Trump Card

One of the odd things about parenthood, other than that it's the title of a Ron Howard film that was made into a TV series more than a decade later, is that it trumps nearly everything else in your life. This isn't a secret: if anything, movies underestimate how all-consuming the responsibility can be. But what the movies don't tell you is that, at a point, it just becomes a fact of your existence. I guess that's not quite dramatic enough for Hollywood, but it's humanity at work. You accept that your primary focus in life is no longer you, but your child, and you move on.

So, why the lack of posts in the last (gulp) three months? It's not really from a lack of material to write about: there have been several instances of my not-not-blindness colliding with the seeing world, and I'm hoping to catch up on some of those in the coming weeks. It's also not entirely because of the lack of time, although between taking care of my child and working mostly from home, I'm busier than I've ever been,

No, my silence here has much more to do with a sudden shift in self-identity. Namely, I think of myself as a dad before I think of myself as a blind guy now.

Part of this comes from people's reactions in stores: cashiers spend much more time trying to get my baby to smile than paying attention to the way I lean into the credit card machine, so I don't have to answer questions nearly as often. I certainly don't mind that.

But even without that, my focus has just changed from myself to someone else. It's a little like getting into a long-term relationship, but even then, you're sharing the spotlight with someone else. Having a child takes the spotlight off yourself almost completely. I can imagine some people being terrified of this, but I actually love it more than I can say.

Still, there's a lot to explore about navigating the world with my idiosyncratic eyes, baby-strapped-to-chest or not, and I plan to write about it. And thanks, everyone, for talking back to me!

(That's "talking back" in the good way, not the way my child will learn in a few years.)

Happy Not-Not-Blind Father's Day

Since it seems that I'm not the only one out there, I just want to wish my fellow not-not-blind fathers a Happy Father's Day. I'm sure all three of you are having as much fun as I am.

Stumbling Blindly in a New Desert

A little over a week ago, my daughter was born. Again, just to stay on topic, I won't go into the details of the birth here, but the short version is as follows:

1. Mama had no drugs, nerve blocks, or anything else.
2. Labor lasted a while.
3. The baby came out.
4. Everybody's happy and healthy.

I was able to see her head come out, even recognize a face - the midwife pointed me to the right place, and I was able to get in close enough to see it. Amazing, of course. Cutting the cord was pretty easy -- they practically put the scissors there for me -- but since they had already clamped the cord at either end, it was a little like being the mayor at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new shopping mall. (OK, maybe a bit more significance than that.)

There are a bunch of routines that parents go through several times a day: dressing, changing clothes, changing diapers, burping, and feeding, to name a few. Right now, the mom is in charge of feeding, and we take turns for the rest. Some tasks are easier than others for me: I always have a little doubt that I'm getting the diaper exactly right or cleaning every little nook and cranny that I should be, but I ask the fully-sighted people to check my work, and so far I'm doing all right and slowly improving.

As with anything, repetition helps. Just like learning an instrument or a part in a play, practice turns the difficult into the possible into the run-of-the-mill. At the moment, parenting feels possible, and I doubt that it will ever feel run-of-the-mill... but a few small aspects might.

It certainly helps to know that the blood-curdling screams that we're evolved to interpret as the sound of an abused child are, in fact, perfectly normal expressions of momentary dissatisfaction. Few of us start out this life wanting to be change, bathed, or momentarily denied our nourishment, and we are willing to cry bloody murder to express our rage. For that kind of scream, having limited vision doesn't really hurt: it's my average hearing that suffers.

Luckily, she's adorable.

Waiting

Waiting is hard.

Waiting tables, for someone like me, is nearly impossible. I've done at in the friendly confines of a summer camp, as a counselor, for our biannual "fancy" dinner where we wait tables in character. Loads of fun. Definitely not the same as being an actual waiter.

Waiting for acceptances or, more often, rejections, is the toughest part of being a writer. You sit there, at the mercy of theater companies and fellowship committees, having put your heart and soul on paper and having no other power to convince them that you're worthy. The only part that makes the wait for college acceptances worse is that, in that case, you actually expect someone to say yes. Woe to he who expects.

And then, there's expecting... waiting for the expected. There are all kinds of divinations that go on on the birthing industry, all kinds of special warning signs that tell you when the baby is nine months, eight weeks, two days, or six hours away. They are all, to put it politely, bull-crap. No one knows. Two days could mean three weeks; six hours could mean twenty minutes. And when predictions are off by that kind of scale, they aren't predictions at all, but wild guesses.

We're left with the pure experience of waiting. Sitting, standing, doing dishes... taking walks for the sake of walks... looking for any and all events within shirt walking distance. Watching lots of TV. It's not at all easy. There's a part of me that would love to get work done, but the mind won't consent to that. It wants to wait, too. So that's what we'll do.

Waiting is hard. Luckily, eventually, it ends. What lies beyond waiting can be truly transformative, joyous, life-changing... and, sure, sometimes it's disappointing too. But at the very least, the end of waiting produces one wonderful feeling: relief.

Any Day Now

It could happen tomorrow, this weekend, or three weeks from now. We have a cradle, a changing table, and a glider chair (like a rocking chair, but awesomer) ready to go. So I'm sure that when the baby does come along, we'll be completely prepared and won't be surprised by anything.

It's standard practice to pack a bag ahead of time, with everything we'll need at the hospital. There's even a classic I Love Lucy episode about it. It's probably not so common to include several lists in big, huge print so that, when it comes time to call family, friends, and a car service, I'll actually be able to read the numbers.

