{"id":46853,"date":"2020-03-17T22:59:43","date_gmt":"2020-03-18T02:59:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=46853"},"modified":"2020-08-12T22:59:53","modified_gmt":"2020-08-13T02:59:53","slug":"new-father-brogging-002","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=46853","title":{"rendered":"New Father Brogging, #002"},"content":{"rendered":"

Despite my sporadic writing habits leading up to the birth of my child, I ironically seem to be finding more time to sit down and write now that she\u2019s come into the world.\u00a0 Mostly on account of the fact that as she was five weeks early, she\u2019s unfortunately not home yet, and is still at the NICU, where her frail little preemie body is playing catchup under the safe and watchful eyes of medical professionals.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ultimately, mythical wife and I both know that she\u2019s exactly where she needs to be in her current state, and we are eternally grateful to the kind and caring staff of the hospital that has been definitely providing excellent care for our daughter.\u00a0 However, when the days are over, the reality is that she is still not home with us, and it\u2019s an agonizing struggle at the end of each night when the time comes for us to part ways with our daughter, while she stays in the NICU while we leave<\/em> her and head back to our house, empty of human children.<\/span><\/p>\n

She was born 12 days ago, but it doesn\u2019t really quite feel like we\u2019re parents just yet, as when the time comes in which we go to bed, it\u2019s like we\u2019re a married couple with no children, since there\u2019s no kid to put to sleep and marvel over the fact that it\u2019s a life that we created together.<\/span><\/p>\n

We spend around 6-8 hours a day in the NICU with our kid, but until the day she comes home, there really is something kind of missing from the whole experience of having a child.\u00a0 We feel like parents when we get to change her diapers, feed her, and rock her to sleep, but the wholesome feelings always end when the realization hits that we need to go home to rest and take care of ourselves, so we have the energy and capacity to do it all over again the following day.<\/span><\/p>\n

Our daughter\u2019s showing progress on a daily basis, but the fact of the matter is that it\u2019s still an indeterminate amount of time before she\u2019s given the green light to come home.\u00a0 Her last real hurdle is to continue to demonstrate the ability to eat more and out of a bottle, more consistently, and subsequently gain weight.\u00a0 Every day where she drains an entire bottle is akin to a playoff win, but behind the scenes we don\u2019t know if we\u2019re in the lightning-quick MLB playoffs, or if we\u2019re in the endless vortex known as the NBA\u2019s playoffs.<\/span><\/p>\n

Back home, I\u2019ve actually accomplished a lot of the tasks around the house that mythical wife and I agreed needed to get done before the arrival of our kid, because once she got here, we know they probably won\u2019t be gotten to.\u00a0 I\u2019ve painted entire sections of our house, I\u2019ve stained the entire fence around the house.\u00a0 I\u2019ve swapped out old outlets and switches for new, tamper-proof versions of them for future kid safety.\u00a0 I\u2019ve unboxed strollers and learned how to install car seats into both mine and mythical wife\u2019s cars.\u00a0 Just about every piece of furniture for our baby\u2019s nursery is assembled and the room just about finished.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019d wager to guess that most parents who ever have to go through the experience of their children going into the NICU go through the same kind of anxieties and frustration that mythical wife and I are going through.\u00a0 I know there are many out there who have it way worse than we do in terms of state of the baby upon arrival or how little or long they stay in the NICU, but when the day is over, we\u2019re all in the same state of where we as parents go home, while our children remain behind, which is a shitty feeling no matter how you look at it.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Suffice to say, daily living has been really something over the last few weeks.\u00a0 Despite the fact that even staying in the hospital with mythical wife after the birth of our child, I didn\u2019t forget to do my daily 100 push-ups, even doing them on the hospital floor each night we were there.\u00a0 I even followed through with participating in some fun runs that I had signed up for, thinking I\u2019d still be safe in terms of not conflicting with any early-term births, but life has a way of playing jokes on us sometimes; but because the theme of these runs were cheating daylight savings, they were literally at 1:00 am and 8:00 am, and because I was pretty much already hopped up on adrenaline and funky sleeping due to mythical wife\u2019s pumping schedule, I went ahead and did both of them, even notching my first ever age-group award, placing 3rd in my old motherfuckers age bracket.<\/span><\/p>\n

But then out of the blue, I forgot to do my push-ups on one night, and just like that, the streak was over.\u00a0 I made it 60 consecutive days of doing 100 push-ups, before I forgot like an idiot and brought my hope to go like a full 100 or even 366 days in a row screeching to a halt.\u00a0 It was on Friday the 13th too, so if there were ever a more appropriate day for some bad luck memory to take place, it couldn\u2019t have happened at a more fitting time.<\/span><\/p>\n

