Ten Items of Amazement on the Birth of My 5th Grandchild

A woman with two artificial heart valves and a pace maker can have a baby but it takes a village of medical professionals trained to just call a pregnancy ‘high risk’ and not get too gory about the details.

A situation can be extremely not good but somehow right itself given a combination of having no choice but to persevere and saying positive things one doesn’t believe until one does.

It’s very satisfying to pass on to the next generation the adage: Prepare for the worst and hope for the best.

Nurses who take care of mothers and their babies really hold the future in their hands; the good ones send moms on their way with sharpened skates and a river of smooth ice, the bad ones we have erased from memory.

Two people of normal intelligence can install a child safety seat in their truck but it will take an hour and many unnerving re-readings of pages studded with threats that if you don’t do X, Y, or Z right, YOUR CHILD MAY SUFFER SERIOUS INJURY OR DEATH.

The perfection of a newborn baby is unparalleled by any other wonder of the world.

This breast pump business is really over the top.

Because of my age, I’m unlikely to know this baby when she is an adult but that is okay because I’ve lost enthusiasm for investment in the future, preferring instead to hold a baby while eating lasagna for dinner.

In less than a week, my daughter has developed a level of executive function and profound gentleness that I perhaps hadn’t expected and it might have been because I didn’t know her as well as I thought I did.

There is a baby in the house for the first time in fifteen years so there is swaddling going on and much talk about the color of poop and we all go to bed early because we’re exhausted by the surprise of it all.