Live Blogging a Live Birth

For my wife, who was busy.

July 10, 2011

@ 7:30pm: Oh dear. When Darby stood up to accompany me to dinner her water broke. I guess this is gonna happen. Darby is calling our midwife Jaymi.

8:00pm: The fluid is greenish yellowish. A quick perusal of the web says this is likely Meconium, which is a fancy word for poop.* It’s not necessarily serious, but the baby can aspirate it and this is not good. Jaymi is on the way.

We planned for this moment for months and somehow it has still managed to sneak up on us. We bought medical supplies and special teas and stocked our fridge with Gatorades (which were, apparently, off limits to those who are not with child, as though my thirst might not also need quenching) and all of that seems extremely small when confronted with the fact that a human baby will soon be trying to exit my wife’s body.

I’m not sure what we’re supposed to be doing at this point, but it seems clear we won’t be going for pizza after all. At a loss, I offer Darby a Gatorade and am told to shut up.

8:15pm: Darby is on the can while her fluid drains. I’m sitting in the hallway just outside the can. I was sitting in the living room reading about the American soccer team’s brilliant ouster of Brazil earlier, but then I realized this would seem callous if the midwife walked in.

9:00pm: Jaymi just informed me in sotto voce, “This is going to go fast.” Darby is already 5cm dilated. For the uninitiated and those that don’t use metric, this is about 2 inches and about half the size you need it to be. While that sounds big to me, it also sounds like the baby’s head needs to be only about four inches across to fit comfortably. This seems unlikely. Father’s hat size: 7^5/8 inches.

In the time since my last entry the parents were called. I wondered if it was too soon to sound the alarms but I decided it would be better than having the baby while they slept and having them feel like they missed it. Both sets live in the Eastern Time Zone, so they were just about asleep. My father-in-law in particular sounded less than pleased to be answering the phone but he softened somewhat when I told him the news.

I also ran to the corner grocer to buy maxi-pads (I guess there will be some bleeding). Gosh, there are some witty people at our local. The guy in line ahead of me saw that I was carrying only two packages of pads and let me cut in front of him.

“Husbandly duties?” he mused.

“You have no idea,” I said.

The cashier, looking at his watch, then said, “I’ve been there.”

I doubt it but I just laugh politely.

Presently, Darby is barfing her brains out. This is normal. Sadly, the puking started between the time the pizza was ordered and delivered, and the order was not without contention.

“I’m gonna order the pizza.”

“Will you get cheese?”

“Ok. What about—“

“Just. Cheese.” Darby said with a withering look.

Now her pizza is sitting uneaten on the counter. It sure could use some mushrooms or green chile.

9:15pm: “Do you need anything?”

“My Gatorade. It’s on the red thing.”

Fetches it from the brand new hutch. Sweeps water ring away. Hands the drink over.
“I see you didn’t use a coaster…”

“Give me the damn Gatorade.”

I don’t mean to illustrate these events as though Darby is being cruel or unfair. For one thing, I am a terrible smart aleck, a quality that intensifies when I know I am supposed to be serious (alas, we don’t even own any coasters). For another, her body is preparing to expel an infant and this, I imagine, requires a lot of concentration, leaving little room for the appreciation of subtle jesting.

Darby looks very preoccupied, understandably so. She goes from standing, arms akimbo, panting like she just ran a long race, to sitting, stupefied, like a drunken sorority girl with no hope of making it home tonight.

9:30pm: Into the pool. Given that it’s so hot in our apartment and she’s already covered in sweat, I can’t see how laying in a warm water can feel good.

…and it doesn’t, according to sources. Not that I blame her, but she seems pretty unhappy. She just asked when she can start pushing. Jaymi told her her body would start pushing when it is time.

While stroking Darby’s arm I was informed of the unbeknownst-to-me No Touching policy. Calmly, Jaymi informed me that if I am going to touch, stillness would perhaps be preferable to stroking.

“No touching!” Darby repeated.

