Strolling Amok

O Happy Day!

Actually, no text is needed for this post. The photo says it all, don’t you think?

My oh my, I’m a grandpa again! I don’t run the Strolling Amok blog as a “personal” website along Facebook “what I ate today” lines, but this seems to me to be a worthy exception. My son sired a boy, Bronson, just a few years ago, and now my daughter has produced little Greta Celeste just a few days ago! This kid has been stomping bladders and sciatic nerves for awhile, but never have I seen a woman so enjoy the whole process of pregnancy and birth, the joy of the good far overriding the challenges of the bad. The sense of elation has been palpable.

It was especially notable that she opted for a 100% natural birthing (no pain killers), but little Greta had her own agenda going. Some 6 days late, she had to be induced to avoid undue complications, and my daughter proceeded in an orderly fashion until the baby’s awkward head positioning greatly extended the hard labor (head visible). They let her push for a couple of hours, but with risk entering the picture again past that point, she agreed to a c-section, and that was that. Instant baby. Greta’s 8 pounds, 11 ounces makes me think they should have thrown her back to mature to the 10 pounds, 8 ounces my daughter weighed at her birth, but hey, the clock ran out.

The hours of hard pushing sans painkillers earned her the ample respect of the recovery room nurses and, judging from the decibel levels, little Greta’s lungs and chest muscle tone appear to be in fabulous shape, from what I hear. In my daughter’s words, “I can’t stop staring at her, and can’t believe I’m able to have any of this for five seconds, let alone a lifetime.”

It’s easy for me to take life and living for granted, seeing as how I’ve been at it for awhile now, though I’m going more on ignorance and inertia these days than on youthful determination to knock down the obstacles. And even things like this, pregnancy and birth, can be approached with a blasé air of assumptions. But as you can see, the miracle component is hard to ignore sometimes.

I guess that explains why my usual reluctance to return to the land of potholes and commercial RV parks that cost more than a small apartment, forsaking the frugal beauties of the Great Southwest, is not quite so strong these days. Instead of biding my time while enjoying each of the stops that offer optimum temperatures in the coming months, I’ll be impatient to haul the Defiant back through the thunderstorms and mini-bursts to the crowded, mosquito-infested maelstrom, and enjoy the miracles. The very best part is simply handing them off when you see “that face”, and their diapers need changing! Oh, it’s the best!