Despite my sporadic writing habits leading up to the birth of my child, I ironically seem to be finding more time to sit down and write now that she’s come into the world. Mostly on account of the fact that as she was five weeks early, she’s unfortunately not home yet, and is still at the NICU, where her frail little preemie body is playing catchup under the safe and watchful eyes of medical professionals.
Ultimately, mythical wife and I both know that she’s exactly where she needs to be in her current state, and we are eternally grateful to the kind and caring staff of the hospital that has been definitely providing excellent care for our daughter. However, when the days are over, the reality is that she is still not home with us, and it’s an agonizing struggle at the end of each night when the time comes for us to part ways with our daughter, while she stays in the NICU while we leave her and head back to our house, empty of human children.
She was born 12 days ago, but it doesn’t really quite feel like we’re parents just yet, as when the time comes in which we go to bed, it’s like we’re a married couple with no children, since there’s no kid to put to sleep and marvel over the fact that it’s a life that we created together.
We spend around 6-8 hours a day in the NICU with our kid, but until the day she comes home, there really is something kind of missing from the whole experience of having a child. We feel like parents when we get to change her diapers, feed her, and rock her to sleep, but the wholesome feelings always end when the realization hits that we need to go home to rest and take care of ourselves, so we have the energy and capacity to do it all over again the following day.
Our daughter’s showing progress on a daily basis, but the fact of the matter is that it’s still an indeterminate amount of time before she’s given the green light to come home. Her last real hurdle is to continue to demonstrate the ability to eat more and out of a bottle, more consistently, and subsequently gain weight. Every day where she drains an entire bottle is akin to a playoff win, but behind the scenes we don’t know if we’re in the lightning-quick MLB playoffs, or if we’re in the endless vortex known as the NBA’s playoffs.
Back home, I’ve actually accomplished a lot of the tasks around the house that mythical wife and I agreed needed to get done before the arrival of our kid, because once she got here, we know they probably won’t be gotten to. I’ve painted entire sections of our house, I’ve stained the entire fence around the house. I’ve swapped out old outlets and switches for new, tamper-proof versions of them for future kid safety. I’ve unboxed strollers and learned how to install car seats into both mine and mythical wife’s cars. Just about every piece of furniture for our baby’s nursery is assembled and the room just about finished.
I’d wager to guess that most parents who ever have to go through the experience of their children going into the NICU go through the same kind of anxieties and frustration that mythical wife and I are going through. I know there are many out there who have it way worse than we do in terms of state of the baby upon arrival or how little or long they stay in the NICU, but when the day is over, we’re all in the same state of where we as parents go home, while our children remain behind, which is a shitty feeling no matter how you look at it.
Suffice to say, daily living has been really something over the last few weeks. Despite the fact that even staying in the hospital with mythical wife after the birth of our child, I didn’t forget to do my daily 100 push-ups, even doing them on the hospital floor each night we were there. I even followed through with participating in some fun runs that I had signed up for, thinking I’d still be safe in terms of not conflicting with any early-term births, but life has a way of playing jokes on us sometimes; but because the theme of these runs were cheating daylight savings, they were literally at 1:00 am and 8:00 am, and because I was pretty much already hopped up on adrenaline and funky sleeping due to mythical wife’s pumping schedule, I went ahead and did both of them, even notching my first ever age-group award, placing 3rd in my old motherfuckers age bracket.
But then out of the blue, I forgot to do my push-ups on one night, and just like that, the streak was over. I made it 60 consecutive days of doing 100 push-ups, before I forgot like an idiot and brought my hope to go like a full 100 or even 366 days in a row screeching to a halt. It was on Friday the 13th too, so if there were ever a more appropriate day for some bad luck memory to take place, it couldn’t have happened at a more fitting time.
Speaking of Friday the 13th, it was on this particular day in which mythical wife and I went to a grocery store to not necessarily stock up like the masses were doing, but to essentially fortify our pantry and freezer with some things that might come in handy, if the world were really to go apocalyptic and we didn’t want to get caught with our pants completely down.
It’s like we heard all the stories and the memes about insane Americans going overboard with doomsday prepping, but it was still a sight to behold ourselves, when we rolled into a local grocer at 11 pm, only to find certain shelves of the store completely wiped the fuck out. Pasta was all gone, bread was completely wiped out, and just about all of the fresh meat in the stores were cleaned out completely. Naturally the toilet paper and paper towels were all gone too. I had a list of things that I had hoped to get, and when we left the store, almost nothing was actually crossed out.
Coronavirus has definitely been running roughshod throughout ‘Murica. Aside from all sorts of sporting leagues, concerts, and events of all sorts of sizes all getting cancelled or postponed, it’s hitting just about every aspect of normal life, most notably when it comes to small businesses and the restaurant industry. “Social distancing” has become the phrase of the year, as everyone is encouraged to stay at home and away from groups of people, with hopes of minimizing the spread.
Among the most drastic of things that have happened on account of coronavirus, my company actually shut the building down, and despite years of stating that my team of graphic designers couldn’t work from home on account of large image formats and file sizes, it turns out that we all really can, due to the constant advancing of personal high speed internet speeds. It’s funny how necessity exposes a lot of bullshit within individual companies as well as all across America as a whole, what with how many arbitrary rules and laws seem to be bending left and right because of all the shutdowns and vacancies are forcing them to be re-evaluated to how much bullshit and unnecessary so many of them are.
Speaking of companies, typically I don’t talk about whenever I seek out a new job, because I’m superstitious and I don’t want to feel like I’m jinxing myself talking about it, but I actually applied to a place a few weeks ago, and things went as well as to get a phone interview, as well as an in-person interview. I actually felt optimistic that I could’ve gotten this job, which would have been a triple-win in the sense that it would have been a title upgrade, pay upgrade, as well as one massive game-changing benefit, but then everything kind of went dark.
I never got a callback, which I thought I was at least entitled to, since I had done an in-person interview, but I was holding hope that everything on their end was kind of frozen on account of current events and what they do as a business. I told myself that as long as the job listing remained on their careers site, as well as on LinkedIn, I had a chance. But recently the position vanished from the company’s site; it’s still up on LinkedIn, but the fact that it’s gone from the source felt a little like a punch in the gut that the dream is over. It sucks, because I actually really wanted this job for more than just get me the fuck out of my current job reasons, but it’s not looking too positive for me at this point, and I’m disappointed that I didn’t even get a callback to confirm what I’m already feeling, which has me feeling dejected and disappointed.
That’s just it though, I’m often times in a weird state of mind these days, because I’m very satisfied with life when I’m spending time with my daughter, but then I’m feeling sad and anxious when I leave her at the NICU. I find it hard to concentrate and focus at times, and I’m often sleeping amounts that say that I may be going through a little bit of depression at the current. Even when I’m at home, despite the fact that I have yet to have any dad-like responsibilities, I don’t really do any of the things that typically bring me enjoyment, like watching wrestling or seeking out something good to watch on Netflix or Plex.
I guess I should feel fortunate that the desire to write has yet to leave me, and it’s probably because there’s a part of my psyche that sees something productive and futuristically potentially reflective if I put my thoughts and feelings down on writing at this current state, and when the day is over, I probably should prioritize writing over wasting my time on too much bullshit mindless television watching.
