in must be laced with the crack cocaine, because there is just no substitute--and while in McDonald's, I figured oh, what the hell, might as well go whole hog (as it were) and ordered the whole Big Mac meal.

Reflections afterward on the Big Mac: eh. It was OK. What the hell was that salad dressing in there, though? Was that the famed "special sauce," because it looked and tasted like Thousand Island.

The fries, however, were awesome.


* * *


So sometimes I like to watch these medical shows on TV. Not medical shows like "ER" or "Grey's Anatomy" (the latter which I've never watched, but have this hunch that I would find it overly melodramatic and therefore irritating), but medical shows like the ones on The Learning Channel. I know many of these shows are more sensation than science (behold the number of shows about trauma in the ER or plastic surgeries gone horribly wrong), but some of them are kind of interesting. I realize, though, that what I do when I watch these shows is the same thing that some guys do when they watch sports. I talk to the TV. And sometimes, I yell at the TV.

Yesterday, Joe and I were watching this show called "Amazing Medical Stories," which featured three patients with, uh, amazing medical stories. The first one featured a guy with a giant disfiguring AVM on his nose and forehead, requiring resection and the fitting of a prosthesis.


MICHELLE
That's a big one. I hope they scanned him, to make sure that he doesn't have AVMs hiding out anywhere else.

SURGEON
(On the show, talking to the patient)
We're going to have to resect all the way to here, and put in titanium screw here for the prosthesis...

MICHELLE
Scan him! Scan his brain!

SURGEON
(Continuing, because people on TV can't hear you screaming at them)
...and in a couple of months, you're going to come back to fit the prosthesis.

MICHELLE
Are you going to scan his head or what?

[Next scene: The surgeon is looking over a panel of the patient's head CTs.]

MICHELLE
(Vindicated)
Ah.


The second story was the story of a guy who got his arms fried off after an accident with a high voltage line, blah blah blah special nerve-integrated prostheses. The final story, though, was about a baby born nine weeks premature who was intubated and had a stroke that rendered her paralyzed from the chest down.


JOE
Oh oh.
(Covers Michelle's eyes.)

MICHELLE
What? I can watch this. I'm brave.

JOE
Too scary.

MICHELLE
Too scary for me, or too scary for you?

JOE
Too scary for me.

MICHELLE
We can change the channel.

JOE
No.

NARRATOR
(On TV)
But with the aid of blah blah blah technology blah, little Ashley is able to walk for the first time.

JOE
Wow, that's awesome.

MICHELLE
(Snotty)
Well, the real question is, why would an ex-31 weeker have such a bad outcome in the first place? Why with no comorbidities, if she was just a normal 31 weeker, would she even need to be intubated? What kind of dog and pony show are they running down there? Haven't they heard of CPAP?

JOE
I don't know. Maybe she had other problems that they didn't mention.

MICHELLE
(Talking to TV)
Why did you have to intubate so aggressively? What about the risk of IVH?

JOE
Stop yelling at the TV.

MICHELLE
Well, it's making me mad.


Then I realized, and not for the first time, why some people hate having doctors as patients. Because we can be extremely annoying. Or at least I can be.

Currently reading: "Mutants: On Genetic Variety and the Human Body." I thought this would be more of a history-of-science kind of book, but it turns out to be much more science and much less history than I'd anticipated. You should probably have a relatively strong interest in embryology and genetics if you're looking to get into this one.

testing moblog feature

testing moblog feature

Not sure if this is going to work...

"sick" call

I got paged at 11:30pm Thursday night by one of the Chiefs, which is never, ever a good thing. In fact, pages from the Chief are almost always bad news. They never call just to say hi, or tell you that you won an award, or that somehow, they scraped together some extra money to put towards your next paycheck. It's always "Listen, would you mind working an extra ER shift? Or two? Or ten? On Christmas and New Year's? Thanks." Sure enough, I was being called in to work in the PICU the following morning. The ignominy of it all was that I wasn't even getting called to cover another resident (which is sort of the point of the resident sick call pool)--I was getting called to cover an NP who had called out "sick" at the last second. (And not to be bitchy about it, but I have plenty of sources that lead me to put "sick" in quotes--and yes, three day weekends are quite nice I hear, I would love to enjoy one myself sometime in the next five years.) Since when is it my job to cover random staff throughout the hospital? What's next, them calling me to cover the respiratory therapists? The guy who restocks the supply closet whilst mumbling to himself? Lunch Lady Doris in the cafeteria?


