We are no longer the Knights Who Say TBD

We are the parents who say...please welcome our daughter Elizabeth Adele, aka Libby.

Like we always do, she squeaked in under her deadline, making her debut just as the last rays of daylight clung to June 23.

Details and pics to come later, sleep to come now. And let the gender prediction gloating begin.

Also, my apologies to Illiterati readers -- the hospital is blocking me from logging into Typepad, so I couldn't put a notice on TLB's blog.

Update: here's out little girl peeking out at the world--

TBD still TBD

Update 6/23: We're at the hospital, drugs are flowing, but TBD is still holed up like Butch Cassidy and/or the Sundance Kid. We're trying to convince the child that there are two eager parents waiting for him/her, not an armed and angry Mexican army. We hope to resolve the standoff peacefully.



Well, we haven't even had our baby yet and already TBD is rebelling. The initial pharmaceutical artillery failed to soften TLB enough, to the point where the doctor said inducing labor would probably not produce a baby. Labor without a baby...that's a pretty easy selling point to resist.

So, we have returned home for resting and will return Sunday night for more shelling and hopefully a full offensive on Monday morning. Sorry our fertility is jerking everyone around like the writers from Lost. And thanks for all the good wishes -- you all are putting some big ol' smiles on our faces.

In the meantime, this clip seems appropriate:

The waiting is the hardest part

It looks like our parent initiation will be put off one more day. The hospital is apparently chock full o' delivering women, so there's no room at the inn unless we want to deliver TBD in a stable. The plan is to get The Lovely Becky in the hospital this afternoon and induce tomorrow morning. Since we're just hanging out and waiting, I'll turn things over to today's house band:

Blogshower: The Gathering

If you have a baby on the Internets, does it cry in code?

The wonderful Jennifer has blown the Horn of Birth (not to be confused with blowing the Horn of Fertility, which can lead to pregnancy) to convene the First Non-Annual Blog Shower for myself, The Lovely Becky, and TBD.

As of tomorrow, TBD will be very much D. The doctors are inducing TLB, and we should be parents before the sun sets on Thursday. It’s the culmination of a long journey that, truth be told, only stopped sucking seven months ago. But as long as everything goes well tomorrow, none of that will matter. We’re going to be parents and it’s December 24th on our biological calendar.

People ask us if we’re nervous about being parents. The answer is a very honest no. We’re nervous about the birth as anyone with a vague grasp of the concepts of engineering, volume, and friction should be. We’re nervous about having a healthy baby, although the Magic 8-ball has consistently said “all signs point to yes” in that department. After nearly ten years of trying, though, we’re more than ready to add the magic number to our equation.

I also had a recent injection of confidence via Snoop Dogg. In the last issue of Esquire, Snoop participated in the "What I’ve Learned" feature. He talked about raising his two boys and what it’s like to be a parent, and that his oldest was about to enter high school. I didn’t know Snoop had kids, which means I had never heard about Snoop’s kids the way I had, say, heard about The Coreys. Which means that Snoop Dogg managed to have two kids who have stayed out of trouble. Mr. Dogg certainly has help with childrearing, but he is also high all the time. So if Snoop Dogg can have two boys who have avoided the harsh glare of TMZ, I think my chances are okay.

The bigger reason I feel okay about this is because of all the incredible support we have received over the years. Our families have been wonderful, consoling us when things went bust, cheering for us when things finally went well, and now offering to help us make the transition to parenthood. Our bricks-and-mortar friends have been equally solid, listening to more hours of ranting about our reproductive organs than the Supreme Court would allow and soothing us with their calming presence and copious amounts of alcohol. Finally, when TLB and I began blogging, we picked up a new group, our virtual friends, who have also consoled and cheered, even though most have never met us.

All of you have been essential to this process. We could not have stayed sane and remained hopeful without all of that support. So please allow us to raise a virtual glass of punch to toast you.

We would also love to hear any final wit and/or wisdom you have, or whatever else is on your mind. Drop some mad science in the comments section. TLB and I will be in and out of the comments today as well.