Next, Jaymi picked up the camera. Between contractions, Darby recedes into what looks like deep relaxation. Her eyes shut and her breaths slow and deepen to a rate a yogi would be proud of. However, the moment she hears the very identifiable sound of a camera strap quietly jangling as it is slowly lifted from a table across the room Darby springs to life.

“No photography!”

“You can always delete them.”

“No photography,” she repeats, flinging her hands outwards.

Jeesh. It’s like we’re at a museum. I wonder what she’ll say about my live journaling…

9:45pm: Darby is having some pretty intense contractions. Her stomach jumps and lurches like one of those fat comedians that can make their flab do The Wave.

I was holding her hand but I wanted to keep writing. Also, it was getting kind of crushy.

10:00pm: I don’t know if Darby is going to remember this real clearly. I’d guess she won’t. But I’d like to just say that she’s doing awesome. The work involved is evident to the guy in the armchair sipping ginger ale. And she may well talk about how difficult this was but, at the risk of oversimplification, she’s kind of making it look easy.

It’s quiet when the grunting subsides. Trying to be a good reporter, I ask Darby what she’s thinking about. “Nothing,” she practically whispers. This seems about right.

10:30pm: The pushing is in full bore. Darby is grunting like a slow-motion replay of women’s tennis. I switch out my writing hand so she can strangulate the left one. This is intense.

Jaymi is sitting calmly on the sofa. Occasionally she will quietly intone encouragements to Darby, but mostly she just watches. And this is fine with me. She does not appear worried, so I’m trying not to worry but I must look a little nervous because she keeps giving me the Thumbs Up.

10:45pm: The things that are happening in this kiddie pool! I think we both believed we’d be soaking our feet in the evenings later this month. Now I’m less sure.

11:00pm: We’re starting to see some head. Jaymi says he’s not gonna have much hair. How is this possible? I trimmed my ears the other day.

I can’t believe the dogs are sleeping through this! I hope the neighbors are too.

This experience is so strange, that you can just make a new person in your own living room. I kind of can’t believe it’s legal, or that you don’t have to notify the authorities.

Jaymi has been continually checking the baby’s heart rate with a Doppler. I feel tremendous relief each time when the whoosh that signifies blood flow is heard.

11:15pm: The belly button is back. It went missing a few months ago. This is little consolation right now, and I don’t mention it, but still, it’s cute.

“How much longer?” Darby wails.

“Until he’s all the way out,” Jaymi says. This seems at once really obvious and incredibly daunting.

As he begins to crown more my pulse rises. I am starting to get the idea of the size of this thing and it just doesn’t look like it’s going to fit.

“It hurts!!” Darby yells. This characterization seems wildly inadequate.

11:23pm: It done! Darby is cradling a short, bald guy. When the head emerged Jaymi had me move around to help catch him. I held his head under the water while Jaymi pulled and twisted him to the left. The shoulders came out suddenly and then the rest of him rushed out too. My heart racing, I held him there for a moment unsure of what to do.

“Hold him up!” Jaymi beams. I hold him up. He’s squishy and grey. His skin feels like a saggy water balloon. I can’t believe this was inside my wife’s tummy.

“Give him to Darby!” Jaymi says, less beamy now. I hand him to Darby who looks exhausted but also greatly relieved.

“Oh my god,” she says, cradling him in her arm. She repeats this several times. She is not even aware we are here anymore. It’s pretty special.

She looks at me and says, “I’d like to call him Elijah.” This is not surprising. It was on the list. But when she says this I agree because, good lord, this is not the time for an argument. I am happy to let her have the final say.

11:30pm: Pending a positive drug test, it’s official. Darby completed a natural birth in just under four hours and I have a son. Full name: Elijah Skywalker Photos. Stats to follow.

July 11, 2011

@ 1:30am: The living room is back to normal. The pool has been emptied, the tarp is gone, the Oriental rug is visible again. Jaymi assesses the baby and reports no irregularities. Eli is 20 inches long with a 13-inch cranial circumference. He weighs 7lbs. 5oz. For being the most beautiful and amazing baby of all time, his measurements are totally average.