* * *


The reason that I was still awake when my Chief called me at 11:30pm, though, was because I was working on this. You know it was only a matter of time before Cal got his own website. We mainly set this up for family and friends; we're also sending out official "we're expecting" announcements this I've posted on this page already in one form or another, but there is a very cute picture of a baby chick up on the page, so there you go.

People have been asking me lately if I'm planning to have a baby shower. Is it bad to admit that I don't really want to? I didn't have a bridal shower either. Just something about the girliness of the tradition turns me off. Also, I don't like having that much attention focused on just me for that period of time. I barely survived my wedding as it was. I know a lot of people have co-ed baby showers nowadays, and make it into more of a normal get-together, but still, I don't want to be remotely associated with a function where people are expected to play games like these.

Currently reading: "The Nursing Mother's Companion." It seems like breastfeeding should be this totally easy thing, because it's natural and all that, but the more I read about it, the more I realize that it's totally complicated and hard.

resolution, for now

Hey all. Thanks for the input. Not that I intended to make it a beat-up-on-Joe free for all yesterday, because those of you who know him also know that he is a good husband, sensitive in general and all that--but I really do think (by his own admission) that he really hasn't thought all that much about what it's going to be like around here after Cal joins the mix. Also, I think that he was having a lot of anxiety about how to "do it all," having a successful work life while not being a neglectful parent, and was afraid to talk about it with me because he thought it made him some sort of an unfit father, not knowing that I was stressing mightily about the exact same thing. (I guess he hasn't been reading this page.) So he was compensating for the uncertainty factor by perseverating on the stressor with which he was at least already familiar--that stressor being work. Ah, sweet sweet immutable work. Teacher, mother, secret lover.

Residency is a strange thing. I would barely even call it a "job", it's a total cult-like lifestyle that warps how you think about everything, and forces you to put a priority on work when really, sometimes your priorities should lie elsewhere. One of my co-residents once told me (to illustrate a point that we were making about how residency turns you into a crazy person) that after his wife's father died, the first thing he thought about was, "Shit, how am I going to get off time from work to go to this funeral?" Or the co-residents who suggested to me sanguinely shortly after I announced my pregnancy, "What would be nice is if you gave birth, like, two months early. Then you could squeeze your maternity leave in before you start your anesthesia program." Yeah, that's the ticket, deliver two months ahead of schedule. What normal people think like that?

I think part of the delayed connection for fathers (I can only imagine, and not to generalize) is that they don't really have to think day to day, moment to moment about the fact that there's a fetus all up in their craw, sprinting for the finish line. It would be different if they had to feel the kid move around at inconvenient times, or go to the bathroom every two seconds, or outgrow their clothes faster than they can buy new ones, or hobble around with back and leg pain all the time, or contemplate every bite of food that goes into their mouth to assess whether or not eating that unwashed grape is going to "hurt the baby." I was pretty much the same way early on in the pregnancy. Without tangible evidence of Cletus the Fetus (as we called him at the time) bumping around in there, there were whole stretches where I would just...forget. Men can continue to do this until much later into term, I think. I mean, I'm not following him around work all day, poking him with my protuberant abdomen and screaming about how the kid is kicking me in the bladder.

That fatherhood instinct-delay, I imagine, is probably fairly universal. But there's another wrinkle to our story that think also plays a role. I feel like the fact that I have two years of training in Pediatrics is giving him a false sense of security in my abilities to handle things right from the get-go. I think he is lulled into complacency by the fact that I so far have had a whole lot of baby-wrangling experience, and therefore have everything under control, no sweat.

Here's the dirty little secret of Pediatrics here, people. Pediatricians who don't have kids themselves don't know what the hell they're doing. We just don't. Sure, we know more about kids than the average doctor, and I know what to do with a kid with otitis, or who is septic, or who has stopped breathing and needs to be resucitated. But normal kid things? Not a clue.

One of my attendings summed this up rather nicely when she talked about bringing her first kid home from the hospital. She was a Peds attending already by the time she had her first child, and was not only a former resident at my program, but a former chief resident (which in Peds, as in Internal Medicine, involves an extra year). The first week after the kid was home, her husband asked her how they were supposed to bathe the baby.