And now, please welcome our guest speaker, Dr. Bill Cosby:

Cuter Than Baby Jesus

Last week, The Lovely Becky and I drove down to Illinois to attend a shower for our coming child, TBD. We had a very special guest on our trip: my mother.

What made Mom’s presence so special was that, for the first time since 1996, one of my parental units walked through the doorway of a building I paid rent or mortgage on. In fact, my Dad was the last one to visit me. Mom hadn’t been to visit since 1995, back when TLB and I still thought we needed birth control.

When I tell people how long it’s been since my parents visited me, they always ask if we’re estranged. It doesn’t help that I jokingly refer to Mom as Mommy Dearest, or that my family is marinated in sarcasm. The simple act of asking for the salt can produce five minutes of faux annoyance and point-blank bon mots that would have driven Dorothy Parker to drink. Or maybe sobriety.

However, I have a very good relationship with my parents—good enough that I can use sarcasm with them. I see them at least a couple times of year, despite never having lived closer than 500 miles from them since TLB and I got married. I would visit them, meet at my Grandma’s for Christmas, and travel to third-party locations for vacation. But they never came to see me.

As the sand on the parental visit clock grew into a dune, and then a desert, my brother Tickle and I joked about it. Tickle had moved away by 2001, and they never visited him either. My parents had good excuses—Dad has a very demanding job, and Mom spent a good part of that time helping our sister raise our nephew. Still, we wondered what it would take to get them to visit. (My sister and my brother Snake Anthony still live at home or close by.)

They flipped the sand dial over last fall, when they traveled to Iowa for Tickle’s engagement party. TLB waited at the front door with a camera, snapping a photo of them crossing the threshold, so we wouldn’t wake up the next day and think it was some crazy dream. Of course, by the time they arrived in Iowa, TLB and I had to travel there from Michigan, since my parents had been unable to make the journey in the narrow six-year window that we lived there.

The Journey to the Center of Tickle’s House presented my best opportunity. It unbalanced the Non-Visitation Equilibrium. When they didn’t visit either Tickle or myself, it was funny. Now that they visited Tickle, it was kind of sad. Or so I said as I bombarded them with visit propaganda.

Finally, I got the call. Mom was coming. Dad had booked her a flight, and she was trekking all the way to the UP to visit us.

I told Tickle I didn’t believe it, that I waited for the last-minute call that she had cancelled the trip or that it was some elaborate hoax. I drove to the airport last week ready to see everyone except my mother get off the plane. But lo and behold, there was Mom, waiting with her bags. She came to the house, sat on our couch, and visited.

As part of her visit, we drove down to Illinois for the baby shower. TLB’s mother was just as eager to see Mom as we were. They hadn’t been in the same room since our wedding in 1994. They caught up like old friends, talking about us, about TBD, about houses, and even took a trip to the antique store together.

The shower turned into a bit of This Is Your Life for us. We had friends and family from all over the country and from assorted eras of our lives show up. TLB’s friends from college. Our friends from Iowa. Friends from a job I left nearly a decade ago. Tickle and my forthcoming sister-in-law, K. My grandma, our aunts, our cousins, and our mothers.

We had the event at a local restaurant. After the meet-and-greet and lunch, the few boys in attendance headed to the bar. I stayed to open gift after generous gift, usually making a trademark smart ass comment while still expressing gratitude. We got car seats and diapers and bibs and books and hoozles and hotzels and blaggraffins and blitznuffins. Between the Monty Haul we made here, the gifts our coworkers showered on us, and all the stuff we’ve gotten from TLB’s sisters (who have already spawned), Baby TBD will not be wanting for much. Although I could use a couple yaks to carry all this stuff around.

My friends H and K gave us two gifts in particular that stood out. H’s boyfriend is a referee for the Windy City Rollers, a Chicago roller-derby team. She gave us this killer onesie. Nothing says cute like a skull and crossed skate wheels. K, who shares my love for religious humor that borders on blasphemy, gave us a T-shirt that says Cuter Than Baby Jesus, complete with a rattle cross logo. This elicited some obvious non-laughter from the more religious members in attendance, but TLB and I cracked up. After all, if I’m going to Hell, I’d like my child to join me.

