Saturday, April 5, 2008

The Annals, Entry VI - Maxims of Maximus

A maxim is a general statement usually deemed to be universally applicable. Aristotle’s Rhetoric 1394 and 1395 provide some details. To our amusement (and occasionally, chagrine), Quintus has recently begun sharing rudiments of his “universal” wisdom with us:
  1. That’s just the way the night goes sometimes
  2. I can’t; it’s complicated
  3. Obedience means listening to mommy and daddy; responsibility is doing what I`m supposed to; self control means not doing bad thing
  4. Dirt looks like poop
  5. Death hurts
  6. Hummers are gas guzzlers
  7. If I don’t chew, I throw-up
  8. A big pee in the morning means I will be dry at night
  9. My food is black; it’s burnt
  10. Falling down is funny
  11. Moldy cheese tastes a little bit eww (complimented equally by “Gouda tastes good-uh”)

While somewhat limited in scope, these are drastic improvements over the beginnings of his speech. Quintus' first word was “hi there.” Not only “hi,” which would have been a formal greeting, but “hi there,” which is spatially separated from "hi here." There is explicit recognition of distance from the other. It is not the yes of Derrida (xxii-xxiii), but it is not no either, not an Amen but not ignorance; it is the acknowledgement of distance, the presence apart, yet the introduction to the other in the possible interest of yes. In acknowledging the other as apart from the self, this initial statement was an early revelation of Quinn’s personality; he is one who observes all, calculates from a safe distance, and engages when the time is right.

Second to “Hi there” was “Bee bee bee bee bee - Oh wow!” an expression that signified his intense interest in his surrounding reality. Every encounter was a new creation to be taken in with freshness, diligence, and care. All things were not an end in themselves as Kant’s second formulation of the categorical imperative would have it.

Quinn’s quest was for knowledge of the object. To acknowledge something requires recognition, a process that demands objectification; once something has been objectified, it has become a means to an end. The examination of any object requires an encounter between a subject and an object. For the younger Quintus, there was never an end in itself. His encounters with the other were occasions of perpetual reintroduction and continued enjoyment, as repeatedly emphasized by his next verbal utterance: “arrrrrraaaaaaah,” most properly translated “again.” Karl found this a refreshing reminder of the wonder of creation, a correlative and corrective to the subject-object relationship. “By thus fixing the thoughts of others upon their relations with Heaven, [Quintus] Fabius [Maximus] makes them more cheerful regarding the future” (Plutarch’s Lives LCL, Vol. 3, p. 131). Reality for our Quintus was other, exciting and concrete, yet always new and so never completely objectified. Although often couched nowadays in a highly elaborate (and often hilarious) vocabulary, to our delight, his exuberant outlook remains. May he always say, “I spy with my little eye something…poop. There it is!” and do it with more joy than most.

The Annals, Entry V - Carpe Diem (or rather...Dies)

In advance of labour and delivery, Andrea held tightly to a couple of suppositions:

  1. It certainly couldn't be harder than a day of bagging up with double boxes of spruce before walking in to the back of your land somewhere in the Torpy Valley (and if you have no idea what we're talking about, this will give you a primer on how we spent 6 summers together). Just to be explicit, such a day usually involved bloody hips and shoulders from carrying all the tree weight (usually around 50 lbs for a two-box bagup), ripped out leg hair due to bag rub, blistered and bloated feet from 10+ hrs on rough terrain in combination with multiple rainstorms, muscle cramps and a sore back from walking about 10 km per 10+ hour day with the aforementioned weight. The end result in most cases (for those who didn't turn and run after the first two weeks) was a bizarre and slightly sad love of pain coupled with the ability to slip between alternate realities (and while the DSM-IV would likely have something to say about this, we promise we're much better now...)
  2. Physically fit people have shorter, easier labours

In preparation for the impending ordeal, she did two things related to these fundamental beliefs:

  1. Nostalgically reminisced over how hard core she was back in the day (can you find us here?) and siked herself up to belief that she still had it in her. Karl thought she was a bit soft, but he was wrong...
  2. Walked and walked and walked some more – since she works about 5 km from our house and her ob/gyn doc kicked her off her bicycle about halfway through the pregnancy, getting in a decent amount of foot time was pretty easy; once her mat leave started, she even visited work a few times a week just to keep up the walking!

On a Monday, after one of these extended walking sessions, she noticed that her hips felt unnaturally loose as she climbed the stairs. Inside the house, she noticed some of the less coffee-talk appropriate signs of impending labour, along with contractions about 10-20 minutes apart. As a first timer and slightly horrified by some of the aforementioned unmentionables, Andrea panicked, and off we ran to the hospital. It was a good 3-hour test run that involved:

  • Nurses laughing sardonically, claiming they could tell from a mile away that we were first-timers
  • A self-proclaimed "overworked and underpaid" nurse who proceeded to squirt Andrea's blood all around the room while placing an IV and then asked Karl to clean it up
  • A resident who stated Andrea was 2 cm dilated followed by another resident who said that dilation had yet to begin
  • The blood squirting nurse returning to kindly help us "escape" from the hospital so that we could spend the rest of early labor in peace at home

Back on our own turf, we were encouraged that things were starting up with the assumption that sometime the next day we would joyfully welcome our firstborn to the world. After one mostly sleepless night that involved a lot of contraction timing and a few walks around the block (it's a whole new world out there at that time!!), we were pretty tired, but seeing as how things were pretty much "stable" (contractions 3-6 minutes apart, painful, and 1 minute long, but not really going anywhere), Andrea sent Karl back to school and puttered around the house, binging on all things Internet related to labour and birth. By that evening, things had evened out with contractions pretty steadily 3-5 minutes apart, but they were not getting any easier to deal with, so before going to bed, knowing there would be no sleep for us, we headed off to the hospital again, thinking that something must be happening by now. After all, early labour's not supposed to take more than twelve hours, right? This Tuesday evening trip involved:

  • The same laughing nurses (though perhaps "sarcastic chuckling" would be more accurate at that point)
  • Two of the medical students Andrea works with stopping in for a chat and checkup
  • A crusty chief resident who, after determining Andrea was 2 cm dilated, said that he had just delivered a couple who had come in a week earlier in the same condition as Andrea (A WEEK!!!!)
  • Us bolting out of the hospital as fast as we could, chalking the experience up to diversion and lack of anything better to do while waiting

It was when we got home and started reading the Bradley book more carefully that Karl noticed mention of the "putterer" labor pattern, and while Andrea is always comforted by categories and labels, whoever decided to write "you are not working hard at this stage" was clearly smoking the aforementioned but uncondoned reefers. Double-box spruce bagups and a swampy walk-in were starting to look pretty sweet indeed. Wednesday was pretty much "second verse, same as the first" except that when we went for our recreational hospital visit at about 11pm that night, Andrea was finally 3.5cm dilated, and they decided we should stay until morning to see if she would progress any more quickly with some rest. Miraculously, Andrea's contractions slowed a lot, and she was finally able to sleep until the nurse shift change early Thursday morning. (Remember way back on Monday when this whole thing got started? No? Us neither...)

However, at 7am, she was still only barely 4cm dilated (this must break some kind of terrible record or something), and they decided to get proactive on us. Andrea's water was broken at 7:30am, and contractions came back almost immediately at double strength and double speed. Andrea managed well for about an hour while Karl figured out all the bells and whistles of the electronic gadgetry involved. With all the cords and wires, plus the Lazyboy in the corner, he was looking for the receiver and plasma television. Who knew he was going to get to watch this on 1080p with DTS-HD?!? Unfortunately, the sound track was stuck on something that sounded like a train car repeatedly riding over particularly bumpy tracks. At one point, Andrea's dry-humored and medical-intervention-loving ob/gyn doc swaggered in, patted her head, and said rather patronizingly, "Well, aren't you a righteous sufferer..." before waltzing right back out. Andrea says she chuckled in her head, but Karl doesn't believe her. Karl knew the genius behind his comments was to stimulate Andrea's rage (perhaps we'll discuss our personal motivations at another point…), thus removing her subjective experience of pain by turning her focus to anger (Bruce Banner turning to Incredible Hulk?).

Although we had been pretty excited about a med-free birth, the psychological fatigue of the past three days had taken a toll, and at about 9:00am, Andrea gladly accepted the nurse's offer of an epidural. Fortuitously (in hindsight), however, the anesthesiologist was stuck in an emergency c-section, and by the time he was free, the nurse came back to an interesting scene in our room. Karl was at one moment on top of the bed, pushing as hard has he could on Andrea's back, the next running over to cool a cloth for her forehead, and the next grabbing some ice chips out of a cup for her dry mouth before jumping back on the bed to start the cycle all over again. The nurse took one look and said, "She doesn't have time for the epidural," before walking back out. Why she left us alone at that point was somewhat baffling, as it was only a minute or two before the uncontrollable urge to push overcame Andrea, and Karl ran out into the hall to yell at any passersby: "My wife is pushing whether you want her to or not!!" This caused the appropriate ruckus, and suddenly, at 10am, our room was full of all kinds of people bringing in all sorts of equipment and generally causing a commotion.

Once they got everything set up and decided they were ready (is that a bit ironic?), Andrea's body decided it had had enough, and she went numb…literally. She was in that weird half-reclined position you always see in the movies, except that instead of cursing and flailing, she was asking a junior medical student (witnessing her first birth) what she liked best about medical school, what specialties she was considering, and all sorts of other odd stuff. She was a lovely student, though perhaps mildly disappointed by the anticlimactic nature of her experience with us, evidenced by her inquiry: "Aren't you supposed to be screaming or something? All my friends say the lady always screams…" Karl, on the other hand was slightly awestruck by the scene. A half moon of nurses and students were whispering to each other while another in the hallway directed more traffic into the room. There were hushed mentions of the sacred "N" word: a "natural" birth. The nurses had to tell Andrea when to push because she couldn't feel the contractions, but we had the best resident ever coaching everyone. It was calm and serene; the universe was at peace, and the child was going to be delivered into what had become a waxing crescent of medical staff all facing the birthing chair. We would have continued like that for quite some time, except that Andrea's ob/gyn decided to make another grand entry, somewhat like a comet breaking into the earth's atmosphere. He surveyed the scene and decided that all was too calm and orderly. To heat things up, he determined that vacuum extraction would solve this lengthy delivery problem (Andrea had been pushing for maybe a half-hour at this point, pretty short for a first-timer, but whatever…), and our boy was out in no time flat. Karl pronounced his emperor name, and we were good to go. While we could tell of Karl's slightly traumatic cord-cutting experience or the overly graphic third-party breastfeeding demonstration, the main point remains that Quintus Maximus was born into our family, and we were overjoyed.

Yes, for those wondering, "Quintus" was a fitting name for our son (aside from the fact that it pleases Karl's colleagues so immensely…). Historically, Quintus Maximus' Roman family name was Fabii, which is tied to ditches. As tree planters, we lived, dug, and drove in ditches. Andrea's planting experience helped her get him into this world and also led to the generation of Quinn's name. We will have to see what the serenity and celestial signs at his birth portend (scroll to XCIV, especially the last few sentences)!

Stay tuned next time to hear the young emperor say: "I spy with my little eye something...poop. There it is!!"