ATTENDING
Bathe? The baby?

HUSBAND
Yeah. Don't you know? You're a Pediatrician.

ATTENDING
Yeah, but I never actually had to...maybe we just...lower her into the water? Dunk her in?

HUSBAND
But what kind of soap should we use?

ATTENDING
Soap?

HUSBAND
And should we actually immerse her, or just sponge her off?

ATTENDING
Well...

HUSBAND
And what kind of shampoo should we use?

ATTENDING
Uh...

HUSBAND
Why don't you know these things?

ATTENDING
I don't know! Someone else usually does that part! No one ever taught me how to actually bathe a baby!


For instance, what to do when the kid cries? My current strategy for crying babies at present is as follows:

PLAN A: Coo, "Oh, you want to go back to mommy!" (or Daddy, whatever the case may be) and then pass off the screaming pink thing as fast as humanly possible. Hopefully the real parents know what to do. However, if no parents are around...

PLAN B: Swaddle the kid up. Sometimes this makes them stop. Sometimes. If I have time, I may also...

PLAN C: Stick a pacifier in the kid's mouth. They're supposed to...pacify...aren't they? However, if all else fails...

PLAN D: Walk over to the kid's nurse and say, "I don't know what I did, but he's all upset in there. Maybe he's hungry or something." Then walk away under the guise of having urgent doctorly business to take care of instead of just admitting to total incompetence.

Other things that I don't actually know how to do. How to actually feed a baby? Burp a baby? Cut a baby's nails? And good lord, the crying, what if he doesn't stop crying? EVER?

At least I know how to change a diaper. That much, at least, I learned from my rotation through the Well Baby Nursery. But this has also created the mistaken impression in my mind that all babies have an unlimited supply of free diapers and wipes stashed under their basinettes. What, we actually have to pay for that stuff? We're so screwed.

But anyway, the Joe thing. After peeling away the mutual anger lingering from the night before (I thought he was running away from the issue, he thought I couldn't stop harping on the issue, and why coudln't I stop it with the harping?) we reached an understanding and are friends again. We're both stressed. We both want to be good doctors and good parents at the same time, and we're both concerned about how we're going to manage to swing it. And when it comes to Cal joining us on the outside, neither of us know what the hell we're doing. But at least we're in the same boat. Joe's going to ask for one week of vacation the first week of August. (Ophtho residents get four one-week vacation blocks, and they've just been asked to submit their requests, which is why this whole discussion came up in the first place.) I'm going to cross my legs and keep the kid on lockdown until then. And we're both going to remind ourselves that just because you're a resident doesn't mean you can't be a human being as well.

Currently reading: "Word Freak." I've talked about this book before. It's funny, because I find that my Scrabble game noticible improves each time immediately after I read this book. Which is maybe why I have to re-read it in eight to ten month intervals.

paternity leave

I'm on sick call for the next two weeks playing Substitute Teacher of the Year Peggy Hill, which means I have to wear my pager at all times, even when I'm home. I don't like this at all.

So today I decided that I was going to sit down and do some good old fashioned studying. You know, to learn things and get smart. The only thing is, I couldn't find the book I was looking for. Yes, I know I have many, many more books from which to study, but I wanted to study that book, dammit. And I just can't imagine where it went. What, like someone would come into our house and steal it? Worst cat burglar ever. Even the chances that I misplaced it are low, since aside from it's brief shelf life at Barnes and Noble and the fun trip home in a plastic bag, I don't think this book has ever left the computer room. So where could it be? I must find this book. All other books are dead to me.

Then I noticed that my desk was kind of messy. On first pass, it didn't look like the book could be nestled in the pile of papers and assorted waste, but I suppose it could be hiding in there. So now I have to clean my desk. Ah, cleaning as an excuse for not studying. Some old med school habits die hard.





(It really is quite messy, though.)