After the official shower ended, a bunch of us returned to my in-laws to drink and make merry. Like the pregnancy so far, the conditions were perfect. I sat in beautiful 75 degree weather (look, kids, warmth!) drinking a beer with Tickle. He started talking about some pictures my mother brought with her. I had asked Mom to bring some photos of me as a kid, so I could scan them.

“There’s one of you wearing white pants and this red vest,” Tickle said.

“Oh my God, tight white pants,” said K, laughing.

“Really tight,” Tickle reiterated. “Awful.”

The outfit didn’t ring a bell. When we got back to Michigan and I checked Mom’s pictures, I realized why. My brain had blocked out that I had ever dressed like this:



I’m 15 in that picture, and clearly President and CEO of the Not a Chance Club. And yes, those are pants, not the product of spray paint.

Amazingly, I looked much cooler some ten years earlier:



Sneakers, funky checkered pants, thick black belt, and a white polo. I look like a rock critic, in this case, actually assessing a real rock.

The main reason I wanted to see some childhood pictures is because I had never seen a baby picture of me. That may seem weirder than my parents going 12 years between visits to my house. TLB in particular has been bothered by this much more than I have. I explained that my parents were very young and poor when they had me, and didn’t get a camera until after my first birthday. Luckily, other relatives had taken pictures of me as a baby, and Mom found some of them:



What did my lovely wife, who for years had expressed a desire to see my baby pictures, say?

“You look weird without hair.”

I have to agree with her. And it’s why I’ve started sleeping in a Propecia helmet, just to be safe.

I asked my parents to get us a camera as a shower gift, so we could make sure we have ample photos of TBD. Although sweater vests and pants tight enough to show birthmarks will be forbidden.

Questions we already know the answers to, Pt. XXVI

From a birthing video we watched in our baby class on Saturday:

"Do you want to see the placenta?"

We're ordering a full season of TBD episodes

The Lovely Becky and I had a big test in our planned parenthood today: a 4D ultrasound of TBD. This was the test that could reveal a lot of Very Scary Things, and because of our history with procreation, we were proactively scared ourselves.

Our local hospital/trading post lacks 4D ultrasound capabilities (most of the moose and beaver do not have the required health insurance for it), so we had to travel out of state for the procedure. Our doctor was a white-haired, mustached German man who looked a bit like Blue from Old School. He talked with us about the procedure, and let us know that if TBD checked out okay today, TBD would likely check out of Hotel Womb okay this coming June.

Dr. Blue fired up the machine and showed us the pictures of TBD. Until now, most of the ultrasound images of TBD have looked like a cross between a Rorschach test and some variation of Cthulhu. In fact, just based on the previous images, if my child turned out to be an elder god with an octopus head who planned to destroy all humanity, I wouldn't have been surprised. Today, however, my child looked like a child. I could make out all kinds of features and see that TBD did not have an octopus head. That was a relief.

Rather than just do the pedestrian task of telling two overly nervous expectant parents that their child was fine, Dr. Blue decided to quiz us on developmental biology. "What is this black spot here?" he asked.

My inner monologue began to scream, OMG, IS IT CANCER?!! HOW CAN A FETUS HAVE CANCER?!!! TBD HASN'T EVEN STARTED SMOKING YET!!!

"The stomach?" TLB answered.

"Good. And we can see that the stomach is just fine," Dr. Blue replied before I could ask if it was stomach cancer.

The Q&A continued during the whole ultrasound. To be fair, Dr. Blue didn't know that my brief career as a pre-med student had lasted until my first chemistry midterm freshman year of college, when I got a grade low enough that I would be unable to go to a medical school in North America. He did not know that, while I provide a detailed summary of the major movie roles of Arnold Schwarzenegger, I could not tell him the basic purpose of each valve of the heart other than "to pump blood." He would let me hang myself with wrong answers until a) TLB gave the correct answer or b) we both demonstrated that we were products of the American educational system and just wanted to know if our child would have a promising career in sideshow entertainment.

All of his answers added up to healthy baby. No cancer, no deformities, no talons or leathery bat wings. TBD passed the test with flying colors.

