Reflections on My Novel-Writing November

I tried to write a novel during the month of November. I had heard students of mine mention this concept. I did not realize that this was actually a sponsored thing, and that "Novel Writing November" was an idea of a larger organization, or that some best-sellers, like Water for Elephants had their origins in this idea. … Continue reading Reflections on My Novel-Writing November →

Thucydides and a Possible Blog Project?

I'm almost to the end of a class on Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War. Previously I'd only studied bits and pieces of that text - we read the Melian Dialogues in my senior-year high school English class, and then read Pericles' funeral oration in a college freshman-year liberal-arts intro to political theory. But reading … Continue reading Thucydides and a Possible Blog Project? →

Final Thoughts on The Birth of Our Child

We finally came home that Easter Sunday, around 4pm. We strolled Sam back to the pink line and rode downtown, switching to the red line and riding down to Roosevelt to get lunch at Eleven City Diner. The waiter asked us “how old?” “5 days.” “5 days?” “Uh huh.” It’s still amusing to me that … Continue reading Final Thoughts on The Birth of Our Child →

Our Unexpected Introduction to Infant Cardiology

We were now totally unexpectedly sitting at another admission desk while we were being checked into another hospital - this time Rush, on Chicago's near west side, much closer to our house. There was a big, open atrium, leather chairs, granite countertops all around. We were shown into a room in the Children’s Hospital section of … Continue reading Our Unexpected Introduction to Infant Cardiology →

Home and Back Again

When we walked in our front door, I looked around at our apartment. I've always had a strange and confusing feeling when walking into a home I’ve been away from for a time. I remember a family vacation when I was no older than 9 (because we lived in “our old house” - i.e. 222 … Continue reading Home and Back Again →

Sam’s Stay in the NICU – or – The Medical Industrial Complex Strikes Back

And so we come back around to where we started. This picture shows Brooke and me, neither of us having slept for more than 24 hours, Sam having been born and then having apparently stopped breathing and then resuscitated by the medical staff, and then hooked up to the tiniest IV you've ever seen, through … Continue reading Sam’s Stay in the NICU – or – The Medical Industrial Complex Strikes Back →

The Apneic Event

At about 6:30am, or, as the doctors were soon to put it, “at about one hour of life...”, Sam seemed awake enough that Noelle thought it would be a good time for him to try breastfeeding. Brooke held him up to her left breast. He started sucking, and Noelle showed Brooke how to break the … Continue reading The Apneic Event →

Labor and Delivery

When we were packing our bag for the hospital, we had a serious debate that is pretty funny in retrospect: we had read somewhere that we should bring a book in case things got really slow, so we probably spent several days, on and off, trying to figure out whether we should bring Pride and … Continue reading Labor and Delivery →

Emergency Room and OB Triage

“Are you feeling the urge to push?” “No.” At the time, this dialogue felt urgent - in few more hours of nothing much happening, this would feel almost comical that he had asked us. The scared-looking Physicians' Assistant immediately produced a wheelchair from behind the desk and made Brooke sit in it. This was funny too, because we … Continue reading Emergency Room and OB Triage →

An Early Arrival

“Baby, I think my water just broke.” Brooke spoke the words like they were foreign, like words she had learned in a textbook, like a phrase that didn’t really fit. My first (three-quarters asleep) reaction was to distrust her. “What? Are you …” I wanted to say “sure?” but I was in such a fog that … Continue reading An Early Arrival →