* * *


So Joe and I had sort of a...conversation last night about his plans for taking time off from work for paternity leave. Our original plan from day one had been this: I would take off four weeks of medical leave and use one week of vacation time after the baby was born to total five weeks total of maternity leave. Joe would plan to take off two weeks of his vacation time immediately abutting my leave to total seven weeks total of having a parent at home 24/7 with the kid, even if it wasn't the same parent clear throughout. We would phase in our nanny during this time, maybe have her come in a couple a days a week to start, and then transition her over to full time as we both returned to work. Seemed like a reasonable plan.

Yesterday, Joe told me that he didn't think that he would be able to take two consecutive vacation weeks off after all. He said it would be "too much strain on the clinic." I didn't understand why him taking two weeks off consecutively would be different than having two separate residents each taking one week of vacation back to back (something that happens fairly often), but I was like OK, whatever. So there would be six weeks total of a parent home with the kid. Six is better than five at any rate, and I would still have the peace of mind of knowing that Joe was home with the kid for that first week that I returned to work.

But today I started thinking some more about what it would be like immediately after the kid came home. That first week, for instance, when we were still figuring things out. And I wasn't quite sure that our original plan--to just have me at home alone with the kid for the first five weeks--was the best use of our time off. Joe seemed reluctant to even consider asking for an extra day or two off immediately after the kid was born, and given how new we would be to all of this baby stuff, I thought I would feel more backed up if we actually overlapped some of our vacation time--namely, if he took a week of vacation at the beginning of my leave as opposed to after my leave ended. Hell, after five weeks, when I returned to work, we'd have things figured out, right? (She said optimistically.) It's that first week that it's really important that we both be there to get things all set up.

So therein began our conversation.



MICHELLE
So I was thinking that if you only get one week off for this kid, maybe it makes more sense to take it off at the beginning of my leave, you know, immediately after the kid is born, rather than at the end.

JOE
Mmm-hmmm.

MICHELLE
I know that we had originally conceived of your vacation time with the kid as sort of a bridging measure for me getting back to work without stressing out too much about leaving the kid at home, but honestly, I'm thinking about spending that first week home alone with this kid and it's freaking me out. I think it might be nicer if we did it together.

JOE
Is that what you want?

MICHELLE
Well, I think it might be nice for us to have that first week with the kid off together, but it's your vacation time. Tell me what you want to do.

JOE
I don't know. I hadn't really thought about it that concretely.

MICHELLE
OK, so let's say that you don't take that first week as your vacation time. Will they at least give you a day off? Just one day after the kid is born? To at least, you know, drive us home from the hospital?

JOE
I don't know. I have to ask.

MICHELLE (Getting a little mad)
Because I think that's pretty reasonable, to get one day off after the birth of your child.

JOE
I'll have to run it by my Chief.

MICHELLE
What "run it by?" Just tell him. Tell him that the day your kid comes home from the hospital, you're going to need a day off.

JOE
But if we can't plan in advance what day that's going to be, then they can't know to downbook my clinic patients.

MICHELLE
Well, what if you were sick one day, unexpectedly? Then what would happen? The clinic would just have to cope, wouldn't it? Trust me, people ask for a lot more for a lot stupider reasons.

JOE
I have to run it by my Chief.

MICHELLE
Well, listen. My maternity leave starts August 1st. And that's the latest that this pregnancy is going to go, because I already talked with [my OB/Gyn] about this whole short maternity leave issue, and if this kid isn't emerging from the womb by August 1st, we're inducing. So why not just ask for the first week of August as your vacation time?

JOE
I'm not supposed to.

MICHELLE
What?

JOE
Residents aren't supposed to ask for vacations during July or August.

MICHELLE
Well why the hell not?

JOE
Because it's the beginning of the academic year.

MICHELLE
Well, listen, that might have been the case this year, since you were a first-year resident and had to get oriented and all that, but next year you'll be a second year, and that just doesn't make any sense at all, especially given the circumstances.

JOE
I don't make the rules.

MICHELLE
Well, don't tell me that the stupid rules can't be bent for big life events like THE BIRTH OF YOUR FIRST CHILD. I mean, what would they do if someone got sick in July? If someone's parent died in August? Would they say, "Too bad, the rules say you can't take off in July or August. Guess you'll have to miss the funeral."

JOE
I have to run it by my Chief.

MICHELLE
Well, what if he says no?

JOE
He won't say no.

MICHELLE
So why do you have to run it by him? Why don't you just tell him that you want to take your vacation the first week of August?

