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A Guide for New Fathers: Part I - What's Shooting Out of My Baby?

Welcome to this first installment of my new multi-part blog series. Rather than bore you with a narrative of my baby's early life, I've decided to compile my experiences into a helpful guide for new dads! Share and enjoy.

 Your Baby's Holes (& The Substances That Will Blast Therefrom)

Hole 1: The Mouth

A small baby's mouth is designed to reject most substances. Only one substance - breast milk - is allowed to enter, and even that substance is nearly always immediately released back into the outside world to soak into clothing, blankets, and furniture. Once this milk curdles, which in a cool dry environment can take as long as 8 seconds, it gives baby and her environment a distinctive odor unique to babies (and unwashed gangrenous third-world goatherds). But undigested breast milk is one of the better things you can hope for from a baby's mouth, because if you act fast it's possible to clean it up.

By far and away the best thing that comes out of baby's mouth is drool. I like drool. First of all, it's the only baby substance where the baby word is grosser sounding than the actual word. What sounds grosser to you: "saliva" or "drool"? It sounds like something a shambling zombie would moan.

Anyway, when you see something erupting out of baby's mouth, hope for drool, because it's colorless, (mostly) odorless, and if it lands on the carpet you can probably just leave it there with no ill effects. Your baby will go through phases where he suddenly begins drooling much more copiously than before. When this happens, you will confidently reassure your wife that this just means he's starting to teethe, while secretly fearing in your heart of hearts that your baby is a retard.

But a baby's mouth (especially a little baby) is most likely to emit "spit-up", or, as the medical community more accurately calls it, "putrid rancid semi-digested tit-whey". No one knows for sure why babies spit up so much, but most experts agree that it has something to do with the babies being total fucking assholes.

Spit up differs from adult cheese-vomit in one crucial respect - it appears totally without warning. If an adult were about to yawn up a liter of rancid curds onto your carpet, you'd expect a certain amount of gagging and lurching, or at least a distinctive facial expression to indicate that disaster was imminent. A little baby will giggle and smile at you, and then right through that smile, like those Starburst ads from the 80's, a little tsunami of stinky white destruction will come crashing through those adorable little gums, right onto your priceless Faberge eggs (or Hummel figurines, or whatever other worthless shit you've got piling up in that apartment of yours).

(Just to back up a little - When I said "those Starburst ads from the 80's", I meant the ones where a big tidal wave would unexpectedly hit, with giant fruits floating in it. Sadly, I couldn't find a link to one of those. But I present you with this Starburst commercial instead, because even though it has nothing to do with what I'm talking about, it's too awesomely retarded to go unlinked.)

I know many of you are asking yourselves "How does spit up taste?" Unfortunately, I can tell you. It tastes like feta. Salty, salty, skunky feta.

How do I know this? Well, this brings me to my first tip for new dads:

Tip 1: When within 30 yards of baby, keep your mouth closed.

In my case, I was playing a game called "Oh, The Humanity!", where I float Logan over me while pretending he is the Hindenburg. During this particular game, just as Logan's pretend-hydrogen-contents had exploded and we began the shrieking crash to earth as dozens perished in Logan's flaming wreckage, Logan went totally off script and giggled a stream of spit-up onto the unsuspecting crowd. Because I was busy doing the voices of the doomed passengers, I got a mouthful of Logan's stomach contents.

18 hours later, I finally stopped gagging.

Hole 2: The Urethra

The urethra outlet (or pee-hole) is an opening capable of releasing gallons upon gallons of baby urine the moment it is exposed to the open air. I'm serious. The instant a baby's diaper comes off, they're getting ready to pee, and you are playing with ammonia scented fire every second that diaper is off. This phenomenon is so well documented that there are a wide array of products available to place over a little boy's penis during the few seconds it is exposed during a diaper change. The most popular is the pee-pee teepee.

The good news is that baby urine isn't anywhere near as gross or strongly scented as grown-up potty. Which is good, because you will be peed on. A lot. And not just you. Baby will pee all over himself or herself. If you've got a boy, he'll frequently pee in his own face (don't try to prevent it, this is vital preparation for fraternity life).

You will be peed on so often that I can almost guarantee that at some point early on you (exhausted and stinky, wearing the same pajamas you put on 36 hours ago) will be peed on (just a few errant drops), and you won't even bother to clean it off. Why waste the effort? You'll just be peed on again in half an hour.

Oh, one other thing. During the first four days, it's not uncommon for your baby's urine to contain little red crystals (true!). These crystals are natural and do not indicate a health problem; they're just there to freak you the fuck out.

Hole 3: The Nose

There is a widespread misconception that a baby's nose is used for breathing. In reality, a baby's nose is not connected to the respiratory system until the child is in third or fourth grade. Until then, babies breathe heavily through their mouths, huffing and puffing like little telephone perverts all day long. Many babies' first words are "What are you wearing?"

No, the baby's nose is designed for one thing: the production and storage of boogers. A prolific baby can produce up to 8 giant-sized boogers per day. Each booger is lovingly crafted in exquisite detail, which is why your baby will be overcome with rage if you ever dare to attempt to remove one.

If you do attempt booger removal, I suggest you use a q-tip lightly moistened with chloroform or morphine. Do not attempt booger removal on an unsedated baby; most babies would prefer to whip their head around and drive the q-tip into their brain rather than allow their boogers to fall into enemy hands.

In any case, there is no real need to remove your baby's boogers. They will fall out onto your baby's mattress as she sleeps, at which point they will be harmlessly ground into baby's hair.

Hole 4: The Anus

This is, of course, the exit point for baby's precious little shitballs. It's important to realize that there are many varieties of baby poop as your child ages:

1. Meconium (first 1-3 days) - Meconium refers to the first bowel movements of a newborn baby. The word itself is derived from a latin term meaning "why is slimy tar coming out of my baby's asshole?" Meconium can be difficult to remove, but a combination of wet-wipes and a little water usually do the trick. Just kidding. We recommend sandblasting.
2. 'Odorless' Mustard Poo (first 3 weeks) - Our baby is breastfed, so his first real poops were wet mustard-colored little splashes. Dr. Sears (world-renowned-baby-care-know-it-all) claims that these early bowel movements "do not have an unpleasant odor". When I read that before Logan was born, I assumed that he meant that these poops had no odor. But that's not true. Inexplicably, these poops smell like (and I swear this is true) the glutinous film that accumulates on the inside of a rice cooker.
3. 'Odorful' Mustard Poo (until baby gets solids) - Dr. Sears didn't say a damned thing about this, but after about three weeks, Logan's poop began to acquire a noticeable cheddar cheese odor. We didn't change anything about his diet, his poo just started to stink. So, you know, look forward to that.
4. Big Boy Turds (once he gets solids) - These are your grown man, fully formed baby turds. Of course, where grown up turds tend to be shaped like hot dogs, your baby's turds will be shaped like little hamburgers, because they're instantly squashed flat in baby's diaper. But the point is that they still resemble low-quality meat, so you know your baby is becoming a man. The fun part about this stage is now baby needs to work to get the poo out. Before, when it was mostly a liquid, baby sat back and let gravity do the work. But now muscular coordination is needed as baby struggles to execute the complex dance of muscle contractions and relaxations necessary to release a mature dooky. But since baby can barely control her fingers, let alone her various sphincters, this is a challenging process. Sometimes our baby will stand by his window, screaming, tears streaming down his red, sweaty face, as he desperately works to unlock the rubix cube of his bowel muscles. And I stand by his side, cradling his head, feeling his pain, and trying desperately not to laugh.

Babies also fart. I hadn't realized this, but apparently all babies are world-class near-constant farters. Logan farts so much that I have twice asked his doctor if there's something wrong with him. Even more disturbingly, his farts always smell exactly like his mother's, to the point of precisely following hour-by-hour changes ("Look honey! He has my eyes and your flatulence!"). Whatever chemical agents bring odor to farts are apparently passed directly through breastmilk.

Hole 5: The Ears

According to our pediatrician, babies' ears are prone to wax accumulation and it is critical that parents regularly check and clean any waxy build up. Needless to say - fuck that.

Next time: Coping with Baby's Sleep Habits - The Many Benefits of Suicide

Natural Childbirth - Part 3 - Ironic Twists

You may have noticed that I haven't posted anything in 6 months.

But, see, it turns out that these damned little babies burn through your free time in a big way. You're awakened at 4:00 AM by a series of high pitched shrieks from down the hall, you're sucked into a whirlwind of screaming, poop, and hair pulling, and just when you've finally picked the last chunks of curdled breast milk from your chest hair, it's 1 AM, time for bed! I don't know if there's anything in the world that has such a devastating effect on your social life, free time, and finances.

Now that we've finally found a way to get our baby to sleep through the night, I've got the creativity and energy I need to share my accumulated six months of shit stories with my adoring readers.

But my last blog entry leaves some nagging loose ends. So let's tie this shit up and move on with our lives...

---

When I last left off, Heather was in hour 40 of labor, but only dilated to 4 centimeters. At the time, we were exhausted and dismayed that Heather had labored so long but had made so little apparent progress. Of course, now we know that Heather was almost done! Just 16 hours later Heather and I were saying hello to little Logan.

