A little after 8:15pm on August 4th, 2022 (which, at the time of writing translates to "last Thursday") Vieno Elaine Brooks, slimy, blue and screaming, slid smoothly out of her mother and into the world. The doctor stood from her stool and gently placed a brand new person on Lauryl's chest. The nurses cheered. The screamer paused and looked up, squinting, with the look of someone who has just been shaken awake from a deep sleep. After a moment the doctor presented me with a pair of angled surgical scissors to cut the umbilical cord. A nurse stood waiting behind me, having been alerted to my tendency to swoon at the sight of blood. I accepted the scissors and declined the chair. An umbilical cord, in case you were wondering, is rubbery, twisted and unequivocally alien. The scissors gnawed their way through, and just like that, this little diver was cut off, her visit suddenly permanent.
Another nurse reminded me to take out my camera.
The moment she was out, a countdown began to get us out of the delivery room and in to the mother/baby unit just down the hall. Vieno - so strange to attach a name to a face after all these months of blurry, bigfoot sightings on the ultrasound - was exceptionally calm as they weighed, measured and swaddled her. A patient patient, but eyes wide, clearly beginning to wonder if this was just a deeper dream.
Now it's a week later - more than a week! - and Vieno is gurgling on my lap. Neither of us has slept in far too long. It is nearly three in the morning, and I'm dictating this in to my phone. As has become her habit (if we can call them habits at this point), the formula I just fed her has been returned after a brief period in her little belly and is now a chunky white puddle, melting in to the couch cushion to my right.
Anyways, where was I. Ah yes, The point. The point is that if I'm not careful I'll have forgotten this whole extraordinary week by her first birthday. And I don't want to forget it, because nine days ago I couldn't imagine having a child, and now I can't imagine not having one. It happens that quickly. The stress of keeping a little life alive, combined with the absence of sleep, means that this extraordinary shift normalizes almost instantly, which, for someone curious about how points of view can shift and form new identities, feels like someone switching on the lights. A birth in both directions, if you will.
Anyways, this isn't going to be much of a post, but I do want to capture a few things that stand out.
<ul>
<li>babies feet are smooth as a cheek. (The simple fact of an unused foot (which I hadn't even considered as an option, let alone a reality) is startling.)</li>
<li>We were told several times that everyone working at the hospital was an independent contractor which, as an independent contractor myself, I found a little unnerving.</li>
<li>My interest in the digital world has suffered a precipitous drop in the week since her arrival. The idea that I am preparing to study Screens for the next six years arrives as a joke. Hopefully this changes.</li>
<li>Idealized fantasies of a happy future arrive unbidden, which, with the absence of sleep, can feel vaguely hallucinatory. Reading her a bedtime story that will become her favorite. Her first upright moments on a bicycle. The mysterious joy of the theater. I have plans.</li>
<li>She'll see things so clearly. All the magnificent physicality of the world that has faded back in to the patten of familiarity for the reset of us - it's there! Unfaded! She already knows all those questions that I've forgotten to ask.</li>
</ul>

🔐