JOE
Because it's not allowed.

MICHELLE
Well, do you even want to do this? It's your vacation time, you decide when you want to take it. Do you want to take it at the beginning or the end of my leave?

JOE
Honestly, I hadn't thought that concretely about it.

MICHELLE
Well, start thinking concretely! We don't have a whole lot of time left to work with here!

JOE
Well, what if I request that vacation time, and they don't schedule me for any patients then, and the kid is born early? And then my whole clinic schedule is screwed up, because I'll have no patients that week and 30 patients a day the next week?

MICHELLE
Look, you're not the only one with scheduling concerns here. I requested my maternity leave starting August 1st, and because of the orientation schedule I have with the Anesthesia program, I actually cannot miss work before July 29th. I mean, if the kid comes earlier, there's nothing I can do about it, but I have just as much invested in the timing of this birth as you. And at least don't have to be physically absent from work immediately after the kid is born. If you need to go see patients while Cal and I are still in the hospital, be my guest. If the he comes early and your vacation time isn't scheduled for another two weeks, then I guess you'll be working those first two weeks after the kid is born. But I don't have the luxury of doing that. So I'm hoping just as much as you, if not more, that this kid comes right on time.

JOE
I just think this is a stressful conversation.

MICHELLE
Stressful for you? All this boils down to is you scheduling your vacation time! I'm the one who is actually switching residencies and giving birth all in the same month!

JOE
I just have to see if it's OK for me to take my vacation time in August.

MICHELLE
(Dawning realization)
Wait, did you ask your Chief if it was OK for you to take two consecutive weeks off and your Chief said "no," or did you decide by yourself that it would be "too much of a burden on the clinic"?

JOE (Small pause)
I decided myself.

MICHELLE (Acidly)
You know, other people work there too. You're not the only person that sees patients around there.

JOE
I know.

MICHELLE
Look, whatever. It's your vacation time, it's your choice. Take two weeks off, take one week, don't take any time off at all. If you're not the one that wants to take off time to be with your baby after he's born, then I don't care. Go to work, do whatever then hell you want.
(Soap opera-ish flourish of dramatic music)


So, blah blah blah, domestic squabbles blah. But honestly, the part that gets to me the most about that whole conversation was the "I hadn't thought that concretely about it." And the response that I was barely able to hold back was to that was, well that must be nice. Must be nice to not have to think concretely about this kid being born, to not have to worry daily and incessantly about timing, to not worry about being scheduled to work right up until and beyond the very day that the baby is due to be born, worry about switching residency programs and then having to take time off just a month after starting, to worry about how I would be viewed professionally or by my peers for taking that time off, to not have to stress about having only five weeks off from work with the possibility of needing six weeks to recover from a C-section, the logisitics of pumping on breaks from the OR, getting to work on time every morning and getting home before the nanny quits and still having a semblance of focus and dedication to my patients at the hospital. Yes, it must be nice not to have thought concretely about those things.

I know I'm making a bigger deal out of this than needs be made, and I know that part of it stems from worry that Joe would enter some kind of daddy-fear fugue state and just start going into denial mode shortly before Cal joins us in gaseous oxygen world. But still, it bugs me. Because I just feel like he should be thinking concretely about these things. And it shouldn't be just about what I want, but what he wants too.

Currently reading: Well, not "Lange's Clinical Anesthesiology," that's for sure. At least not until I can find it.

Addendum: Found it! Though it had nothing to do with cleaning my desk. Apparently it was on the bookshelf, but the spine was facing in. Sneaky.

perseverating

Leaving the hospital post-call from the PICU this morning, I walked by some of the nurses who were also heading out after their shifts. "Good night!" they said cheerfully.

"Good night! Get some rest!" I said back. Which is funny, because it was 8:00am. And funnier, because I almost always say "good night" when leaving the hospital post-call. I guess "night" is relative now.


* * *


Ooh, I got a bilingual e-mail from Babycare last night that says that our stroller order is being processed and should be shipped in the next few days! Or, in Dutch: Geachte klant, je bestelling is in behandeling. Uh...thanks, flying Dutchmen! Now that we finally ended months of indecision and finally pulled the trigger on a stroller, I'm super-excited for it to get here, not torturing myself with after-the-fact indecision and doubt like I thought I might after such a large purchase. Still surprising, though. I never thought I'd get so hepped up about a vehicle.

