June 9th - Sylvi's revenge

So, it appears the public apology from my earlier post either wasn't sincere enough or wasn't public enough. The Stomach Virus Gods paid a visit to 19 Minutes World Headquarters late Thursday night, a good four days after Sylvi, our one-year old, dealt with them. Actually, the worst of it hit the 19 Minutes staff (well, me, anyway) at 6:06 Friday morning, otherwise known as exactly the same time I was scheduled to be doing a newscast on the air. Only quick action saved me from delivering the first-ever radio newscast in technicolor. (The quick action? Skip the newscast, run to the bathroom.)

This was actually the second consecutive June 9-10 period that Sylvi decided to exact her own brand of health issues on us. Last year at this time, after hanging out for almost eight months in an otherwise normal pregnancy, she decided that, hey, why not show up five weeks early?

She was five weeks early, meaning we were ready, but we weren't really ready. Meaning, we had just -- that night -- finished putting all the "Here's how to make your stay at the Women's and Infants Center a pleasant one" literature in a file folder, but we hadn't actually read it. Meaning, we had just -- that night -- put together the Diaper Champ diaper disposal system, but we weren't really prepared to use it.

Meaning, we went to Dairy Queen on a pregnancy-fueled craving for a banana shake, and came back with me grousing about DQ's broken chocolate ice cream machine -- until, one step into the door, my wife's water broke, which managed to put the chocolate ice cream thing into at least temporary perspective.

We checked in with her obstetrician, who assured us we had plenty of time to get to the hospital, especially since we live two blocks away. That was good because it gave me plenty of time to subsequently walk around in frantic little circles as I attempted to remember what we'd need to pack. That was also good because it gave us time to drive to my office first, to pick up the digital camera that was inexplicably sitting on my desk. This of course meant that the drive to the hospital, which should have taken 35 seconds, took 20 minutes instead.

But everything went fine. My wife's labor lasted about 20 hours, but the delivery itself took around 3 minutes, short enough that we didn't even have time to turn off the baseball game in the delivery room, and short enough that my wife had to yell at me and the delivery nurse, "IS SOMEONE GOING TO COUNT FOR ME?" as she pushed, since we were preoccupied with noticing that, hey, the head's coming out. Or maybe we were preoccupied with the baseball game. I'm not sure. [Note to my wife: I'm kidding. I really wasn't preoccupied by the Diamondbacks-Orioles game, which Arizona rallied in the last couple innings to win, 3-0, behind a home run by Steve Finley and a stellar pitching performance by Casey Fossum.]

Sylvi spent 12 days in the Special Care Nursery at the hospital, but her stay was a pretty pleasant one compared to what one might see on the Discovery Health network. And she continues to be far cuter than any child of mine has a right to be, even when she discovers new tricks, like grinding her front teeth, or rolling over on her changing pad just as we're removing a poopie diaper.

And as it turns out, had we not had her my wife would have never known that delivering a baby is actually more fun than the stomach flu.

Happy birthday, Sylvi. [And hey, the Diamondbacks won yesterday, too.]