On Babies, Boats, and Bicycles

For those who missed it, about a year ago I wrote this blog post.  It's pretty funny, I recommend it.  For the TL;DR version, it's about why cruising on a sail boat is like having a baby.  Obviously, at the time I'd done neither.  Now, I've done both in less than a year.  On May 11 it will be one year to the day since the two of us set off on our sailing adventure.  Three of us came home 14 weeks later.

I'd intended to write a funny follow up to the aforementioned blogpost, but trying to wrap the experiences of the last year into a few pithy paragraphs is going to be impossible.  Still, I'll give it a go.

In said blogpost I made a joke about how having an infant is sort of like cruising, because you're sleeping in shifts, and you never see each other, and you're pretty much just shoveling whatever food is closest at hand into your mouth while you set the autopilot/the baby sleeps.  This, I can confirm, is quite accurate.  Or, at least, it was accurate before Cody went back to work.  Now that he has to get up early and support us, I try to let him sleep through the night (but not on the weekend!  haha!).  So, it's actually more like when we'd sail through the night in rough weather, when I was too much of a weenie to stay at the helm and he'd have to pull all nighters, except with our roles reversed.  I remember one night when he tacked back and forth into a 25 knot headwind and 6 foot chop while I slept in the v-berth.  Occasionally we'd drop off a wave and I'd look out to see if he was still on board, then fall back asleep.  I'll get up to feed or change the baby, and Cody will stir and mutter something like, "wanmetachange?" which I think is him asking me if I want him to change a diaper, before falling back asleep.

As far as the pregnancy goes, well, not much about it was like preparing the boat for our trip.  Well, now, maybe that's not the case.  Truth be told, I didn't enjoy being pregnant much.  There were cool things about it, like when he kicked, but mostly I just felt physically lousy.  The first 18 weeks or so it was nausea, then there were a couple weeks with no gastrointestinal complaints, then it was gnarly heartburn for the duration.  I thought maybe the nausea would be like seasickness, or something like that.  Difference is that you can just take drugs on the boat!  People just keep offering you ginger when you have morning sickness.  Stop it.  Stop offering ginger.  It totally did nothing at all.

Working on the boat was, similarly, not my favorite.  It was springtime, and rather than spending hours on the trails we were in a dark warehouse sanding and painting and epoxying.  Every damn weekend.  But the true similarity is in how I feel about the process with the benefit of hindsight.  Which is to say that if I could do it again I would, and not just for the end result.  Rather, the process is part of the adventure, even if it doesn't feel like it at the time.  And when adventures come to an end I always feel nostalgic to live them again.  But to conclude that anything has come to an end is untrue, because just as we'll be back on the water this summer, our adventures with our little guy are just beginning.

Now, labor.  I have to admit, I felt pretty confident going into labor.  I figured I'd just treat it like some gnarly 24 hour bike race, and contractions would be like intervals, and yada yada yada.  No.  Just stop. That's wrong.

There is literally nothing that compares to the physical misery of labor.  People should just stop trying to describe it, because you can't.  And you're stuck in it.  It's the most committed to something I've ever been in my life, but only because there was no way out of it.  If there were I'd probably have taken it.  At one point I was trying to be really pathetic so Cody or the midwife would offer me drugs, but they just told me to breathe.  Breathing did literally nothing.  Counterpressure did literally nothing.  Here's the only analogy I can come up with that conveys even a modicum of how I felt:  it was like crossing the gulf stream to the Bahamas, when a gnarly gail blows out of the north.  Now, since the gulf stream runs south to north, a strong north wind causes it to blow up into big chop and can produce gnarly conditions.  It's not advisable to cross at these times.   Finding myself halfway through labor was like getting halfway across the gulf stream only to have that cold north wind blow through.  There's no turning back, there's nothing to be done but persevere.  No one can help you, you just have to suck it up and keep moving.

And if you make it through?  You're greeted either by that amazing bluegreen water, or, you know, your son.  And it's unreal, and amazing, and you can't believe you survived but you're oh so happy that you did.  And you're stronger, and better, and life is perfect.

Now what?  Well, we're settling into our newest adventure comfortably.  Cody's gotten to go mountain biking a few times, and I'm hoping to be back out there in another week or so.  The boat probably won't be in the water until the end of May, but that's OK, because Atlas has to be 9 lbs to fit into his lifejacket, and he's still under 8.  But we're super excited to get out sailing again and are hoping to do a weeklong family cruise northward later in the summer.  Everything is more fun with more love.