Now, when I wrote the previous two blog entries, just after Logan was born, I was full of trauma and anger. My plan was to intersperse what we were told at our birthing classes with a narrative of the birth to illustrate how our hopes and expectations were utterly, ironically disappointed from the moment we entered the hospital.

It's 6 months later now, and my outrage has lost its edge (plus, sleep-deprivation related psychosis has destroyed most of my ability to form new memories). So I'm abandoning my subtly self-pitying literary structure for an overtly self-pitying bullet point recap of the birth:

1) During our Bradley class, our instructor dedicated an entire class to the drug Cytotec. Specifically, how the drug will kill you and your baby. This was a stunning revelation; after all, why would the FDA approve a drug that was consistently fatal? But our Bradley instructor had proof, perhaps the only proof that could be offered for an accusation of this gravity: an uncomfirmable anecdote featuring no names, sources, or verifiable facts of any kind. According to this shocking story, a lady who doing just fine in labor was given Cytotec to speed up labor, and she and her baby were dead within minutes.  Perhaps even more damning, the instructor revealed that Cytotec had never been proven 100% safe!

As you probably guessed, Heather and I, liberal egghead faggots that we are, proceeded to spoil things for everyone by making a lot of stupid arguments that nobody cared about. Like how a sourceless, context-free anecdote about one person doesn't constitute proof of any kind. Like how it's impossible to prove that anything is 100% safe, and that it's not even clear what that would mean ("Dear God! Vicks brand cough drops can be fatal when hammered directly into the skull! They're not 100% safe!"). Heather and I went home very, very annoyed that our instructor would pointlessly alarm pregnant women with illogical, unscientific nonsense.

Ironic twist: Guess what drug Heather was given to control postpartum hemmorhaging? <ding!> You guessed it: Cytotec!

2) Heather's labor took so long that the doctors became concerned that maybe the baby was turned in a funny way. A parade of nurses, midwives and OBs were brought in to determine the baby's position. These experienced professionals grew increasingly worried that the baby might be in a dangerous feet-down position that would require an immediate C-section. Heather sat through an agonizing emergency ultrasound during which two nurses could not locate the baby's head or feet. Things were starting to move in inexorably towards C-section when the lady who actually knew how to operate the ultrasound machine showed up.

Heather and I watched the screen as she instantly found the baby's feet (exactly where they were supposed to be, facing up), and ran the ultrasound down the length of the baby's body, showing us cross sections of the baby's feet, shins, knees, thighs, cock-and-balls - D'oh! So much for not finding out the baby's gender ahead of time.

Ironic twist: The labor took so long because the baby was in a weird position. He was face-up instead of face down. Not one of the nearly dozen people who had checked the baby's position had noticed.

3) The pushing part of Heather's labor took 4 hours, which is just about as long as pushing can possibly go before they cut you open. Heather was screaming like a wild animal, and sweating like a professional wrestler. Every muscle in her body was shaking from the constant effort she was making to push the baby out. Our midwife, Hagatha, repeatedly told Heather that pushing was taking so long because Heather just wasn't really trying.

Ironic twist: Of course she was fucking trying!

4) Heather ultimately ended up having a vacuum assisted delivery. Now, in Bradley class, we'd talked a lot about how to push slowly when the baby begins to crown, to slowly stretch the vaginal walls and prevent tearing. When the O.B. finally got the vacuum attached and did one good tug, the baby shot out like a cannonball. Heather experienced fourth degree tearing, which means that suddenly the only separation between her vagina and rectum was the biological equivalent of a strand of hastily hung police-line tape.

Ironic twist: Before she got pregnant, Heather would often loudly remark, "Boy, I sure am glad my vagina and rectum are topologically distinct spaces!"

There's a million bullet points like this. Nothing went the way we expected. We thought we would have a drug free delivery - Heather ended up getting pitocin to increase contractions and an epidural for pain (but Hagatha helpfully turned off Heather's epidural and turned up her pitocin once pushing began, so that Heather could experience the maximum possible agony). We thought it would be sublime and magical - it was traumatic and brutal. We thought that if we read enough books, if we did the right exercises, if we ate the right foods, if we followed the rules, we'd get the birth we wanted. We'd started to believe what our lefty hippy birthing books said: that birth was a beautiful, natural process that rarely (if ever) required the intervention of the greedy, power-mad medical establishment.

We were really fucking stupid.

Childbirth is a natural human process, but that doesn't mean it's beautiful. There are plenty of perfectly natural processes that result in bleeding eyeballs; the fact that mother nature is calling the shots doesn't make it pretty. Childbirth can be terrifying, and painful, and boring, and until very recently was a leading cause of death. And we knew that.

But we didn't want to believe that. Heather and I have lived our entire lives believing that if we worked hard enough, we could control the things in our lives that felt dangerous and out of control. And what's more dangerous and out of control than having a miniature Houdini attempt a daring escape from your high-security twat.

And once Heather and I had decided what we wanted to believe, it was easy to find a buttload of books to support it. And if we'd wanted to believe that bad feelings were caused by the disembodied souls of aliens killed in nuclear volcanoes, we could have found books to support that too.

So Heather and I were cruelly reminded of a fact we'd known for a long time, but had almost forgotten: many things, maybe most things, just can't be controlled. Sometimes, you can do everything right, and things still get fucked up.

<sigh>

The good news:

Our son, Logan Isaac, was born on August 22nd. He weighed 9 and a half pounds, and was 22 inches tall. We love that little guy with all our hearts.

But man was he a pain in the ass for the first four months.

Postscript: When Heather read through this post, she pointed out that some readers may be left with the impression that her vajayjay is now permanently wrecked. I just want to set the record straight: Heather's vagina is fucking awesome. I would go so far as to give it the Congressional Medal of Honor, or at least a prominent place in the Pussy Hall of Fame. In fact, it might be even better than it was before. Back in the day, Heather's vagina was happy, but it had never really had to work for anything. Now it's more than just a pretty face.

Natural Childbirth - Part 2 - Positive Expectations

From "The Bradley Method" Class Workbook
Class 7 Relaxation Exercise: "Positive Expectations"

Work through your birth plan and make all the arrangements necessary as you prepare for your labor and birth. Then write a realistic story together, of your target birth experience. Include as much detail as possible. Make it a normal, realistic progression, but be sure that it is positive and reassuring. Every day this week, read the story to the mother when she is deeply relaxed. Then have her sit up and discuss her feelings. Did any part of the story make her feel tense, upset, uncomfortable? If so, you still have some things to work out. This does not guarantee that you will have this target experience, but it will help you both feel more confident and tranquil about what you are likely to face.

---

Mid-July - Bradley Method Class 8

 Instructor: So, I hope everyone did their homework and did the relaxation exercise from last week?

John: Nope. We didn't want to do that one. It seemed counter-productive.

Instructor: What do you mean?

Heather: Don't you think it's a little bit of a setup to write out your ideal birth experience? You're bound to be disappointed by how it really turns out.

Instructor: Come on, guys! You know how important relaxation and positivity are! Remember, it's up to you! Let me read you a great birth quote from Dr. Bradley: "If it is to be, it's up to me!"

We checked into the hospital quickly and efficiently. Our midwife had told the hospital we were coming and forwarded our medical info, so we were able to go straight to our labor room. Heather labored steadily as we settled in, and I was relieved that her labor hadn't started to backtrack. We had heard that some women get flustered in the unfamiliar hospital atmosphere, and their labor can really slow down.

July - Bradley Method Class

Instructor: Remember, guys, you have the right to refuse ANY medical procedure, okay? So don't let anyone tell you you have to get an IV buff cap, or fetal monitoring, or anything, okay? You can always tell them no, or tell them you want more information before they go ahead.

John: I appreciate the fact that we have a legal right to refuse medical care, but come on. If a doctor tells you that there's an emergency, and you or the baby are going to die if you don't follow their advice, you don't really have a choice. Anyone in that situation is going to take the doctor's advice.

Instructor: A lot of people have that attitude, class, but you always have options. You can ask the doctor what study proves that the procedure you want is medically necessary and safe.

John: But that's my point. Even if he gives you evidence, you can't evaluate it. He can just say, "Oh yeah. It's in JAMA 52:1:35" and I have to trust him. I don't read the New England Journal of Medicine.

Instructor: Bingo! That's why you ask him to show you the article!

Heather: Wait a minute. You're saying that I should ask a doctor to produce a journal article proving that the life saving emergency intervention he recommends is a good idea?

Instructor: Yes indeedy!

Heather & John: Right.

The nurses came in to give Heather her buff cap (a little semi-permanent valve they install on the back of your hand so they can pump you full of whatever drugs they want). Heather and I were annoyed by this, because we had no intention of pumping any drugs at all into her. But our midwives and doula had assured us that it was a waste of time to fight them on this point of hospital policy. If we pressed the issue, Heather would be identified as a problem patient, and then we would be fucked.

It's been my experience that, in a hospital, whenever a needle needs to be inserted into a vein, the nursing staff immediately begins a desperate search for a nurse that is visually impaired, palsied, or mentally enfeebled (if you are insured by Kaiser, they may be able to scare up a nurse that is all three). This is just a "first draft" needle insertion that no one seriously believes will work, so it all happens in a relaxed atmosphere of trial and error, where no one gets hung up on "results", dig?

