Author: josh

I’m Not No. 1

I just noticed that a Google search for “josh lewis” no longer returns my blog as the #1 hit. I’ve fallen to #2, beaten out by those lamewads at joshlewis.net. Give me a minute, I think I may cry.

OK, I’ll be alright in a few minutes. Just… do me a favor if you own a website and link to my blog with the link being only the words “Josh Lewis”, will ya? Googlebomb a little bit for me? Please? It’s legitimate! I’m actually Josh Lewis!

Thanks for the juice! I knew I could count on you.

Caleb’s Story: Labor

We now continue Caleb’s story from the previous entry by bringing you into the delivery room itself! It is September 4th, 2007, around seven o’ clock in the evening.

Labor

When I arrived in the Labor & Delivery room, Steph was already hooked up to some IVs and monitors, including a blood pressure monitor, a monitor for Caleb’s heart beat, and a monitor to measure contraction frequency and strength on a little graph. (I would be mesmerized by the undulation of this graph for the next ten hours.) She was also on a magnesium sulfate drip to prevent seizures. (I wouldn’t find out how strong that drug was until the following day.)

We were originally told that Steph’s labor was likely to be at least 24 hours long, so we settled in for the long haul. However, at about 1am things started to get really intense as Steph’s contractions became stronger. The line on the computer screen behind her head would go shooting towards the top of the graph, and she’d get the most panicked expression I’ve ever seen on her face. On one of the first big ones, she looked into my eyes with true worry and said, “I don’t know what to do! Help me!” I coached her through just as they had taught us to do in our birthing class, breathing rhythmically. Ha-hee-ha-hee-ha-hee-ha-hoo. It’s a great distraction, which is exactly what you need in the midst of intense physical pain. Awhile later she got an epidural because we were told we still had many, many hours of labor ahead of us, and Steph wanted to get some rest so she could be more useful when the time came to push. It definitely helped her to get some rest. Or at least as much rest as it’s possible to get with needles in your hands, cords draped all over you, monitors constantly beeping, nurses regularly inspecting sensitive places, and a blood pressure cuff squeezing the daylights out of your arm at ten minute intervals.

Technology tangent: throughout all this, I was posting to Twitter and blogging it when I could, all from my iPhone. Seriously, thank God for that iPhone. I couldn’t get a wifi connection anywhere near that wing of the hospital, and the nurses recommended that I not leave Stephanie for periods longer than a few minutes at a time if I could help it for the first two days. I had to go down two floors and walk down a long hallway to get to the nearest hotspot. A few days later I ran home and got an Ethernet cord and found a live port high on the wall in the corner of our room, but until then, the iPhone was our only lifeline to the outside world. EDGE may be slower than you’d normally like, but when it’s all you’ve got, it’s really nice.

Things kept moving along until around 4:20am when Steph said she felt the need to push. Some of the nurses said it couldn’t be time yet because she was only 40% dilated an hour earlier, but they checked her again, she was fully dilated, and it was time to rock ‘n roll. I won’t describe absolutely everything I witnessed in the next half hour, but it involved a lot of blood and other fluids, some very bright lights, and several women shouting. When Steph’s final pushes rolled around, seeing Caleb’s blood-covered scalp with matted-down hair rocking back and forth with each push was amazing. Telling Steph, "He has hair!" and seeing her eyes light up. Seeing her determination to finish the process. Seeing him finally come sliding out to the cheers of everyone in the room, his rubbery arms popping out from his sides. Looking into his scrunched-up face for the first time, all pinkish-red and covered in vernix, is something I will never ever forget. There’s something odd that happens when you look at this cone-headed thing that has just come out of your wife and recognize it as a separate human being. And it’s your child, nonetheless. It was easily the most surreal experience of my life, filled with joy and a hundred other emotions. Add mild sleep deprivation to that cocktail and you’ve got something truly powerful!

Next time, on "Caleb’s Story," we’ll dive into the depths of parentnoia!

Thursday Rant: Event Blogging

The Thursday Rant is my weekly chance to let my guard down and speak freely and foolishly about some topic that makes me mad. Call it therapy.

I started blogging in May of 2003. It’s not heroic; I was late to the party compared to my friend, the venerable Kevin Hendricks. Dude’s been blogging in some form since December of 1998. That’s a pioneer. I thought he was crazy when he started. I bring this up only to admit that I don’t “own” blogging or have some innate right to tell you how to blog. But that’s never stopped me before.

Many of my friends have had a blog at one point or another, so blogging isn’t rare. But it’s rare that blogging is really done the right way. So let me make this clear: correct blogging can only be achieved if done consistently over a long period of time. How consistently? I’d say the minimum is once every month. If you average below that, you’re not really blogging. But that’s not what really ticks me off. Blogging infrequently happens to the best bloggers, and I’m certainly guilty of it too.

For the last few years I’ve been noticing a troubling trend: event blogging. Literally dozens of my friends have chosen to start blogs due to a specific event in their lives. They were traveling internationally. They were having a baby. They were getting married. They were moving. These are all good things, but these are not a reason to have a blog. When you start a personal blog, you are the event. Not your trip. Not your baby. Not your wedding. You. The reason I come to your personal blog is for you. I want to hear your thoughts on any topic you pick. I want to see a recent photo of you. I want to know about something that happened to you and how it affected you and your friends. Go for it! I’m a captive audience, and I’m going to read every word.

Don’t insult yourself by thinking that your life isn’t interesting enough to read about, or that you don’t want to waste the electrons. Interest doesn’t usually come from the topic, it comes from the skill of the writer. You may not be a great writer yet, but I think Kevin would agree it’ll come with time and practice, and Kevin’s a pro. So write! Work on your craft as you go. Just don’t pollute the internet by starting a fresh blog somewhere, posting three entries, and never posting to it again. That’s called “fading,” and that’s for wimps. Commit to it and stick to it. You’ll be glad you did. And when that international trip, baby, wedding, or big move comes along, you’ll have a place where you can talk about it. No new blog needed.

If you want to communicate with a large group of people quickly and easily, but you only want to do it a few times, send an email and put them all in the “BCC” field. (You don’t even have to put anybody in the “To” field. It’ll still send. Try it.) Just don’t start a blog. We don’t need more faders. We need writers.

Blogs aren’t newsletters. Let a blog be a blog, and everybody wins.

Code Lindbergh

Earlier today we were at the hospital for checkups and vaccinations when someone came over the clinic-wide P.A. system and said, “Code Lindbergh, elevator twelve, Code Lindbergh, elevator twelve.” I was coming back from the bathroom at the time, and just as I was reaching the spot where Steph had chosen to sit and nurse Caleb, a woman in the hallway told me to stop walking around and take a seat. There was no “please” in her voice.

I asked what was going on and she said, “potential infant abduction.” I should’ve known from the code name. And here we were with a fussing infant in our arms, and he was hidden under a nursing cover. Suspicious!

I had a worrisome thought, leaned over to Steph and whispered, “How do we prove he’s ours?”

“We’re not going to start trying to anticipate this stuff, Josh.” She was a little preoccupied anyhow.

It took about five minutes for the all-clear to come through, which apparently made this Code Lindbergh “a pretty long one.” At least nobody asked me for a DNA sample.