Of course, this was a 4D ultrasound, which is supposed to provide 3D pictures of the baby. "This process can produce some spectacular images," Dr. Blue said, "if the baby cooperates." Which TBD refused to do. Every time Dr. Blue tried to capture a 3D image, our child would move or otherwise thwart him. The doctor managed to snap four blurry photos which looked could have been our baby's face or the image of Elvis. We faced teenage rebellion before TBD's first birthday.

"I know we're going to get ours on the back end," I said to TLB. "Everything will be fine, and then we'll hit teenage years and deal with drinking and sneaking out of the house."

"Or worse," TLB said, "our child will be a Republican."

Maybe the octopus head wouldn't be so bad after all.

Name my child and win a prize*

I am crazy busy with work this week and have haven't had time to read blogs, let alone write on mine. However, The Lovely Becky has a contest for naming our forthcoming offspring, TBD. I want to give our child a good, Christian name. For instance, if we have a boy, I want to name him Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians. TLB isn't so hot on that, so much so that she's willing to let people looking for "dry humping jerk pants" name the child instead.

Random 11 may have to be postponed tomorrow but I will try to post if I can.

*Contest owners reserve right to define "win" and "prize."

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go home and have a heart attack

Friday afternoon, The Lovely Becky started bleeding. Bad bleeding, the kind we've run into before, the kind that says no soup for you. "We have to go to the emergency room," Becky said.

I couldn't believe it. Everything had gone just fine on Tuesday! How could things go south in the same fucking week? I knew we have a long way to go, that lots of things could cause this to end, but Jesus H. Christ, I hadn't even finished my touchdown dance yet.

The last time I cried—I mean really opened up and just sobbed my eyes out—was after our first miscarriage, in 2001. I didn't even let the tears rip when our last IVF went bust. Yesterday, I stood on the stairs, getting ready to put my shoes on, and I felt a wave of grief collapse over me. I took my shoes and hurled them up the stairs, throwing them as hard as I could. My eyes swelled and I prepared for the waterworks when I realized I couldn't do that to Becky. She wouldn't blame me, because she's lovely, but I couldn't saddle her with my emotional breakdown in addition to her own physical breakdown. I took a deep breath, grabbed a small chunk of control, and picked up my shoes. There would be plenty of time to lose my shit later.

We've seen medical staff for fertility-related matters enough that we know when things are really fucked. Their body language, the things they say, and especially the things they don't say, can give off a bad vibe that no amount of positive thinking can shield me from. As Becky told the nurses and doctors her symptoms, that vibe came as thick as amber covering an insect. The initial exam just made the amber harden around us. "It looks iffy," the doctor said as nicely as he could. "It doesn’t mean you're miscarrying, but it looks iffy."

But iffy does mean miscarrying for us, because our fertility script is more predictable than a bad horror movie. Despite being more or less a model married couple, we're the fornicating teenagers that are always getting impaled by the Golem of Childlessness. The doctors needed an ultrasound scan to tell for sure, but I sure as hell didn't.

The ultrasound tech, while friendly and very nice to us, went about his business in total fucking silence. I looked at the pixilated images like one of those hidden paintings, staring at it and waiting to see little pixels form a giant middle finger. Finally, after feeling like we had been at the hospital for two years instead of two hours, the tech finished. He couldn't tell us anything because that's the doctor's job. But he did tell us that the baby's heartbeat was 138. That's even stronger than it was on Tuesday.

Wha???

The doctor arrived and delivered the unexpected: as far as they could tell, Becky and the baby were fine. The heartbeat was not only good, the baby had grown since Tuesday and was cruising right along the development chart. He told Becky to stay off her feet this weekend and let them know if anything else happened, but otherwise she was free to go.

Becky and I looked at each other, unsure how to react. We're still getting used to good news. So we did what we always do when we either want to celebrate or bury our sorrows: we drove to Culver's and picked up some Butterburgers.

I don't know if Ashton Kutcher has some kind of fertility punking machine, but if he does, I'd appreciate it if he would knock that shit off.

It also seems like an appropriate time to show my favorite movie scene of all time: