"Blow Out Your Pampers Feat. Animal"

I don't know that I've ever seen a newspaper article cite a song as a source, but there's always a first time:

The "Single Ladies" singer was elated about giving birth to Blue Ivy, her first child, after having a miscarriage and struggling with pregnancy, according to a song about her daughter released by Jay-Z two days after the baby's birth, "Glory feat. B.I.C."

It's sort of like saying, "Paul McCartney reported having 'a wonderful Christmastime,' according to the song 'Wonderful Christmastime.'"

(By the way, I'm still cheesed off by the reports that Jay-Z's entourage closed the NICU to fathers. Beyonce didn't exactly deny it, saying that "Security was very tight, but not just for the sake of it. [. . .] It was for the security of our daughter." That story made me really sad when I read it.)

We were following Beyonce's pending delivery while Jen recuperated in the hospital. I remember how little sleep we seemed to get in the two nights after Animal was born; my head hurt — ached — like I was up all night. It was enough just to stare at our child and be amazed by him. Which brings me to my second point: Where in the fuck did Jay-Z find the time to not only write a song but also go record it and release it to the world?

Jen made the point that he might have written the song beforehand. If so, I think that's even worse: How do you know what you're going to feel before it happens?

Every once in a while before Animal was born, someone might ask me something along the lines of "what I thought" or some such — the subtext, I always assumed, was "You're going to Disneyworld, baby! So exciting!" And the truth is that I didn't know what I thought — eventually I just got comfortable with the idea that I had no expectations about what it might be like, and that I didn't want to superimpose expectations about what parenthood would be like.

To be fair, most people — especially those who were already parents — tended to say something along the lines of "things "are going to change so much." That seemed less laden with expectation, but also a little foreboding.

Anyway, one thing I wouldn't have done was write a lyric like "The most amazing feeling I feel/Words can't describe what I'm feeling for real." Because A) The worst thing in the world for someone who expresses himself through words is to punt and claim that "words can't describe what I'm feeling" and B) If you're fudging and telling me what you're feeling in advance of feeling it, then telling me that you can't describe what you're feeling is . . . making my head hurt.

But to go back to "what I thought," one thing I remember feeling at some point long before Animal was a yolk sac on an ultrasound was noticing how ridiculous Jen and I probably started looking. It wasn't necessarily one thing in particular but rather a straw man (straw couple?) based a composite of a bunch of people I've met in passing and probably have seen depicted on episodes of Sex and the City. That's the Childless New York Couple. Not trying to judge — believe me — but after a while I kept thinking how goofy stuff like $40 mayonnaise really is. We probably look like total assholes. As Goober might say, "Take it to heart."

Let's put it this way, when I saw the New York Times' "Weekender" ad campaign something flipped in me, and I knew that wasn't how I ever wanted to perceive myself. "I'll trade you the Magazine for the Book Review"? You know what? Fuck you:

You know what you don't see in those ads? That un-unsheathed blue plastic bag-of-Sunday-advance-sections still sitting on the coffee table Tuesday evening, right next to the hand sanitizer and box of wet wipes.

The real lede of the Beyonce article above is that Jay-Z "of course" will change his daughter's diapers — the idea being that he'll help out, and not just materially. Which is good — "of course" — but I can't really see him waking up at 4 a.m. after the baby blows out its Pampers . . .

If I were him, I might have waited a few weeks until I released the song written to honor the birth of my child. It might go something like this:

It's 3:56 and wouldn't you know it, we're both still up
You on the changing pad, me avoiding what's flying forth from your butt
When you blow out your Pampers
I wonder who the fuck designed mesh hampers

Or some such . . .

And As Soon As I Write This He Cries Uncontrollably, For No Apparent Reason At All

I really dislike fall. I know it's pretty and stuff, but it's so fleeting, and falling leaves only mean one thing: The inexorable slide into winter.

I was thinking about this as I held Animal the other day. It was either early in the morning or late at night or some time that completely escapes me even though it was less than 24 hours ago and my memory of stuff is suspect because of a lack of sleep these last two-plus weeks.

Animal was born just before the end of the year. Animal is not Animal's name. Animal has a Human name but Animal was what we called Animal in the second and third trimester. Animal's full name is actually "Operation: A.N.I.M.A.L." for "Aquatic Nugget Inside Maternal Abdominal Lair." This name followed "Project: Varpu," Animal's first trimester name, which came from an article Jen read in a design magazine, where a young Finnish couple named their child "Varpu."

Anyway, late into the third trimester, "aquatic nugget" seemed a little understated. In retrospect, it should have probably stood for "Amniotic Nestling Inside Maternal Abdominal Lair."

I didn't quite know what to think about Animal before Animal earned his Human name but as I lay there with him sleeping on my chest, I thought of how fleeting this moment probably is. A lot of the last two-plus weeks have been a blur, an endless stream of burping, dirty diapers, laundry and generally trying to figure out what Animal needs, but the other morning (or night) was something different. Jen was asleep and Animal was asleep and I just touched his soft peanut self as he lay flopped out on my chest. It was overwhelming, this fourth-trimester being sleeping innocently on me. And then I started to think about what I hate about fall.

Right now, the day-to-day regimen of raising a child hasn't been too difficult. Yes, there is sleeplessness (more so for Jen than for me) and yes, there is the whole adjusting to constantly having to ensure the well being of another life, but for now we're at the point where Animal is more of an accessory than a child — at least that's how he looks when we strap him in the carrier and strut around the neighborhood. And when he cries it's only because he's either too hot, too cold, too wet too gassy or too hungry.

Not that it was easy to get to this super-advanced point in child rearing: You should have seen the first night at the hospital, when Animal was shrieking and our suitemate had to subtly suggest that we burp him (at least that's how I interpreted the disembodied "burp" suggestion from behind the curtain, followed by the telltale hollow thump sound against her own child's chest; "Oh," I realized, "We haven't yet burped him!").

For now, it's just that beautiful baby smell and soft skin and talking all manner of bullshit to this beautiful little creature whose brain is still not formed enough to make sense of what's going on (beyond the aforementioned heat-cold-wet-gas-hunger consciousness). And for the moment I'm putting out of my head the inevitable neuroses about raising a child to become an independent minded, relatively modestly productive member of the world. We already made it through the scary first part — we have a healthy child who is gaining weight. The next part is the big unknown — and it's kind of spooky. I see middle school students roughhousing and hope Animal will be OK. I hear about a sociopathic case and hope his brain is OK. I hope we're able to provide him with a solid education. I watch Dan Le Batard Is Highly Questionable and hope we have a similar father-son relationship, full of gentle ribbing and smart sports-related opinions.

But all of these things are years, if not months, away. For now, when I'm not expertly changing diapers, I'm basking in the glow of my own whispered, wonder-filled life insurance commercial.