People always say having a baby is a joyous occasion. It is until the baby actually arrives and makes it all for real, for real. It is also a nerve jangling, dread filled occasion. Every hope and dream and future possibility is laced with the fear that every good parent feels.
Our baby, Lola Grace Macready, arrived one month later than expected. Doctors spouted all sorts of scary jargon about breathing trouble and keeping a watchful eye on her. Scary as that was, scarier still was the prospect of Claire and I having to worry about something happening on our watch. One could never forgive oneself. We bought a baby monitor. Not the cheap little one-way walkie-talkie, but the one with the camera/television combo. It was stark black and white and you could see a grain of sand and hear a mouse fart. We hung on every sound and every move. That monitor was like a drug, hold the fun and add some paranoia.
For her first two months home Lola Grace slept in our bedroom. Claire and I thought it was wise from a supervision standpoint.
We’d finished decorating Lola’s room a month before she was due. We painted it light green on one wall, leaving the others white. It needed three coats as we had to paint over a blood red wall courtesy of the previous owners. We decided on an animal motif, the green jungle ambiguous enough to accommodate a Dexter or a Lola.
It was charming enough, but I hated living in a townhouse. Neighbors piled one on top of the other. Entire conversations would invite themselves in, which only reminded me that ours went out the same way.
After sixty days of being awake every three hours for feeding and diaper changes, doctors felt Lola had made good progress and with the monitor everything would be okay.
Friday, May 24th, 2006
After dinner, a baby bath and copious amounts of kisses, we took our Lola upstairs. All lights were out but for the hallway, stealing its way in to cast our shadows on the green (red) wall. The cubbies placed in and around the dresser were jam-packed with stuffed lions and zebras and oddities like a long, stuffed green dragon.
We fiddled with camera angles and settled on one that went from the foot of the crib going up toward her head, the best overall view. We each kissed Lola’s hand and placed ours on her back as we watched her sleep. We went downstairs and onto the couch as Claire turned on our weapon against having to be right there!
It was magnificent.
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