It's also not so standard to warn your doula that she might have to read small print for us. A doula, for the uninitiaed, is a kind of birthing coach who gives you some useful tips, shows up at your house when labor is underway, and helps the pregnant woman (and her hapless partner) get through labor and delivery. Like midwives, they are a severely under-appreciated and valuable resource, especially if you're trying to get through this process without medication and intervention. We happened to find one we really like.

Doulas don't have any one set of responsibilities -- it depends on the woman, the couple, the hospital/birthing center/home, and the doula herself -- but it's rare that they have to do a lot of on-the-spot reading. However, in our case, one of us will be going through contractions every few minutes, and the other will be legally blind. So it seems fair to warn her that she'll have that added responsibility. I don't think she'll mind.

It's an exciting time, no question. I'm curious about how much of the actual birth I'll be able to see, and what the whole thing will look like. I promise not to put up any birth pictures -- believe me, unless you're someone who enjoys seeking them out, you don't want to see them -- but I'll try to keep a few mental images handy.

How to Give Birth, for Women and Men

I have generally avoided, if not shunned, the following phrase:

"We are pregnant!"

Pregnancy, as far as I am concerned, is an anatomical fact. Although there is now one documented case of a man being pregnant (no joke), there are no instances, to my knowledge, of two people being pregnant with the same child. If I ever did hear of such a thing, I would say, "Mazel tov!" and then proceed to get my brain thoroughly rinsed in hot water. As far as I am concerned, my partner is pregnant, and we are expecting.

Nonetheless, I am fully committed to being fully involved in every step of the pregnancy, and that means -- yes, Bill Cosby fans -- taking classes in Natural Child Birth.

The process is not exactly what sitcoms would lead you to think. Wisdom has shifted since the Cosby days, and no one tells you to breathe super-fast anymore. Nowadays, we call that. "hyperventilating." There are breathing exercises, but those are mostly to help the woman relax during labor. One of the midwives who teaches the class (yes, they're called midwives - I have nothing but good things to say about midwives) has a lot of great practical suggestions of what to do before and during labor, not to mention helping out with the whoel pregnancy discomfort thing. There's also some handy anatomical lecturing. Good thing, too: I was only good enough at biology to cram for the tests.

These classes also include some fuzzier stuff. "Stress can be harmful to the baby, so make sure you're living as stress-free as possible." In New York City? Good luck. "Your mood makes a big difference. Make sure you're in a good mood." So if I'm in a bad mood, I'm harming my baby? Shame on me! "Fix whatever you need to fix in your life, before the baby comes." Right, we'll get right on that.

The fact is, my partner and I are generally happy, well-adjusted people, so none of this really affects us... but if we weren't, I wonder how much of this advice would actually help. Telling people to feel better tends to only make them feel worse. That's why I never send Get Well cards: I always send cards that say, "You're sick! Sucks to be you. I feel great!" I'm a nice guy.

On the way back from the last class, my partner expressed her annoyance at the teacher. Why, I asked? She wondered why, despite that I had said early on that I couldn't see well, the teacher continually wrote and drew on an easel all the way across the room, where I could see nothing. This was true. The odd part was that I hadn't really thought about it.

If there's one thing I've picked up about being a not-not-blind father-to-be, it's that the second part trumps the first. I've been spending a lot less time thinking about my vision and how others perceive it, over the last several months. I spend a lot more time thinking about how my baby girl is going to see the world. ((Genetically speaking, she should be seeing through normal eyes for her entire life... I hope that's so.) My own vision has become delightfully secondary, for the moment.

Still, the vision does come up once in a while. And, now that I've been back to the experts, I have a lot more to talk about. But that's a story for another day.

Why I've Been Slacking Off

If you're reading this, you either already know me or like to check up on painfully dormant blogs. In the first case, you probably know this; if not, um... surprise!

This April, I will find out, firsthand, what it's like to be a not-not-blind father.

In keeping with my tradition of not talking about my romantic life on the blog, I'll just take a moment to say that my partner in crime is going to be, to use a technical term, an awesome mom. No one worries about her ability to raise a kid. Frankly, no one worries about my abilities in that department, either. No one has even brought up the idea that being sort-of-blind might make it harder to be a parent.

There are plenty of challenges, of course. Maybe people don't mention them out of politeness, or out of fear that they might offend me. Well, I'm not afraid, and it seems well worth it to list a few potential problems I may run into:

-reading to the child at night
-teaching good eye contact without actually being able to do it myself
-communicating with a pre-verbal baby
-keeping my child safe
-and many others...

On the safety front, I'm doing what I can. I just booked an infant/child CPR class at the Red Cross, in the hopes that I'll never need to use the training. There was one line about disability on the website, basically saying that you need to contact them ahead of time, so I did. The person I spoke to told me that she would give my information to the instructors, and they would call me if they had any questions.

"Ask them to call me no matter what," I said. "There are all different kinds of blind, and there are some things I can do, and some things I'll need help with."

She was fine with that. We'll see if they actually call.

Anyway, that's the big news... As blind-related events come up, I'll actually make an effort to post them.

Oh, and about that visit to the experts: sorry. Really, Part 3 wasn't that interesting. The upshot is that, after spending six hours there, I still have to go back at some point. They need to take photos of my eyes. They say it won't take long. I haven't scheduled the appointment yet. I feel like I have better things to do.