So while Heather was having contractions, a nurse arrived to insert the buff cap. She had the squeamish, unfamiliar manner of a woman who was just moonlighting at this nursing thing to help pay her way through beauty school. After a few practice stabs, she announced (as tradition dictates) that Heather's veins were very difficult to find. She would have to call in Nurse Patty.

Now, I'm sure that there are some bigots out there that read the name "Nurse Patty", and immediately leaped to some stereotyped image of a huge, overweight lesbian with an unnecessarily gruff bedside manner. You would be correct.

Nurse Patty strode in, took one contemptuous glance at the first nurse, and decisively stabbed the needle home.

And missed the vein entirely.

So with great confidence, concentration, and precision, she inserted the needle again.

And missed the vein entirely.

Not wanting to make a human pin cushion out of poor Heather, she did not attempt to insert the needle again. Instead, she left the 2 inch needle in, and began working it back and forth under the skin of Heather's hand, like a windshield wiper, while Heather continued to have contractions. Luckily, the contractions probably helped put the pain of the needle torture in perspective. (Interestingly, of all the gory carnage I would witness over the next few days, the squirming outline of the needle under Heather's skin was the only thing I couldn't stand to watch). After several minutes of needle sweeping, the nurse was finally rewarded with a gusher of blood that shot up into the buff cap. Success!

Except they had to test it, so they ran some saline through the buff cap. Heather's hand began to swell up like Veruca Salt, but then, mercifully, something clicked into place and the saline began to circulate.

With the painful humiliation of the buff cap over, we were finally able to settle in, so Heather could labor in the way that made her most comfortable and confident.

Well, almost.

First Heather had to endure 20 minutes of continuous fetal monitoring. Fetal monitoring involves having two very tight belts strapped around the mother's abdomen during contractions. This causes a certain amount of discomfort (in much the same way that wearing a metal cock ring while passing a kidney stone might involve a "certain amount of discomfort"). Fetal monitoring technology is a robust and well established field, so it should come as no surprise that the slightest movement will cause these devices to self-destruct.

By this point, Heather's contractions had begun to slow down. I attributed the slowdown to the pain of the buff cap insertion and the pressure of the constant fetal monitoring. Heather suffers from medical monitoring anxiety, to the point where she does a little self-hypnosis routine before using the blood pressure monitor at Safeway. And, sure enough, when the nurses left the room, her contractions started right back up again, as strong and frequent as ever.

Unfortunately, it was hospital policy that Heather needed to be monitored for 10 minutes every hour. So for the next few hours, Heather would labor along like gangbusters (whatever that means) until about 10 minutes before the next monitoring. And then her contractions would begin to space out. A nurse would arrive and hold the fetal monitor against her belly, and say that she just needed to monitor a few contractions. And Heather's uterus, horrified that it might inconvenience this nice young lady, would panic, and not have a contraction for 10 minutes.

As soon as the nurse left, the contractions picked right back up again.

After about 3 hours of this, I called in our midwife for a conference.

John: The thing is, every time you monitor Heather, her contractions spread out. So maybe there's a way we could skip an hour of monitoring, just to let the pressure off a little-
Hagatha: No, no! Absolutely not! I don't think you appreciate the absolute seriousness of this! And, look, if Heather were really in serious labor, her contractions wouldn't be so dependent on circumstances.

Hagatha's lecture continued for several minutes, ending with a suggestion that we should go home if Heather's labor didn't start to pick up. Needless to say, hearing a medical care professional say that Heather wasn't in serious labor did wonders for her confidence, and the contractions grew even further apart. I sat, gritting my teeth in rage, unable to meet her eyes.

Luckily, our doula was an expert in hospital diplomacy, and she was able to broker a deal where Heather would be hooked to the monitors every hour, but the nurses would watch the results from another room. We knew the talks had been successful when our midwife came storming into the room, with our doula following meekly, geisha-like behind.

"Well, we're going to monitor you from the next room now, but since you aren't going to have anyone in here for a while, I think it's time for a vaginal exam."

Vaginal exams are never pleasant, but they're even worse for a woman who is having contractions. She gets the pleasure of being roughly fingered while flat on her back; just about the worst possible position for labor.

After a moment of diddling, Hagatha pulled out her hands, whipped off her gloves and announced (perhaps triumphantly?) that Heather was only dilated to two centimeters. As she left the room, she said with a chortle:

"Okay, I'm leaving. I don't want to scare off anyone's contractions."

To which I responded with an enraged display of silent cursing and flipping off that was so energetic, our doula averted her eyes. Really.

Ten minutes passed without a contraction. The doula and I tried to comfort Heather, who was feeling incredibly guilty and stupid for coming to the hospital too early. She seemed unable to remember the shivering, trance-like state she had been in when we left our house.

Near tears, she got up from the bad and began to plod towards the bathroom, saying "I'm so sorry guys. Maybe we should just go hoOOOOOOOO!"

The doula and I raced over to grab her as she doubled over from a powerful contraction.

Heathers contractions were back, but the damage had already been done. Her contractions were back to being 6 to 8 minutes apart, where they had been 10 hours before.

It took 8 hours for the contractions to build back up to where they had been when we got into the hospital.

I watched the sun rise and set through the crack in the hospital curtains.

I was introduced to 3 different nurses as hospital shifts went through their 12 hour rotations, each nurse assuring us that she would be the one to deliver our baby.

I watched the woman I love endure the terrible monotony of one long contraction after the other. Every 8 minutes. Every 6 minutes. Every 4. With each one I held her hand, or her head, or her shoulders, as she moaned and shook through the obvious pain.

Around 10:00pm  on Monday, I was holding Heather's head as she worked through another 2 minute contraction. As I held her, I realized that Heather had been doing this for more than 36 hours. In all those hours she had never complained about the pain, even when she was obviously in agony. And as I thought about how strong she was, and how proud of her I was, I realized that I was crying. And Heather was looking up at me, smiling. And she was crying too.

When we came out of the bathroom, with our arms around each other, Hagatha was there.

"Your contractions look like they're finally on track, so let's see how we're doing."

...

...

"Well, not bad... We're up to 4 centimeters."

If this were an episode of 24, this is when the clock would appear:

<boop> 39:59:57
<beep> 39:59:58
<boop> 39:59:59
<beep> 40:00:00

Natural Childbirth - Part 1 - Laboring at Home

August 21st, 3:30AM - Presbyterian St. Luke Hospital

Hagatha the Wicked Nurse Midwife: Well Heather, it looks like you're only dilated to one and a half centimeters. But you're about 85% effaced.

John: Are you sure? She was about to start pushing when we got here...

Hagatha: (rolling her eyes) Sure she was. You have to expect this kind of disappointment when you come into the hospital too early...

Heather woke me up at 9am on Sunday, August 20th.

"Baby, wake up. I'm pretty sure I'm having contractions."

"Are you sure?"

"I think so. They started around 7, but I didn't want to wake you up until I was sure."

"Well... let's take showers and get dressed, and see if this keeps up. We want to make sure that this is real, you know?"

"Absolutely. I want to be pushing when I get to the hospital."

We'd heard a lot of horror stories about couples who got so excited when they went into labor that they went rushing right out to the hospital. These poor losers would show up, check in, and then be forced to go home, disappointed and embarrassed, when their labor fizzled out entirely.

We were smarter than that.

So we began to work through our list of labor activities. We'd started this list months ago, slowly adding new ideas as they came to us. So we packed bags, fixed snacks, walked in the park, and generally had one of the most pleasant afternoons we'd had in a long time. Once labor began, Heather finally stopped having the "stabby pains" (aka ringing shots to the cervix delivered by the cutest li'l fetus in town) that had plagued her throughout the pregnancy, and she was happy to finally be able to take a long walk around our neighborhood. I suggested that we walk to a bookstore to buy a copy of Ann Coulter's book so that Heather could squat over it when her water broke. Heather refused, since she was saving her amniotic fluid to blast our cruel, mean-spirited midwife that we nicknamed Hagatha.

On the way home from the park, we rented the movie "Airplane!" from the neighborhood video store. We knew we'd have to return it by 11pm the next day, but by this time Heather's contractions were 4 minutes apart. Even if we were still at the hospital by the time the movie was due, I'd just take a minute to call one of our friends to return the movie for us.

(Many, many days later, I would return to that video store, place a human baby on the counter, and plead with the childless, gay video clerk to cancel $25 in late fees.)

So Heather and I pursued our plan to stay away from the hospital until the last possible minute, trying to contain our excitement, and remain reasonable about the possibility that this might still turn out to be false labor. Unfortunately, although my rational mind was convinced to take this one moment at a time and not get too excited, my heart could not help but be overcome by the excitement.

And by heart, I mean bowels.

You see, I suffer from the Concern Related Anal Projection Syndrome (CRAPS). This disorder manifests itself as an intense need to take frequent, highly pressurized liquid shits whenever an exciting, high stakes performance situation presents itself. I've done some informal studies of this phenomenon during theater performances, and I'd say it affects about 35% of men, and 10% of women (women are far more likely to suffer Theater Induced Nervous Kidney Liquid Emission). This phenomenon accounts for the fact that the men's rooms in all small theaters reek of farts before any performance (check it for yourself). The male actors have been in there, pooping their little thespian hearts out right before the house opened, so that they wouldn't pollute the tiny backstage area where they will be huddled for the next 3 hours. So if you smell a poopy aroma outside the Nederlander theater in New York, don't wrinkle your nose! The fart you smell might once have been inside Taye Diggs!

