Enter the Fourth Trimester

Sounds very Twilight Zone, in a way....

We have one child right now, a two-and-a-half-year-old named Sophie. She's one of the most joyous humans I've ever known, and my wife and I are crazy about her. And now she has a baby brother on the way -- my wife is on the verge of giving birth, literally only days from now. Of course you never know with birthing... it could be today, it could be three weeks from today... but all the signs (several big contractions a day, baby's dropped into the pelvis) are moving in the right direction. Batten down the hatches, clean the house, pack the hospital bag, finish up the last big chunks of code for work, have all the handoff meetings, GET READY!

So soon I'll be vanishing for a little while -- no promises about every-two-weeks -- until we've all gotten the hang of how to juggle two kids, and until Sophie's come to terms with actually having a sibling.

The first three months of a new baby's life are sometimes called the fourth trimester, which really makes sense to me at an intuitive level. The kid's spent his (in our case) whole life in a warm, dark, noisy, gravity-free environment, and suddenly gets dumped out into a cold, bright, (relatively) quiet, and most of all REALLY, REALLY HEAVY environment. Talk about a stunning shock! It's no wonder that really young babies sleep so much -- they can't entirely cope with the world yet.

The first three months are really about easing the tiny one into their new world. Keep it calm, let them rest, let them nurse whenever they want to, be very tender to them. Let them know that this crazy new place they're in isn't entirely all bad. It's a twilight time, a transition time.

That's where we'll be for the next while -- in the fourth trimester. (Or at least, that's really where my wife will be; I'll be half there and half in toddlerville, where everything is explosive and rambunctious and demanding and cuddly.)