Jaymi tells us to get some rest but this seems unlikely. Though we are both tired**, this is way more exciting than anything I can remember. As kids, when we got new Nintendo games I used to set my alarm for 5 a.m. so I would be up before my brother could get to it, and even then I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep.

After some quiet crying in the pool, Eli was dried and swaddled. He is asleep now, breathing in quick shallow sips of air, using his lungs for the first time. He does almost nothing, and we are completely fascinated. We watch him until our eyes grow heavy. We will need our rest. This doesn’t get easier.

…

Special thanks to Jaymi McKay. She was a wonderful and calming influence throughout the pregnancy and, despite what she says, I wouldn’t have been “fine without her.” She helped us accomplish something momentous and made it seem super ordinary. And, after all, it is, but I needed her to reassure me of it.

---

* Back when I was in art school, one of us posed the question as to whether babies poop in utero. This was before the internet, so we never bothered to research this. Instead my solution was to sing the words Womb Pooper to the tune of Dreamweaver to the delight of no one. There is possibly a video of this which I’m certain will resurface at an inopportune moment.

** I did work a 12 today, and the day before.

The Midnight Train to Georgia

The Hyundai Santa Fe: It's not just for tourists either

Despite my thin credentials, I have been telling people I’m a writer for years. I admit it is a bit of a white lie. I write things, but like someone who never actually took karate but who watches a lot of martial arts movies*, I am more or less self-taught and largely untested. This doesn’t mean I don’t work hard at it or take the craft seriously. Indeed, as someone who spent six years and six figures on his arts education, I am quite used to the idea that working in isolation and without an audience can be very fulfilling, if not exactly lucrative.

It is a clichéd thing to say that I have been writing since I was a little boy, but that’s how it is. After my parents bought an old typewriter at a garage sale, my brother and I sat at a desk and composed one-page stories about going to public school. Eventually the heavy, ribboned machine gave way to an Apple IIc and a dot matrix printer, and finally an electric Brother typewriter that had been left behind by my college-attending sister, on which I penned my first and final attempt at a hip-hop song, a masterpiece I modestly titled “Rad Rap.” Unfortunately, I have since forgotten the lyrics, but I can tell you that its subject was Nintendo games, and how awesome they are, and how awesome I am at them.

I am also a sporadic keeper of journals, and I still have them even though rereading them shatters many myths I maintain about how different I am now and how much I’ve matured, etc, etc. In point of fact, they are valuable only because they illustrate to me just how little I’ve evolved since I was in high school. They definitely don’t help me to learn from my mistakes. I’m surprised to see that I have, at times, made the same resolution to act a certain way in subsequent entries, clearly disregarding my own advice from the prior entries. I think the only reason I bother with them is so that I do not repeat the mistake of writing something like, say, my only rap song ever on a loose leaf of paper that is certain to get lost. A bound book is a more complete, more painful, and therefore more truthful retelling of a lifetime.

I don’t know what compels a person to sit down and string together words or why they continue doing it into their 30s. I can only offer that it makes me feel good about myself. Obviously, I wish I had more discipline. Like any craft, to be a good writer you must put in the hours to get a good product, but sitting down to write when I’m not feeling inspired, staring a blank page, is a very ominous feeling. One of my favorite quotes, attributed to Dorothy Parker, goes, “I hate to write, but I love having written.” Of course, she committed suicide, so maybe she should have gotten gone to culinary school or something.

I write, primarily, to keep myself from going insane. I actually feel lucky if I get even one comment below a post, so I don’t feel that I am just shouting down an empty hallway, but you’ll also notice that I continue to post even when I don’t. In the truest sense, I write for myself.

It came as a surprise when, last summer, even though my publishing record at the time was one unsolicited art review, a catalog essay for the show I curated, and this blog, I found myself in the peculiar position of being offered money to write. With little hesitation, I agreed that I would sell out, and I’ve been writing a weekly column of art criticism ever since.

