Life changes dramatically when you have kids. As it should, I guess. But I wasn’t ready for the sudden loss of dignity. And to be honest, how little I cared about losing it.
My firstborn was delivered unto us via an emergency caesarean. He was ten days past due and just too damn cosy. In the end he arrived on the other side of a blue screen and was held up by the doctor like Mufasa raising Simba on Pride Rock. Made me feel pretty useless, but that soon passed.
After all the cuddles and all the swoons, I was being shown how to bathe him. My wife had a belly full of injections so she wasn’t able to lift him. It was up to me! I did a great job, I thought as my wife stepped in to dry our new son as he lay on the change bench.
The midwife was showing my wife how to dry him, gently raising his neck to dry his head, and making sure his face was dried before his backside. A surprisingly useful piece of common sense that some people must not think of. I can’t be 100% certain we’d have been ok without the nudge, but I’d like to think we’d have avoided giving a new baby pink-eye.
Now, I’d been told funny stories about babies peeing on you when they’re being changed, but I didn’t expect it so early in our parenting career. Just as his mother was about to finish with his pimple-sized toes, my son’s penis raised itself, took aim, and relaxed its tip. My son was pissing with precision and power, and because of the angle that most penises tend to find, he was letting go all over his mother’s stomach. Ironic, really: because I didn’t, he now was.
The funniest bit was that due to the belly full of painkillers, my wife couldn’t feel it at all. She was concentrating on the toes and had no idea at all! It’s at this point that our hero – me – re-enters to save the day. In kicked my parental instinct and I threw out my hands, cupped them, and caught his piss. Yes!
Yes? Why was I so happy to be catching my son’s piss in my hands?! I wasn’t sure, but I was. It felt like our first effort, and a successful one, at teamwork. We had a bright future and strong partnership as father and son ahead of us, I felt.
Not satisfied with that pride though, I felt compelled to examine the fruit of my loins’ loins. I looked closely at the piss in my hands and saw it was a good translucent colour.
SO PROUD!
Dignity, shmignity. My new son was a first-rate pisser and pride coursed through my veins while his urine filled my hands.
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