Life update

In my intro post here on Wednesday, I had mentioned that there going to be a "major life change". That happened

So we now have a new “one bit machine”. This one was born yesterday, and since I’m writing this rather early in his life, my interpretation of his bit rate is very very different from what I had inferred when I had written a similar post about his sister way back in 2016.

Back then, I had written:

I had planned to write this post two weeks back, the day she was born, and wanted to speculate how long it would take for her to expand her repertoire of communication and provide us with more information on what she wants. Two weeks in, I hereby report that the complexity of communication hasn’t improved.

At two weeks, the one bit of information (whether my daughter was crying or not) was actually quite insightful. While it wasn’t clear if she needed to be fed or changed, or was feeling too hot or too cold, one thing that was clear for us then was that in the absence of any information (the bit being in a “natural 0” state), there was no need for any intervention.

For the day and half that our son has been in this world, though, even this clarity is not there. That he cries doesn’t necessarily mean that there is need for intervention. There have been a few times when we’ve decided to let him cry on without taking action, and he has just suddenly stopped.

At least twice in the day and half, he hasn’t indicated to us that he has pooped, meaning the thing has dried by the time we could change him (and while I’m yet to try it - he’s still in hospital - I realise that male reproductive organs present a whole new ball game (no pun intended) when it comes to cleaning and changing diapers)!

And this lack of information, on whether there is any intervention required at all or not, has been a bit (again no pun intended) unsettling for me. And let’s see if, in two weeks’ time, his bits have become less noisy and we can at least get information on whether he needs our intervention or not.

A few sundry extras

• He was born yesterday, 23rd November, through Caesarian section. On exactly the same day fourteen years ago, I had written this. Now I remember the context of that blog post. I had suggested to the person who is now my wife that we get into a long term relationship (I hadn’t formally proposed yet), and she had replied that she would need to consult with her astrologer aunt on whether there was compatibility, and only then go ahead. I had written that post in some sort of despair (now all four people in our household have had Caesarian births)

• 23rd November is also known as Fibonacci Day (11 23, get it?). Back in our flirting days, I remember us discussing Fibonacci sequences and rabbits to take the flirting up a notch

• In seven years, punctuated by Covid, the hospital has changed its SOPs significantly. This time round, I wasn’t allowed to cut the cord. I couldn’t wheel the baby out immediately after the surgery. I didn’t even touch him until some two hours after he was born, when he was brought to the room. This was all massively unsettling for me.

• It took me almost a day to get comfortable holding him. Until sometime this morning, I was damn jittery in terms of holding him, using only one fairly conservative method. And then something happened - he suddenly cried, and I instinctively picked him up by the armpits and put him on my shoulder to pat him. The fear had suddenly disappeared

• Once again, back in 2009, I had written about “stud and fighter beauty”, and made fun of aunties who evaluate someone’s beauty (or lack thereof) by evaluating the beauty of individual body parts, rather than looking at it as a whole. I now find myself evaluating my son part by part, to try and understand who he looks like. “His upper lip is like his sister’s”. “His ears are exactly like mine”. “The gap between his nose and upper lip is like his mother’s”. And so on. One thing is clear so far - this one surely doesn’t look like me as much as his sister does.

• Once upon a time, I used to think that having kids when you are in your forties is massively weird. And here I am (though I’m yet to turn 41)!