…

About a month ago I accepted a job at a hospital. It's not a great job, but it is providing me with much needed experience, not to mention insight, for my future career. In almost every way this is a positive step. The most significant drawback is that I no longer had adequate time to write my column.

When I took the job I thought I'd be able to keep writing, but after a few weeks I was exhausted and not feeling satisfied with some things I wrote. After a lot of consideration, I made the decision to resign from my post, and this Wednesday I will revert back to my original form as an unpublished nobody.

I’m saddened to let go of something that was so validating for a writer, not to mention a job that kept me very attuned to the local art scene. Then again, I’m looking forward to the option of spending weekends with my wife.

It’s funny to think about now, but when I was offered the job it felt like I’d won the lottery. Of course, when you factor in the 3-hour commute, self-employment taxes, and the abysmal weather they get up there, it was a lot less lottery-like. Still, I felt like I’d been discovered. I had worked hard, writing for an audience of friends and family, and I was reaping the rewards for being so fucking clever. It was a real rags-to-slightly-nicer-rags story.

I have been writing weekly reviews about Santa Fe galleries for 10 months now and, as with most any job, I’ve had mixed feelings on the matter. There was a feeling of euphoria, but the positives, initially, were far overshadowed by the paralyzing insecurity I experienced.

Despite my 10-strong readership of this blog, I had never really written for an audience, and it kind of freaked me out. Suddenly I had an editor who could change what I’d written and take out the words I so carefully put in**. Suddenly I had a deadline to meet, so I couldn’t just write when I felt like it (on average, once every 3-9 weeks). Suddenly there was the prospect that someone might tell me that my writing sucks.

All of these things happened, but none of them were as bad as I feared. After a while I stopped worrying about the audience so much. My editor gave me pointers. I even learned a few things, like subject-verb agreement, that were probably covered back in high school. I met all my deadlines, and never had to do a rewrite.

I did have a couple embarrassing moments, like the time I misquoted another article, or the time I joked about a gallery not really being closed despite a huge flood that shut it down for several weeks. But most of what I wrote was my opinion, so it couldn’t be fact-checked.

However, being a critic was sometimes a heavy task. No doubt I am expected to have a vested interest in the subjects I write about, not to mention a certain level of expertise. Well, my involvement in the art world is at times tenuous, and I’m not just being modest when I say a master’s degree doesn’t guarantee that I have any idea what to say about a large majority of the artwork I see.

Since I was free to cover any shows I wished, my approach was intuitive. I would keep going to galleries until I found something I thought I could write about. I found it was easiest to write about shows I enjoyed. It was also fairly easy to write about shows that, for one reason or another, offended me. Though, in the latter case, I would often feel very guilty and uneasy afterward. I was acutely aware (in my imagination) of the hurt feelings I’d caused, because I have experienced them firsthand with my own attempts at exhibiting.

It's a strange proposal, art criticism. I know a lot of art is therapy, and I think it's a worthy endeavor, but I'm not so sappy that I believe all art is important or transcendent. It's been commodified and over-marketed like anything else. In a place like Santa Fe, it can be just one more way to make a buck. Ignoring a large portion of the Southwestern-influenced tourist market, I tried to seek out the shows that mixed technical proficiency with personal philosophy. Whatever the motives the maker has, in the end it is difficult to ignore the fact that I am criticizing them.

On the worst days, my role as a critic just struck me as mean. I usually tried to avoid meeting the artists because I found it was much harder to be critical of someone if I could picture their face. It was even worse if I'd had any kind of discussion about the work. Standing there, listening to an artist stammer about why they did what they did, I would be composing my article in my head. I could sense their hopefulness, and maybe even their fear, about how I would respond. Something about this exchange seemed dishonest, like I should have said to them, "I'm really sorry, but you're full of crap." Although, I see that wouldn't have made them feel any better about the ensuing review.