Anyway, since I was running to the bathroom every 60 minutes or so, Heather's early labor was pretty hard on me too. My tortured digestive system was making weird moaning noises inside my abdomen all day, which could be clearly heard if the ambient noise levels were fairly low. Heather preferred to lean her head against my belly as she had her contractions, which led to some humiliating exchanges:

Heather: Ooooooooooo....
John's Bowels: Eeeeeeeeeeeeeee... - OH! Bladda bladda bladda, glump!
Heather: Ooooooooooo....
Bowels: Snork snork snork snork - tick! Watcha watcha. Blap. Blappa blap BLAP!
Heather: Hee hee! Hey you fucker! Stop that! It hurts to laugh!
Bowels: Myyyyyyyyy baaaaaaaad.

Even as the contractions got more painful, Heather remained in a good mood. She laughed throughout the movie, she remained properly disgusted with Nicole Ritchie when she read her Us magazine, and she generally was an unbelievably good sport as the going got tough. Heather's labor had even brought out the best in our dachshund, Remy. Remy normally spends every waking moment trying to set the land speed record for most deafening shrieks emitted within a 20 second period, but even Remy knew something special was happening. When Heather labored on the couch, Remy carefully climbed up next to her and gently rested his head on her legs. He sat there, perfectly still, for hours.

By midnight, Heather's contractions had really started to hurt, but she was riding them out with great courage and composure. I had Heather walking a circuit around the first floor of our house while she labored. I had built three piles of pillows in three different rooms that she could lean on when a contraction set in. I had named these pillow piles Station Alpha, Station Beta, and Station Zed.

Heather: I feel one coming...
John: Head for Station Zed!
Heather: Fuck Station Zed! Station Zed is a piece of shit!
John: You're doing (consulting his notes from childbirth class) ... "great".

Around one o'clock, Heather had started to become distant. Her contractions were two and a half minutes apart, lasting two minutes (which, by the way, does not mean she got a two and a half minute break between contractions. It means she got a thirty second break between contractions). She had started shivering uncontrollably.

I decided that this was getting serious. I called our doula (professional birth coach, for you cretins out there), and told her to come over. She confidently assured me that she would be over in 20 minutes. An hour later, she arrived.

After a brief assessment, she agreed that Heather was damn near ready to start pushing. We bundled her into the car with the last of our stuff, and headed to the hospital.

It was 2:00am. Heather had been in labor for 19 hours. As I navigated the 10 minute drive to the hospital, my nerves buzzing with excitement and concern, I reflected with amazement: "I'm going to be a father before the sun rises."

This was the first (but far from the last) of my predictions that would be proved bitterly wrong in the next few days.

Sympathy Labor

This post was originally published at http://blog.myspace.com/johnrichter_comedian

---

Heather's going to be having our baby naturally. I've trained for months to learn how to support her natural childbirth when the time comes. We've finally finished our classes, and I'm now prepared to apply both the techniques I learned:

1) Rub her back
2) Sob, give up

So, from a pure technique point of view, I'm golden. But I find myself feeling guilty about the fact that, no matter how many inane, sure-to-fail relaxation visualizations I attempt, in the end, Heather's the one who will be experiencing agonizing suffering for days on end. I'm of course referring to the upcoming finals of "America's Got Talent", but I'm sure the birth will be painful too.

In order to assuage this guilt, I find myself doing uncomfortable or painful things on purpose, thinking to myself, "If Heather can handle the pain of childbirth, I can handle this".

I never know when this tendency is going to rear its mentally-defective, hydrocephalic head. Most recently, it happened when I was ordering at Chipotle:

"What kind of salsa would you like?" asked Satan, cleverly disguised as a young, pleasantly plump, recent immigrant to these great United States.

"The flavorless, inoffensive Pico de Gallo for whitey, please!" is what I did not say.

"I'll take the hot one," I smugly announced. "I'm trying to prove that I'm stronger than my eight-months-pregnant wife!" "Oh! And I'd also like to pay extra for another cup of that salsa and some of your inedible, razor-sharp chips!"

So I got my salsa wads, and ate them with relish. I don't like hot food at all, but as I crammed it down I thought, "If Heather can push a baby out, I can eat a pint of searing hot, tomato-colored acid." And I did. And it wasn't that bad.

The next morning, my contractions started.

I was awakened with a start when I noticed a pain in my abdomen that, true to what I had been told to expect, felt like strong menstrual cramps. Of course, I have no firsthand experience of what strong menstrual cramps feel like, but if they feel like being struck in the intestines with a 500 pound wrecking ball made of shit, then yes, they felt like strong menstrual cramps.

My Bradley instructor will be disappointed to learn that I didn't have the presence of mind to time the contractions, but they were certainly getting closer together. I tried to ignore them and go about my business, because I knew that it would probably be hours before I'd need to be rushed to the hospital (although it did seem pretty clear that it would become necessary at some point). But then, quite suddenly, the contractions changed their character. They were suddenly accompanied by an almost uncontrollable need to push.

Rather than make a tasteless and unnecessary "water breaking" joke at this point, I'll cut to the chase. I spent the morning in the privacy of our hall bathroom, going through all the stages of labor, including a difficult period of transition where I became emotionally distraught and felt I wouldn't be able to do it. But eventually, things finally leveled out, and I delivered without the use of medication.

Ladies, you know the "ring of fire" women experience as the baby's crowning? Yeah. I had that. For hours.

---

Holy shit! Special bulletin!

Heather has been complaining that the baby is big enough that it's started to headbutt her cervix. She normally uses the euphemism "stabby pains", but this morning she said:

The baby
hiccuped in my twat
so damn low

Which is, of course, a haiku.

Kartrip 'Kross Kansas II: The Baby Shower

This post was originally published at http://blog.myspace.com/johnrichter_comedian

---

And so we crossed into Texas....

All in all, it was a far more pleasant drive this time than it ever has been before, because I no longer had long hair. On every previous trip through Texas, I had long hair that I wore in a pony tail. This poses some difficulties at service stations and the like, because, to a Texan, this look signals "faggot". It turns out that the average Texan is not interested in having long-haired faggots shop in their establishment, presumably because the homo-rays I emit might irradiate the merchandise, and the next thing you know all the cheap cowboy hats would be made of leather.

Interestingly, to any educated observer, I look way more gay now. No gay man has a long, unkempt pony tail, because it looks like shit, and that's no way to get attractive men to fuck you. But now that I get my hair cut by a blue haired submissive named "Wookie" and wear enough Crew product in my hair to frost a small layer cake, I'm exactly what the Texas shopkeeper has been waiting for: a smartly dressed young man full of buy-curiosity.

I don't know if the hair product helped, but this was also the first time we made it through Texas without getting pulled over by the police.

I think we normally get pulled over because of the "Attack Iraq NO!" sticker displayed prominently in our back window. It's still there, because a) it's hilariously ungrammatical and b) I want to keep it around until it's kitschy and cool, like when you see an old VW bus with an "Abolish Apartheid" bumper sticker. This sticker is a magnet for cops in Texas because the official Texas State Bumper Sticker is "I Support Our Troops."

I'm not entirely sure what "I Support Our Troops" means, but I assume it means "Once a month the owner of this pickup truck flies a Blackhawk helicopter to Tikrit and lays down a blanket of suppression fire so that our boys can secure the WMDs." At least, I hope that's what it means. If it means "I saw this sticker on the impulse-buy rack at the Dollar Tree, and I decided to get it because everyone else has one, and now I'm in the America Club, hooray!" well, it can't be that. That would suggest we didn't have the informed citizenry necessary for a functioning democracy!

Anyway, we didn't get pulled over, and before we knew it we were approaching Houston. You know you're getting close when you get to the 20-story-high white marble statue of Sam Houston, standing on a highway embankment in the middle of nowhere. He has an arm extended and an disturbingly blank look on his face. It's like he originally was part of Mount Rushmore, but then suddenly burst out, Night of the Living Dead style, and began making his way towards Texas ("..must... eat... ribs... RIBS!!!").

We finally rolled into Katy. Baby shower time, bitches!

The shower was at a tea house in Old Town Katy. It's called "Old Town Katy", because "Crumbling, Impoverished Katy City Center" doesn't have the same tourist draw.

Heather was getting really, really excited about the presents, and as we walked up to the building Heather said -

Actually, let's back up a second. Sometimes it can be hard for people to understand why me and Heather's relationship works. She and I have very different interests. She's obsessively organized, while I've been known to jot down notes on a slice of bread rather than hunt down some actual paper. But once in a while there's a moment that proves that no matter what, my wife and I are soulmates, that she and I were meant to be together, that there could be no more perfect partners in the world than us.

As we walked up to the building, Heather said, "The baby's so excited it's going to shit its sac!"

Cue the old Taster's Choice advertisement song: "Celebrate the moments of your life..."

The baby's meconium stayed put, so we went inside. The tea house was surprisingly well appointed, in a fussy Connecticut-bed-and-breakfasty kind of way. Everything was doilies and lace, and Heather's mom had hung clothes lines with baby clothes as decorations. The charm was not diminished by the fact that every member of the staff was a 15-year-old boy in a painter's cap and soiled Nascar t-shirt (not kidding). This phenomenon was never explained.