Makes me feel good to know I'm not the only crazy one, though. In doing my consumer research, I've found that people are as ardent about their stroller affiliations as they are about the other hot-button baby topics, like breastfeeding and circumcision. (And to prove it, they argue about their strollers almost as much.) Moreover, there's a huge interest out there for "the hot new stroller," or strollers that are different and new from those currently out on the market. Having observed this phenomenon from the outside in, I think the next hot stroller is going to be the Stokke Xplory.





The first time I saw this stroller at Buy Buy Baby, I wasn't really sure what it was. Then I noticed that it had wheels on the bottom and that it was in the stroller section. Yegads, my powers of deduction are staggering! Joe and I have from thenceforth referred to this thing as "The Stephen Hawking Stroller," because the thing looked so bizarrely high tech and unlike any other stroller we'd ever seen that it almost looked like a wheelchair in a sci-fi movie. We never even entertained the idea of getting this stroller (aside from the $800 price tag) just for the very fact that it looked so very odd--I mean, we wanted a different stroller, but not so different that it inspired people to point and stare. Also, I was a little scared of how high up the seat was. The manufacturer's claim was that it kept your kid closer to you and out of car-exhaust level, but for chrissake, people, how close do you need to be to your kid when wheeling them around? The thing was so tall that it looked like it would topple over. To say nothing for the fact that it just looked altogether impractical for city living. The sign on the stroller read "NEW FOR 2005!" but I was convinced that no one would ever buy that thing.

I was wrong, of course. I mean, the weirdness factor is keeping people from the Stokke a little bit, I think, but the company seems to have some very canny PR people, and has apparently gifted several kid-toting Hollywood celebs with Stokkes of their own, hoping perhaps to start a Bugaboo-like craze. Among these celebrities are Russell Crowe and Courtney Cox. (Pictures courtesy of celebweb.org)







The stroller also seems to have something of an international following, as evidenced by this website that some dad in Japan set up extolling (I can only imagine, being unable to read Japanese) the virtues of the Stokke. Which surprised me a little, since the Stokke is such a big old thing and Japan is so cramped for space, but hell, go for it, man. But as perhaps the truest test that the trend has caught on was that I've already seen two Stokke strollers wheeling through the streets of Manhattan these past few weeks. The most recent sighting was just this past weekend by Madison Square Park, which, if you hover by the playground area (adjacent to the dog run), is prime baby-trend spotting central. However tellingly though, the dad was actually carrying the kid in his arms while pushing the stroller with the other hand.

OK, clearly I'm now in danger of becoming one of these guys. Enough about strollers already.


* * *


So the PICU is apparently incredibly short-staffed for the rest of the year, and has opened up a number of moonlighting spots for people to fill in, mostly overnight. (Moonlighting basically means picking up extra shifts in the hospital for money. Though it could also refer to an 80's TV show starring Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepard as ex-model and a wiseguy detective who co-run a private detective agency.) Since I have my license now, I'm actually qualified to moonlight, and am very tempted to as well given that the going rate for PICU moonlighting is $65 an hour. Which, you know, is a hell of a lot more than I make now. The only problem is this: all of the moonlighting spots left for this month are shifts that I can't do. Either I'm post-call the days that those shifts are open, or on-call in the PICU already (not getting paid the $65 an hour, mind you). I'm told that there are still plenty of shifts left open for June, but I'm hesitant to sign up for extra shifts during my 8th month, because who the hell knows how enthusiastic I'll be about working extra hours by then? I mean, maybe I'll be energized and ready for action and in prime position to build up our little nest egg for the unanticipated Cal expenses that we're sure to be flattened by when the time comes. Or maybe by then all I'll want to do with my leisure time is lie on the couch, rub my belly and bitch about my sciatica. I just can't say. So I'm not signing up for any moonlighting shifts...for now.

Man, $65 an hour, though.

Currently reading: This article in the New York Times about a study that claims that parents take better care of attractive children than "homely children." Upon first pass, the study seems flawed in several ways (the subjectiveness of what makes a child "homely," for instance, and the fact that researchers were not blinded with respect to homliness and the attentiveness of the parents), but either way, the picture attached to the article is kind of funny.