I guess I wish there was enough good art around to only write positive pieces, but there just isn't. I had the tough task of calling it like I saw it. I think it would be a disservice to always tell everyone they're doing a great job. Upon reflection, I think any artist would know that wasn't true, but it doesn't make me feel any less sorry about it. I didn't accept the job to create enemies, but it's part of the deal.


Of course, I'm not sure I made a lot friends either.

Freelancing is a lonely endeavor. Working alone with almost no feedback produces in me a dangling feeling. The time between when I submit my draft and when it is approved seems to last forever and interferes with my ability to concentrate on anything else. I would fall asleep worrying about how my review would be received. I pictured a mob amassing to have me barred from entering town. God forbid I get an angry letter to the editor. For someone who criticizes others, I have awfully thin skin.

Then there is the matter of what I’ve written. I have no doubt that this job has had, will continue to have, a positive effect on my writing. If nothing else, it was a lot of good practice. Most of the challenges I faced were actually the biggest benefits. For one thing, I’ve gotten much better at sticking to the point. And I’ve gotten faster. But as I name these developments, I can also think of myriad ways in which my writing did not improve.

For one thing, I’ve learned that writing can be forced, that I can find ways to eat up space to suit my word count. Verily, I can babble on and on in a most uninspiring way. I don’t think it needs to be said that all stories are not equal, and a one-size-fits-all approach can be detrimental.

For that matter, there wasn’t always something I wanted to write about. There were weeks in which I left for Albuquerque wondering what I was going to do, how I was going to get an entire page out of what I’d just seen.

Furthermore, though writing my columns is no longer an arduous ordeal that takes two days, I’m not convinced that practice made perfect. Even if it has gotten easier to hit my word count, I would guess my work became less interesting as my neuroses waned. At first I would spend hours and hours on the opening, trying to find an ‘angle’ (that’s what reporters talk about, right?) Most of the time it stemmed from a personal story or an unrelated observation. The point is, I felt a personal connection to what I’d written. Working so hard and for so long ensured that I had been thorough. By the time I went to bed I could almost recite the entire column. In short, I felt a strong sense of accomplishment.

At some point I stopped doing this and just started right in with the artwork. While this may be chalked up to a more direct approach to journalism, an argument could be made that the pieces suffered from a lack of imagination. By leaving myself out of the story, my job got a lot easier. It may only be natural that I should get faster and more efficient, but if a task is starting to seem too easy, how do you know if you’re doing a good job? I hypothesize that if you don’t feel challenged, you aren’t. Isn’t it the struggle and eventual resolution that signifies satisfaction?

Anyway, a little time off and a bit of distance to reflect may provide me with a more accurate assessment of any lasting effects. In the short term, I can say I feel thankful for the opportunity to be published, that I still wish to be a writer, and that I am no closer to understanding art than I had been before.

When I took the job I’d never wanted to be an art critic. Now that I’ve done the job, I suppose I still don’t. Nevertheless, I was extremely lucky to be given this opportunity. The editors took a substantial risk by hiring someone they barely know, not to mention the shoes I attempted to fill were quite large. Zane Fischer, who hired me and who had been the art critic, is well-known and well-regarded in the community. I do not think it is a stretch to say he was probably the most prominent art critic in the state of New Mexico.

To the Santa Fe Reporter I would like to say thank you, and good luck. And to those of you who read my column, thank you as well. I received a lot of praise for the work I did, and I only hope that I was fair and insightful, if a bit stodgy with regards to abstraction, which is stupid and gutless.


Signing off,
John

…

* I actually said this once. My argument was that I had taught myself to play guitar by listening to others do it, therefore, due to repeated viewings of a certain quartet of adolescent reptiles, (or are they amphibians?) I must also know ninjutsu. I guess now that I’m a pacifist, the point has been rendered moot.

** Not that it’s a huge deal, but I contend that saying something “seems” like a good idea is vastly different than saying it “is” a good idea.