The menu was quite nice, on paper, but slightly less amazing in execution. The "raspberry vinagrette dressing" for example, looked and tasted remarkably similar to the neon orange sauce that is typically served with "crab and cream cheese fried wonton (8 pcs)". There were also cucumber sandwiches on white bread with provolone cheese, a triumphant trifecta of perfectly white flavorlessness. But while the menu failed as food, it was a resounding success in terms of looking good on a doily. And there were baby-themed Reese's peanut butter cups, so I was happy.

I made a point of introducing myself to the actual hostess of the party, a woman neither Heather nor I had ever met. Heather's mom had actually organized and paid for the shower, but this mystery woman had agreed to be the public face of the baby shower, because apparently mothers aren't allowed to hold baby showers for their daughters. Every time I tried to get an explanation for this, I was told "It just isn't done!" in the same tone one might expect if you asked a member of the Taliban how they felt about boy-on-boy ass-to-mouth-contact on the first date.

So Heather and I put on an elaborate show of pretending that this mystery woman was actually the host of the party. Our efforts were slightly undermined by Heather's mom's frequent, top-of-her-lungs shrieks of "I'm just SO PROUD TO BE HOSTING THIS PARTY FOR MY DAUGHTER!". Still, I'm sure that there were families in neighboring counties who were totally taken in.

Heather's mom also gave herself away by organizing and emceeing all of the baby shower activities. I was surprised to learn that baby showers traditionally include various party games, all centered around the theme of being really, really boring.

If I designed the baby party games, they'd be a blast. Blindfolded cut-the-umbilical cord, anyone? How about an activity where you try to accurately determine the cervical dilation on a life-like mannequin? The best hemorrhoid balloon sculpture wins a prize!

Instead, the games were more or less worksheets from a third grade English class. As we labored in silence over our xeroxed handouts, Heather's mother shouted instructions to us, sounding like a coked-up activity director on a cruise ship full of mentally retarded children. "Make SURE to write your NAME so that we KNOW who to GIVE THE PRIZE TO!"

So everyone was relieved when the desserts showed up (I ate more peanut butter cups), and soon Heather's mom was shouting that it was TIME for the PREEESENTS!!!! Heather and I sat on a little platform at one end of the room to open the presents, and it was on this stage that Heather did some of the best acting I've ever seen in her already distinguished career. When she said, "Oh! A baby blanket! This will come in so handy if the other 23 catch fire!", not only did I believe that she was genuinely thankful, but it made me genuinely thankful too.

Heather even put in a fairly believable performance when she opened the box that contained a hideous navy blue sweatpant set, emblazoned with a print of a moose and racoon ice skating. (This was perhaps the first garment in the history of civilization where a Rocky and Bullwinkle iron-on-print would have made it more tasteful.) Heather managed to cover her audible gagging sounds with a ladylike sneeze, and no one was the wiser.

(True story: There was, of course, no receipt with this thing, so when we returned to Colorado, Heather undertook an elaborate investigation to determine the origin of this garment and return it, no matter what the cost in time and dignity. After three entire days of grueling phone and internet research, Heather finally returned the garment to a local Kohl's, where they offered to refund her the item's full sticker price:

One dollar.)

To be fair, the majority of the gifts were great, and there were only one or two really horrible offerings. Heather and I finished the gift section in high spirits, which made the final humiliation a little easier to take...

Heather's mother had asked everyone to write down a piece of advice for the parents-to-be, and at the end of the shower, she read them out loud. The interesting thing was how exactly the same most of the advice was. Here's a breakdown of the most popular suggestions:

1) Your child will only be a baby once, so fill this time with love! - It turns out Heather already knew this, but I was shocked: I had planned to constantly beat the baby with it's own shitty diapers for the first two years, and then love the baby during it's second infancy.

2) Keep your marriage healthy: have a weekly date night! - Bullshit! This baby's the one that's supposed to save this marriage, not me!

3) Thank God for the sweet shining light of the merciful baby Jesus Christ and the Heavenly angels up in Heaven will be thy chariot of Justice and the Thanksgiving of Eternal Judgment (etc)

4) Keep an extra bag hanging near the hamper for really poopy items. - Okay, only one person gave this suggestion, and it was a really good idea. Of course, I already use this system.

5) I know you're going to have one nurse support your perineum while you're pushing, but make sure to have another nurse support your clit, too. You don't want to tear in that direction, for god's sake. - Thank you! That's useful advice.

And so, after spending a few more precious days in the company of people we'd deliberately chosen to live thousands of miles away from, we returned home, our little Honda packed with gifts. Of course, to get home, we had to pass through Oklahoma one more time...

Just on the Oklahoma side of the Kansas/Oklahoma border, we stopped at a gas station. I went inside to buy a bottle of water and use the restroom. The store shelves seemed to have been stocked by flinging items from behind the counter and hoping that they landed on a shelf, which they did not. Still, it was probably better that the clerk didn't get up to try to get anything off the floor, because that would only have allowed his B.O. cloud to gain even more territory.

Given the condition of the store, I braced myself when I opened the door to the men's room, but I was shocked to discover that the bathroom was literally sparkling clean. Every surface had been scrubbed to an immaculate shine. I strode to the urinal with renewed esteem for the American people. Sure, we may be too fat to get up and actually place store items on their shelves, but at least we still have enough pride to keep our bathrooms clean.

And then I noticed the smell.

It was a bad smell. It was a smell so bad it would normally have prompted me to get in the car and drive to the next gas station, but by then I was already peeing, so I decided to tough it out. As I zipped up, it became clear that the smell was coming from the trash can. And, despite my better judgement, like so many horror-movie teenagers before me, I went to investigate.

Someone had carefully, precisely, perhaps artfully, pooped in the trash can. I'm not kidding.

High angle shot. John stares, motionless and stunned, at the turd in the garbage can. Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the U.S.A." begins to play as the camera slowly pulls back into the clouds.

Fuck you, Oklahoma. Fuck. You.

Krazy Kansas Kartrip

This post was originally published at http://blog.myspace.com/johnrichter_comedian

---

So this morning, we went to Heather's twice monthly doctor appointment. I like the prenatal appointments, because our doctor's name is pronounced "Dr. Faust" (for real). When we first met him, I was hoping he'd look at my wife's cervix, burst into maniacal laughter, and then cause a hellish cervical dilation that would open a gateway into an alternate dimension of pure chaos. Unfortunately, he's very professional.

His name does have some advantages. For example, although Dr. Faust and all the midwives at his practice are great, they do employ a bitchy, rude, mean-spirited assistant. She says sensitive things to Heather like, "Well, most women don't gain as much weight in their rear end as you have, but at least your breasts aren't as saggy as they're going to get." Since she works for Dr. Faust, I have given her the nickname "Mephistopheles". This is good news for all concerned, since under normal circumstances I would call her "Twatty Fuckwit McCunterface".

Anyway, this morning there was another couple in the waiting room. And I couldn't help but notice that the young man was wearing a T-shirt that said "Snatch: The Best Stuff On Earth" in giant, brightly-colored letters.

Now, regular readers know that I'm not easily offended (see: "Twatty Fuckwit McCunterface"), so it wasn't the language that bothered me. I just found it a little odd that this guy felt the need to advertise his fondness for snatch. Your wife's pregnant for fuck's sake! We know that you have at least a passing interest in poontang!

And to choose that shirt - out of all the possible items in his wardrobe - on a day when he knew he'd be sitting in a waiting room full of pregnant women seems a little crass, even by my standards. I have to assume that he agonized over the choice for hours, discarding shirts that said "Beaver Patrol", "Free Moustache Rides", and "Donkey Punch!" in favor of the more tasteful and aesthetically pleasing snatchware.

Anyway, everything that I've said so far is off-topic. Today's topic is: "Heather's Texas Baby Shower". (Note: although "texas baby shower" would be an excellent euphemism for sexual pee-play, this is not the sense in which the phrase is currently being used.)

As I mentioned earlier, Heather's mother arranged a baby shower for Heather in her home town of Katy, Texas, where every little girl hopes that when she grows up, she can work at the good Wal-Mart. Since we bought our charming and historic Denver home, Heather and I have no money, so we chose to drive down to Texas rather than fly.

It's an 18 hour drive, so we decided to get out the door as early as possible, thus naturally we didn't leave the house until noon. This is because when your final destination is Texas, suddenly there seem to be a lot of urgent household tasks that have to be addressed (ie "When was the last time we checked the ice cube maker for ghosts?").

But eventually we were on the road, and before we knew it we had hit Kansas. You can tell that you've crossed into Kansas, because all the businesses suddenly start cleverly spelling C-words with a K, as in: "Kansas Kountry Kitchen", "Karter's Krunchy Kandies" and "Ku Klux Kleaners".

I was remarking on this phenomenon to Heather as we pulled into a Stuckey's/gas station and noticed a semi with "Khristian Kountry Karriage" or something like that written on the side. As we walked into the little gas station shop, we both had a good laugh about these yokels' unintentional quasi-racist acronyms.

And then we saw what was for sale.

Did you know that they still sell black mammy figurines? Well they do in Kansas!

They also had a sign that said: "Wanted: Kitchen Slave". I'm not sure if they meant "Wanted" in the sense of "we're hiring" or "Wanted" in the sense that the sheriff was on the lookout for a negro attempting a daring escape to the north.