Speaking of Friday the 13th, it was on this particular day in which mythical wife and I went to a grocery store to not necessarily stock up like the masses were doing, but to essentially fortify our pantry and freezer with some things that might come in handy, if the world were really to go apocalyptic and we didn\u2019t want to get caught with our pants completely down.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s like we heard all the stories and the memes about insane Americans going overboard with doomsday prepping, but it was still a sight to behold ourselves, when we rolled into a local grocer at 11 pm, only to find certain shelves of the store completely wiped the fuck out.\u00a0 Pasta was all gone, bread was completely wiped out, and just about all of the fresh meat in the stores were cleaned out completely.\u00a0 Naturally the toilet paper and paper towels were all gone too.\u00a0 I had a list of things that I had hoped to get, and when we left the store, almost nothing was actually crossed out.<\/span><\/p>\n

Coronavirus has definitely been running roughshod throughout \u2018Murica. Aside from all sorts of sporting leagues, concerts, and events of all sorts of sizes all getting cancelled or postponed, it\u2019s hitting just about every aspect of normal life, most notably when it comes to small businesses and the restaurant industry.\u00a0 \u201cSocial distancing<\/em>\u201d has become the phrase of the year, as everyone is encouraged to stay at home and away from groups of people, with hopes of minimizing the spread.<\/span><\/p>\n

Among the most drastic of things that have happened on account of coronavirus, my company actually shut the building down, and despite years of stating that my team of graphic designers couldn\u2019t work from home on account of large image formats and file sizes, it turns out that we all really can, due to the constant advancing of personal high speed internet speeds.\u00a0 It\u2019s funny how necessity exposes a lot of bullshit within individual companies as well as all across America as a whole, what with how many arbitrary rules and laws seem to be bending left and right because of all the shutdowns and vacancies are forcing them to be re-evaluated to how much bullshit and unnecessary so many of them are.<\/span><\/p>\n

Speaking of companies, typically I don\u2019t talk about whenever I seek out a new job, because I\u2019m superstitious and I don\u2019t want to feel like I\u2019m jinxing myself talking about it, but I actually applied to a place a few weeks ago, and things went as well as to get a phone interview, as well as an in-person interview.\u00a0 I actually felt optimistic that I could\u2019ve gotten this job, which would have been a triple-win in the sense that it would have been a title upgrade, pay upgrade, as well as one massive game-changing benefit, but then everything kind of went dark.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I never got a callback, which I thought I was at least entitled to, since I had done an in-person interview, but I was holding hope that everything on their end was kind of frozen on account of current events and what they do as a business.\u00a0 I told myself that as long as the job listing remained on their careers site, as well as on LinkedIn, I had a chance.\u00a0 But recently the position vanished from the company\u2019s site; it\u2019s still up on LinkedIn, but the fact that it\u2019s gone from the source felt a little like a punch in the gut that the dream is over.\u00a0 It sucks, because I actually really wanted this job for more than just get me the fuck out of my current job <\/em>reasons, but it\u2019s not looking too positive for me at this point, and I\u2019m disappointed that I didn\u2019t even get a callback to confirm what I\u2019m already feeling, which has me feeling dejected and disappointed.<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s just it though, I\u2019m often times in a weird state of mind these days, because I\u2019m very satisfied with life when I\u2019m spending time with my daughter, but then I\u2019m feeling sad and anxious when I leave her at the NICU.\u00a0 I find it hard to concentrate and focus at times, and I\u2019m often sleeping amounts that say that I may be going through a little bit of depression at the current.\u00a0 Even when I\u2019m at home, despite the fact that I have yet to have any dad-like responsibilities, I don\u2019t really do any of the things that typically bring me enjoyment, like watching wrestling or seeking out something good to watch on Netflix or Plex.<\/span><\/p>\n

I guess I should feel fortunate that the desire to write has yet to leave me, and it\u2019s probably because there\u2019s a part of my psyche that sees something productive and futuristically potentially reflective if I put my thoughts and feelings down on writing at this current state, and when the day is over, I probably should prioritize writing over wasting my time on too much bullshit mindless television watching.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Despite my sporadic writing habits leading up to the birth of my child, I ironically seem to be finding more time to sit down and write now that she\u2019s come into the world.\u00a0 Mostly on account of the fact that as she was five weeks early, she\u2019s unfortunately not home yet, and is still at … Continue reading New Father Brogging, #002<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[176,194,193,121,37,192,133,32],"class_list":["post-46853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-murica","tag-coronavirus","tag-dad","tag-homeownership","tag-job","tag-kids","tag-old-man","tag-running"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46853"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46855,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46853\/revisions\/46855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}