For the last five years, my wife and I have been in sync… we had a lot of the same experiences, similar reactions and always understood where the other one was coming from.

It’s been interesting having a baby because we have had radically different experiences. She had to strain to birth the baby — I applied counter-pressure here and there. My sore arms vanished in a day — she’s still not 100%. I have gotten good sleep every night — she has chosen to breastfeed the baby and thus had fragmented sleep. She is exhausted simply feeding the baby and napping — I’m in charge of everything else around the house.

But all of this has been a very good lesson in understanding and patience. Even though we’ve been together the last few days, we’ve also been apart. I need to remember where she’s coming from. A bit of understanding probably isn’t a bad thing — I hear it occasionally comes in handy with children….

Birth is much more practical than I had ever imagined. Because the birth of a new life is so spiritual and ceremonial, I always had a fantasy that it would be calm, peaceful and meditative. My wife and I would sit under a tree with moonlight shining down on us… and through a zen-ed out bliss, we would finally get to look at our new son (who would instantly smile at us and then use baby-sign-language for milk).

It was quite a surprise to see how messy, raw and intense it was. A wave of guilt washed over me looking back to see the array of towels soaked in blood, amniotic fluid, and pooh we left as we checked out of the birthing center. I have never been surrounded by so much bodily goo before in my entire life!

I also will never forget the look of pain/pure-focused-purpose/exhaustion/determination on my wife’s face as she worked through the final few minutes of labor. It was such a piercing concoction of emotions.

And looking at my child for the first time — it’s the definition of pure happiness. Somehow the whole 8 hour ordeal seemed worthwhile for one moment of holding your son.

My wife and I are supposed to be saving energy for the delivery of our first kid, so this week we:

• Replaced regular light bulbs with CFL.
• Filled preserving jars with static electricity.
• Reduced our Air Conditioning consumption.
• Removed the keys we had put in our electric plugs. (If our electric plugs had keys and paperclips in them already, we thought our kid would be safer since they couldn’t put things in the electric plugs.)
• Flew all of our now-unused keys from kites off of our balcony.
• Walked more and drove less.
• Converted toaster to Coal, so we could use left-over briquettes gathered from the park BBQs