In any case, we sped on our way. One of the things that I love about the drive through Kansas is the endless array of entertaining signs. Most of them are your standard anti-abortion fare ("Abortion Stops a Beating Heart :(" / "Ma's Diner: Free Coffee if You've Shot an Abortionist" / "I Was Aborted, but I'm Still Saving Money on My Car Insurance, Thanks to Geico") but there are also occassional signs for other pet causes, like Intelligent Design ("Kraftily Kamouflaged Kreationism").

Since the famous Scopes Monkey Trial, Kansas has been a hotbed of evolution controversy and, if awkwardly verbose bumper stickers are any guide, the debate rages on. For those of you who haven't been following along, I'll present both sides of the debate briefly:

Evolutionist Perspective - At one time, Kirk Cameron (Kirk Kameron, Khristian) was ideally suited to the primetime television environment. But over time, new environmental pressures emerged, and Kirk Cameron found himself out-competed by more highly adapted creatures, such as Malcolm Jamal Warner, Urkel, and - to a lesser extent - Ashton Kutcher. Today, Kirk Kameron's Kareer is all but extinct.

Creationist Perspective - Kirk Cameron was personally called by Jesus Christ to make religious propaganda films that no one will see.

So the jury's still out!

But the thing I really love about central Kansas is the awesome roadside attractions. About an hour from the border, you start seeing signs for what seems to be a petting zoo ("Pet the baby pigs!"). At least at first...

After about an hour of signs, the claims begin to get a little weirder: "See the world's largest prairie dog!" "Two headed steer!" "Live 5-legged calf!"

(The "live" in the last one bothers me. It implies that the other animals, including the two headed steer and the baby pigs are not, in fact, alive. ["Pet the dead baby pigs!"] I hope that's not true, because I've driven by these signs about once a year for the last five years. If the world's largest prairie dog has been dead all that time, it's bound to be mighty ripe by now.)

The last sign, just a mile from the actual attraction, says "3000 lb prairie dog!" For years, I've rocketed by this mysterious claim at over 90 miles per hour. But soon I'll have a child. And that child will read the signs. And unless I stop, that child will shriek at the top of his or her lungs for the next 18 years. So I will stop. That's one way that parenthood changes you, I guess. You have to pet 3000 pound rotting prairie dogs.

As night fell, we crossed into Oklahoma (state song: "Ooooooo-my-god I need to get the fuck out of this state!"). And thus began the search for a motel.

I had hoped to stay in Oklahoma City, but apparently since they've had a major bombing they think they're a real city, and we couldn't find anything that cost less than a hundred bucks per night. So we drove on.

You know that part in the Blair Witch Project where the camera forbodingly lingers on their car for a moment as they walk off into the woods? That's what it was like as I watched the Oklahoma City Days Inn disappear in the rearview mirror.

After about an hour and half of driving, we arrived in a town with three major chain motels, all of them booked up (I assume there was some sort of clutching-your-genitals-while-watching-Blue-Kollar-Komedy convention in town). So I began to check out the other, off-brand motels. This was not an easy task, since I had been driving for 13 hours at this point, and my eyes had that "just-been-sand-papered" feel. After speeding away from two establishments that obviously wouldn't do (sign in window: "Your rapist tonight is Ted "), we ended up outside the Sands Motel.

It looked a lot better than everywhere we had visited so far. The outside was done in a pleasant black and white stucco pattern, and the lobby looked clean enough. We got a room. And for only $19! What a steal!

When we opened the door to the room, the whoosh of stagnant air revealed that "non-smoking room" actually means "to the best of our knowledge, there is no one smoking in there at this exact moment". Once our eyes adjusted, we couldn't help but notice that although the carpet was maroon in most places, there was a large patch right around the door that was gray. We also couldn't help but notice that this patch of carpet was shaped an awful lot like a human body.

But we were tired enough that we just wanted to get to bed, so we settled in. While I was brushing my teeth, I admired the workmanship on the bathtub. It seemed that someone had accidentally purchased a tub that was about a foot too short for the space in which it was installed. Undaunted, the intrepid plumber had filled in the entire empty space with caulk. This would be no mean feat under any circumstances, but it also seemed that the caulk had been delivered out of a high-pressure firehose, judging by the sharp points that had formed in the caulk and the grapefruit-sized caulk splatters that had hardened on every surface of the bathroom.

Needless to say, I was impressed.

Now - I don't like to get into the whole gender differences thing, but I think anyone would agree that women tend to be a little tidier than men. Am I right, guys?

So it's no wonder that my wife was the one who noticed the dozens of droplet-shaped bloodstains on the sheets.

Women! I mean, the bloodstains had totally dried!

And I wish I was joking, but I was so tired that I said "Don't worry, baby. I'll sleep on the bloodstained side." And I did.

In the morning, a number of heretofore unnoticed problems in the motel became clear. As I walked to the ice machine, I discovered that the charming black and white stucco I had seen the night before was actually white brick, encrusted with gobs of black filth so thick that they actually stood apart from the wall.

As I blearily walked back to the room, ice in hand, I noticed a cowboy entering all the rooms with some piece of equipment. I was alarmed at first, but then I noticed that he was also pushing a housekeeping cart, and calmed down. Then I noticed (I swear this is true) that the piece of equipment he was using to clean the rooms was a leaf blower. I became alarmed again.

Back in the room, Heather had made an interesting discovery. She had dropped something behind a piece of furniture, and had moved the furniture to retrieve it. My little junior detective noticed that although the carpet in the room was maroon, it was gray underneath every piece of furniture. After a little more investigation, it became clear why: The carpet was originally gray, and it had been painted maroon.

Again, I wish I was joking.

I really, really wanted to ask the manager some questions about the carpet painting, but I couldn't think of a polite way to do it. I considered saying something like "You know, I loved the carpet in our room, and I'm planning painting our carpets back home, and I was wondering what brand of paint you used," but I was afraid that they'd see through my little ruse, and the next thing I'd know I'm on my knees out back, leaf-blowing the cowboy as punishment for my insolence.

So I rejoiced a little when we arrived in Texas. Just a little.

Next Time: The baby shower

'Roid Rage, or "The Red Scare"

This post was originally published at http://blog.myspace.com/johnrichter_comedian

---

Up until now, Heather's been pretty lucky in terms of pregnancy symptoms. And Heather's really good natured about the negative aspects of pregnancy. But there is one symptom that she's been afraid of since day one, a symptom so horrible that -

Well, maybe it'll be easier if I describe it in song...

---

(to the tune of Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer)

You've heard 'bout rashes and flashes and hard-to-make-shitties
Varicose blueness and real tender titties...
But do you recall...?
The most heinous symptom of all?

Sometimes inside your rectum
Arteries can get enlarged
And if an abcess ruptures
Some mucous may be discharged.

'Cause when your veins get swollen
There's more blood flow than you need.
And then the slightest pressure
Can make your swollen rectum bleed!

So if you sit down to poo
Check after you wipe.
Get protrusions diagnosed
Your hemorrhoids may have thrombosed.

Some women don't feel sexy
When their rectum struggles free.
Don't fear, they can be treated
Suppositorily!

---

Flash back to about 5 days ago. Heather was moping around the house, looking furtive and ashamed. I didn't think much of this behavior, because we hadn't gone grocery shopping for over a day, so I assumed she was feeling guilty about some desperate pregnancy snacking behavior, like eating an ice cream cone filled with mustard.

But when I sat down for lunch, she cornered me at the table with a wild look in her eyes. I knew that this was about more than sneaking a few spoonfuls of mayonnaise right out of the container. This was big.

Here is a transcript of our conversation, as I remember it.

Heather: I have something terrible to tell you. You can't tell anyone!

John: Okay. What's wrong, baby?

Heather: I think I might have hemor.....

John: What?

Heather: You know!

John: (nodding) Ohh... (thoughtful pause) What?

Heather: (leans over and whispers)

John: (taking Heather's hand gently) Okay. Let's stay calm. What makes you think you have hem-

Heather: Don't say it out loud! (her eyes narrow suspiciously as she looks downward) They may be listening.

John: Okay, what should we call... "them"? How about... "fancy hole"!

Heather: I hate you.

John: (quietly) How do you know that you have this... fanciness?

Heather: There was... evidence. When I was... um... wiping.

John: When was the last time you ate beets?

Now, perhaps you think that last thing was a rather odd thing to say. Perhaps you don't understand a fucking thing about how my marriage works.

I do not like beets. In my opinion, they taste disgusting, they have a texture remniscent of overcooked caterpillar, and they have a terrible habit of making your morning bowel movement look like a deleted scene from The Exorcist. Heather, on the other hand, loves beets, and eats them all the time.

Now, purely in the interest of statistical analysis, let's look at the cases of "something somebody thought might be life threatening backdoor bleeding, but turned out to be nothing" over the course of my marriage to this point:

John (no beets)	Heather (beets)
0	2

So I had some reason to ask this question. Which is why Heather responded:

Heather: Of course I ate motherfucking beets and they don't have a goddamned cocksucking rubber-sheathed shit to do with this! Now stop dicking around and help me!!!

Even though it may not seem totally rational at first blush, this too was justified. Let's go to the stats:

Number of life-threateningly retarded actions over the course of 5 year relationship
John (no brain)	Heather (brain)
36,432,321	0

If you think that I might be estimating high to get into Heather's good graces, you weren't there when I was driving cross-country with Heather while eating carrots, and saw a pig, and decided to make a hilarious pig noise, causing the partially chewed carrot bits to become lodged in my sinuses, causing me to sneeze and blow snot-covered carrot bits all over the inside of the windshield, causing us to suddenly have no visibility while flying down a busy highway at 75 miles per hour.

This really happened. Ask Heather.

Anyway, Heather's insistence that this was a real problem convinced me that we needed to take this problem seriously and take definitive action. But I had never faced a crisis of this magnitude before. That's when I turned to my crisis-management role-model: Tom Ridge.

I immediately devised a convenient system wherein Heather could signal to me the severity of her hemorrhoids fancy hole at any given moment. Different levels of severity would be described by different savory spices, going from Saffron (mild, painless bleeding) through Cumin (itching) all the way to Cinnamon (fully thrombosed).

This spice-based system (code-named Poopourri), has already been adopted by DARPA.

But Heather, always the Democrat, felt like a meaningless rating system wasn't enough. She wanted to know if we should call our midwives.

My response was that we should maybe wait for a day, and see if it clears up. Of course, this is my response to all medical issues, so it's hard to take that response seriously. If my abdomen suddenly swelled, burst, and millions of football-sized spiders came streaming out, I would tell Heather, "Let's wait a day and see if it clears up."

But at this point, Heather was panicked and deranged enough to actually take my advice, so we moved on to the question of how to guarantee that no one, ever, would discover her terrible secret. She said that nobody could know, because if they did, every time anyone spoke to her they would, quote: "assume that I was bleeding out of my asshole at that very minute."

I make that assumption about everyone anyway, for recreational purposes, so I didn't see what the big deal was.

My suggestion was that she tell everyone about it, and kinda make a joke about it. Maybe in some big public forum, like a blog. If you make fun of yourself, I argued, you preempt anyone else's attempt to make fun of you.

Heather's argument was, if you put this in your blog, you'll wake up with significantly fewer testicles than the quantity to which you have grown accustomed.

I was duly persuaded. So I promised to never reveal her - no, OUR - secret. Because we are partners in this pregnancy, and if Heather wants to keep a part of this shared, sacred experience private, I will respect that.

And then, as soon as the beets cleared her system, the hemorrhoids fancy hole completely, magically disappeared.

Beets 3, Heather 0.

Baby Buckley®

This post was originally published at http://blog.myspace.com/johnrichter_comedian

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Heather's mother is throwing her a baby shower in Texas. This is a little bit of a problem, because 1) we don't live in Texas and 2) we don't know anyone that she's invited. She knows it's considered tacky for a mother to throw a baby shower for her daughter, so she's cleverly kept her name off the evite she sent out. There are now several "No" responses that politely say "I'm sorry, I think this invitation was sent to the wrong address", because the guest doesn't know who the fuck we are.

But we're going through with it. After all, who doesn't want to do an 16 hour drive in a car with broken air-conditioning with a pregnant wife through the most godforsaken cultural wasteland in America? (I'll give you 2 dollars to kill me.)

Anyway, in order to make the big event happen, we needed to put together a baby registry. If we were having a shower in Denver, we would register at your more upscale places, like Baby World or Monolo Blahnik Kids ("I picked up Suzi's child and felt a crushing kick to my scrotum - as I doubled over I had one thought - 'Were those Monolos?'"). But we're having our shower in Texas, and needed to register at a place that was readily available to Texans. We couldn't find a dollar store that took food stamps, so we went with Babies R Us (slogan: "If it beeps, flashes and/or nauseates, it's at Babies R Us!").

I'd never been to a giant baby store before. The predominant message of every item is "buy this or your baby will be retarded and die".

Except for the "kill your retarded baby" gift set.

It wasn't easy to find things we actually wanted. There were the obvious non-starters, like baby "entertainment consoles" that resemble the deprogramming seat in A Clockwork Orange. You strap the baby into an adorable little straightjacket, and then a collection of servos simultaneously spins and vibrates your babies while a rapidly flashing Elmo avatar shrieks musicalized cuteness. (Actually, it's a lot like the Carousel from "Logan's Run", except without the hope of eventual death by laser blast.) These products help calm your baby by shorting out its nervous system. I prefer a system with fewer long-term side effects, so when our baby gets a little colicky, I plan to soothe it with good old fashioned X. (Just like Mom used to take!)

The really surprising part was how many things there were that I couldn't even identify. Right next to the baby monitors (the weapon of choice for the guys down at alt.voyeurism.hiddencam) there was this kind of battery operated box, connected by tubes to two plastic cones that looked exactly like emergency air horns. There were a bunch of other tubes and connectors, and I came to the conclusion that this must be some sort of infant medical monitor, where you hook the baby to the tubes, and then if something goes wrong, it alerts you with a blast from the air horns. I told my wife that it's ridiculous how over-protective some parents are, and then she gives me this bullshit story where she says (get this!) that the air horns fit over a womans nipples and the box sucks milk out of her. Nice try, honey! Even if that were true, nothing but formula for my baby. If it's good enough to malnourish fly-encrusted third world babies, it's good enough for my child!

Anyway: Without a doubt, the best things in the store were the "Baby Einstein" products. These are a series of cds, books, and videos that teach babies how to be intolerably boring snobs before they can even talk! For example, there's Baby Shakespeare. In this DVD, a dragon puppet shows children closeups of brightly colored toys while Beethoven plays in the background and deep-voiced actors read poems by Yeats and Wordsworth.

Awesome! First of all, it's basically child abuse to not expose your infant to Wordsworth's immortal "Composed while the Author was engaged in Writing a Tract occasioned by the Convention of Cintra" and "The Column intended by Buonaparte for a Triumphal Edifice in Milan". I mean, shit. Those poemses was like "Bah bah black sheep" when I was a baby. (Well, they would have been. If my mother had talked to me.)

So that's great. The trouble is, Baby Shakespeare doesn't seem to contain any actual Shakespeare. How cool would it be for baby's first words to be "Out vile jelly!"? But Baby Einstein seems to want to keep my baby away from the darker stuff. Where's Baby's First "Ulysses"? Baby's First "Portnoy's Complaint"? How's my kid going to learn about that part in The Canterbury Tales where a guy gets his asshole burned off with a hot poker? (real translated quote: "Off went about a hand's breath of skin, the hot coulter so burned his butt")

Because it's not enough to be exposed to the classics. If my baby is going to be the infantile pseudo-intellectual prick I'm trying to raise, I need her to be exposed to all the mandatory undergraduate reading that I myself never actually read, but discussed endlessly my freshman year - while trying to figure out whether the girl I was talking to was coming on to me, or just vomiting.

There is a market niche to be filled. Thus, dear friends, I'm writing my own series of age-inappropriate baby literature. I'm proud to announce the formation of the Baby William F. Buckley® collection. With these books and videos, even your stupid baby can excel at those under-5 cocktail parties that are all the rage on the Upper West Side. And what better way to inaugurate the series than with the theater's greatest imposter: Samuel Beckett.

Here at Baby William F. Buckley®, it's important that your infant (or fetus! it's never to soon!) is exposed to the original text, even as we present the piece in easy-to-digest words and pictures. Any time you see a cartoon word bubble, you know that you are seeing the author's original words!

Without further ado, Baby William F. Buckley® is honored to present:

Click the link above, jackass

Are you edified yet? Well, remember parents, it's not enough to just read; comprehension is key! Why not test your infant's retention with these:

Discussion Questions

1) Name 5 differences that make Vladimir and Estragon entirely distinct, fully realized characters. If you can't think of any, you're right!

2) Does the relationship between Lucky and Pozzo remind you of your relationship with Mommy? Answer again when you start potty training.

3) For little boys: At any point did you feel like you wanted to kill Pozzo and marry Lucky? Get used to it.

4) For little girls: Did I see you playing Lucky and Pozzo behind the garage with that Garcia boy? You are never to see that boy again.

5) In what ways are you similar to the The Boy? None? Really? You don't think you're at all similar to the little boy who comes along uninvited into the lives of two people whose lives were fine, if increasingly predictable, and reminds them that all their plans are going to be put on hold, with no end in sight? That doesn't sound even the slightest bit familiar to you? Go to your room.

6) Write a sequel to Waiting for Godot where Vladimir and Estragon change their names to Mario and Luigi and become plumbers. Make sure that Mario and Luigi are transported to a magical mushroom kingdom where they spend all their time fighting turtles and collecting coins so that they can rescue a series of imposter princesses. Which story makes more sense?

7) Have you ever pretended to be impressed by a piece of literature or art because everyone expects you to be, even though deep down inside you think it's pointless nonsense? Congratulations! You're ready for college!

All I have to do is find a publisher, and I'll make a fortune! We can finally afford Elmo's Calming Baby Centrifuge (up to 2000 rpms!).

Wait... wait... wait...

Circum-Size Me!

This post was originally published at http://blog.myspace.com/johnrichter_comedian

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Heather and I have decided not to find out the gender of our forthcoming baby, but a simple headcount in my neighborhood suggests that there's about a 50hance that we'll end up with a boy. (That is, of course, a lie. If I'd really based my guess on a headcount in my neighborhood, I'd be predicting a 75hance our baby would be a gay man with a tiny dog.)

So, if it's a boy, should we snip the tip on this little guy? Should we pop the hood? Should we, to be blunt, unravel the turtleneck?

I don't know much about the unclipped member. I haven't seen an uncircumcised penis as an adult (outside of porn, which, of course, I've only seen at book burnings). My wife did meet an uncircumcised penis in college. She says it was "hard to work with". (I assume they were assigned a class project together).

I've only seen one uncircumcised penis in real life, when I was a kid. Most of the little boys in my generation were circumcised. In fact, I didn't even know what circumcision was until I was in second grade, when I met Rommell. Rommell (pronounced Rome-EL; he was East Indian, not the devilishly clever Nazi general of the North African campaign) was in my second grade swimming class. After class, we all had to change in the same damp windowless concrete bunker, so when Rommell's uncut johnson was on display, it - like all our ice cold microwangs - had retracted to the size of a quantum singularity. His still-intact foreskin didn't retract as much as the rest, making it look like there was a short length of tube at the end of his penis. As a kid, I natually assumed he was deformed somehow, but I kept open the possibility that his weiner-tube had some sort of nectar-extraction role in the springtime.

(This kind of misunderstanding is exactly why we have to stop telling the "birds-and-the-bees" metaphor to kids. It doesn't even fucking hold together on the level of logic. Sex is like bees carrying pollen from one flower to the next? That suggests that babies are made when a man has sex with woman A, collects the semen that was already present in her vagina on the end of his penis, and then has sex with woman B to impregnate her with woman A's sperm. You call that making love? That's not making love. That's a CU football recruitment party.)

(As long as the flowers are passed-out drunk.)

I feel bad for Rommell. He probably went through life thinking that he had a weird unit, even though it was the rest of us that were mutilated.

It's hard to know why so many Americans are circumcised. It could be yet another example of Christian Jew-envy. Christians think that if they get circumcised, when they go to heaven God will open their fly, take one look at their junk, and say "Oh! You're one of the chosen people. Go to the front of the line and collect your gift basket." These poor misguided Christophiles don't realize that God will smell the bacon-cheeseburgers on their breath when he zips them up, and then they'll have to stand awkwardly before God himself as he asks "Wait, you chopped your dick off and I didn't even ask you to?"

Anyway, circumcision in the U.S. isn't about religion. When I asked my mom about it when I was a kid, she said that you had to do it to keep things clean. If you don't remove the foreskin, she said, it gets all dirty and infected under there. The problem is that this theory is, prima facie, total fucking bullshit. If the real explanation is cleanliness and concern for infection, why don't we also remove the kid's tonsils and appendix too, and since we've got him strapped down anyway, let's sew his filthy, filthy asshole shut. How dirty can a foreskin get? At the absolute worst, you've got maybe enough storage for a tablespoon worth of smunge. (For Ron Jeremy, add a quarter teaspoon to taste).

Consider this: If a man's foreskin space is equivalent to a glove-compartment, women have an entire Bed Bath & Beyond to keep tidy. But you don't see that many filthy, infected lady-parts, do you? (If you do, consider switching services.) I think a boy can be trusted to keep that relatively small area clean, especially considering the amount of time he's going to spend handling the damned thing anyway.

Which is, of course, the real reason why circumcision took hold in the U.S.: it was a Victorian era cure for masturbation.

For real. Look it up.

Victorian doctors were so worried about young men "stroking the coonskin" that they decided that baby boys should be circumcised with no anesthetic. That way, they would have lifelong negative associations with their penises and be less inclined to rub one out. In the late middle ages and the Renaissance the vital task of creating traumatic penis experiences had been left to the Catholic clergy, but apparently by the 1800s the medical establishment had to step in and take over for the waning papists.

(Life tip: "Waning papist" is an awesome euphemism for impotency. Try using it on your next date! You know, after the inevitable "I don't understand... This has never happened to me before." Yeah, right. Tell that to your 10th Pabst Blue Ribbon, Skeeter.)

Anyway, I don't know what the prevailing medical opinion is, but my own extensive lab work shows that circumcision doesn't have much of a dampening effect on masturbation. (Or if it does, thank God I was circumcised, or I would have died of exhaustion/cock-trauma during the summer between 9th and 10th grade). If you actually want an effective medical procedure to curb masturbation, try removing the kid's hands.

You know, that probably isn't enough - a lot of guys would just give themselves a stump-job. Better to take the arm off at the shoulder.

And the leg off at the knee. Just to be safe.

The thing is - who gives a fuck? Does anyone really care about masturbation anymore? Show me a person who doesn't masturbate, I'll show you a person who has made some horrifying romantic compromises.

I could give you dozens of reasons why I'm not comfortable with it. I could bore you with the story of when I took a long hike in wet swimtrunks and flayed the tip of my circumcised jimmy so raw that I had to prop a twig in my wasteband to hold the material away from my battered but proud pantswarrior ("Your name is Toby!" my bathing suit shouted at the little guy, but he raised his head high and gasped "Kunta... Kunta Kente"). But that anecdote might be awkward, so I'll keep it to myself.

So never fear, little Logan. I pledge allegiance to your foreskin, and the united state of your genitals!

The Bradley Method aka "An epidural is like giving crack to your baby"

This post was originally published at http://blog.myspace.com/johnrichter_comedian

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I am, by anyone's standards, a sarcastic little fuck of a man. When I heard that Dick Cheney had shot his friend in the face I laughed, out loud, for 2 minutes straight. When I was 11, my favorite game was to wait until my nanny was screaming at me, and then to laugh in her face as loudly as I could, until I ran out of air, at which point I would fall to the floor, clutching my gut, and croaking "kill me! please, kill me!" (This is how JFK handled most political crises.)

But I was resolved to take our baby's arrival seriously. When we went to baby classes, I was the first to wear the fake pregnant tits-and-tummy-filled-with-lead-shot vest. I leapt to the center of the floor when the instructor asked us to practice our pelvic thrust exercise, and I retreated with dignity when I realized, several minutes later, that only women were supposed to practice this particular activity.

"Whatev'!" I said, saving the spare letters for an emergency. "It's all good!" (I learned to talk all hip like that from American Idol interviews.)

I don't mind being a big fat jackassy puss, after all. After you've tongue-kissed every male actor in town (including a certain temporarily non-gay Christian youth minister) in public because you're hoping for the 1 in 20 probability that your wife will spin the bottle and kiss Jess Clare and thus unlock heretofore unknown stores of bicurious lustiness that will culminate in a hot and heavy MFF situation - well, at that point you're just kidding yourself with any attempt at dignity.

Anyway, despite this commitment to an earnest process and utter lack of shame, I have begun to feel like our birthing class may not be totally valuable. I first got this feeling when we began doing vocabulary exercises. The teacher says "Open your workbooks to page 23", so we do, and there's a page full of vocabulary terms and their definitions. The teacher then proceeds to go down the list of words and say, "Okay, does anyone know the definition of anus?"

And nobody answers, because 1) of course we know the definition of anus (although I guess you could argue that if we had a little more hands-on familiarity, we might not have ended up in this mess), but mainly 2) because the definition is written on the page right the fuck in front of us. So nobody answers, and after a few minutes the teacher says "Come on guys, someone must know this one!" until someone reads, out loud, the definition that we've all been reading silently for the last 8 minutes.

This week, we did a "fill-in-the-blanks" exercise where the blanks were so open ended there was no way to correctly answer most of them. Almost everyone gave perfectly reasonable answers, but they didn't match the ones in the book, so we each got to play fun one-on-one mind-reading games with the instructor while 10 other pregnant women pretended to be paying attention, but were actually desperately concentrating on timing their next inevitable fart to coincide with a loud door-slam or scraping chair noise.

I grew restive. Here are some of my real answers to the real questions on the "What Birth Coaches Should Say" worksheet:

First Stage Labor

3. "The stronger the contraction, the more you complain ".

4. "You're doing a hand job!"

7. "Isn't my wife doing a Puerto Rican behind my back !"

8. "Picture your cervix gaping like a barn ."

9. "The discomfort in your back means that the baby is   moving 28 million dollars worth of smuggled hashish through your birth canal every 36 hours - that's why we need to build a wall across the Mexican border . "

13. "I love Nascar ".

Second Stage Labor

17. "Push to the point of embolism ."

20. "I can see the hypocrisy of our medical establishment !"

22. "Completely squeeze your head between dem nurse titties and recoup your energy."

25. "I own you... and our baby!"

So my point is, it was edifying. We also spent an hour talking about how the use of analgesics or epidurals during a birth is morally equivalent to strapping your newborn to the hood of your car while forcing him to do a beerbong full of warm Keystone and meth. The cool thing about that is everyone in the class wants to have a drug-free, natural birth; hence our enrollment in this natural childbirth class (see how that works?). But after the scare-tactics and misinformation, I kinda feel like having a drugged delivery out of spite. We decided to compromise: Heather will smoke a joint during the birth, but it'll be one of those fake chocolate joints, so it's okay.

The worst part is that while this was dragging on, I missed the faaabuloooous television debut of the very Christian Soldier I referenced above in a homosexual context. This was a shame, because I really wanted to see his show, AND because he gave out fake dolphin nostrums at his party. I was really looking forward to pretending to forget the real name of the nostrum and mistakenly calling it a priapism all night long.

But, instead, nothing! Foiled again! Damn you Doctor Bradley!