Just a few minutes after my son was born, at a time when most fathers are overcome with emotion and most mothers are simply trying to recover from the trauma of childbirth, my wife and I had to deal with one unexpected problem. No, my son didn't have any difficulty breathing or any supernumerary digits. And my wife was recovering well, even if the anesthesiologist took his sweet-ass time administering the epidural. Instead, the unexpected problem was dealing with the aftermath of the birth. I'm not talking about seeing the mound of placenta and other assorted remnants of afterbirth lying on a table a few feet from the bed. What I'm referring to is the pain and anguish of having to listen to the world's worst neonatal nurse spew her unsolicited opinions like a newborn spews his or her most recent meal.
Our nurse was someone incapable of keeping her opinion to herself, no matter how irrelevant and inappropriate it was. She was a loudmouth steeped in scare tactics, more wretched than Nurse Ratchet. I knew things were heading in the wrong direction the first couple of hours after my son was born. Instead of checking up on mother and son at predictable and coordinated intervals, the nurse assigned to our room seemed to relish coming into our room constantly. Each time I managed to even slightly doze off for a minute on what one might charitably call the couch (an L-shaped piece of furniture likely picked up from the trash heap at the thrift store and most definitely designed for adults whose pituitary glands had seriously malfunctioned as it was approximately three feet in length), Nurse Wretched would loudly knock on the door and announce that it was time to check on something.
She was constantly monitoring and checking my wife, my son, fluid levels, and IV drips. Now, I was certainly grateful that my wife and son were being taken care of, but the nurse made sure to check one thing every seventeen minutes instead of perhaps trying to monitor three things on one visit. Though my sporadic slumber makes me wonder if I was just delusional, I'm virtually certain that she also managed to check the leaky faucet in our bathroom, the flickering of the overhead fluorescent bulb, and the minute-by-minute status of our 401k accounts—all on separate visits, of course. After her twelfth visit, I was ready to say something. I'm not usually slow to criticize or condemn, but because it was our first child, I said nothing. I figured that the nurse knew what she was doing, and perhaps letting my son or my wife sleep for more than fifteen uninterrupted minutes would jeopardize their health. I speculated that insomnia might be the preferred way to help mom recover and son flourish. It wasn't doing much for dad, but I figured that I could make it through a day or two before complaining incessantly about how little sleep I had gotten while my wife recovered from the routine and relatively painless experience of childbirth.
At some point, however, I began to feel like I was a part of some novel CIA study on sleep deprivation. The nurse repeatedly came and went, though she did less and less each time she visited. A few dozen times, she just asked if things were ok. I'm not sure if she thought we were too dumb to figure out the complexity of the emergency call button (it did, after all, require one to push it) or if she was genuinely concerned that we might actually be sleeping and felt the need to awaken all of us. I know that there are some who, when pressed by incessant interrogation techniques and sleep deprivation, maintain their cool, but I would have confessed to being the gunman on the grassy knoll if it had meant six minutes of sleep. Little did I know, however, that sleep deprivation was only the first tool wielded by Nurse Wretched.
On one of her myriad visits, the nurse decided to give us her opinion about circumcisions. Apparently ignorant of the fact that my wife is Russian and that most Eastern Europeans don't practice circumcision, she told us that people who didn't get circumcised were dirty. She didn't rely on any studies or other empirical evidence to support her position, instead preferring to rely on the time-honored power of persuasion better known as unsolicited and uninformed personal prejudice.
Naturally, disparaging an entire continent of people wasn't enough for our nurse. She also decided to employ scare tactics. I wasn't sure if her scare tactics were also gleaned from CIA training manuals, but I was an easy mark—a first time dad who didn't have a fucking clue about how to raise kids. It was thus unsurprising that I tried to follow her ludicrous advice when she told me that I shouldn't give my son a pacifier because he would get used to the pacifier. She regaled us with stories about how hard it would be for my son to give it up, and I naturally envisioned my son walking around his college campus, steadfastly refusing to spit out his Superman pacifier.
The first night at home, my son woke up crying uncontrollably. I'm not certain what he was upset about, primarily because he wasn't very helpful in telling me what was wrong. Hell, he didn't even try to mutter anything intelligible between cries. But rather than blame him for his stubborn behavior, I'll move on. While he was crying, my wife and I were trying to console him without his pacifier. As most seasoned parents well know, that approach was about as effective as asking him what was wrong. My mother and my mother-in-law, both of whom were staying with us since we were scared shitless to be alone with this screaming monster, came upstairs to help. They both suggested that we give our son his pacifier, to which we responded that the nurse told us that doing so was a bad idea. I started to tell them about how babies get hooked on pacifiers and some never give them up, but the grandmas just laughed. They both recognized the absurdity of the advice we had received. They insisted that we give him a pacifier, and we eventually relented—only after it appeared that he crying so hard an eyeball was about to pop out. We gave him the pacifier, which he immediately took. He quickly calmed down, his eyeball settled in nicely, and he was asleep in seconds.
I immediately recognized the folly of my way. I had just assumed that a nurse who had dealt with children all her life would dispense worthwhile advice. And I knew that I knew nada about babies or being a dad. What I had failed to recognize, however, is that there is one immutable and indisputable fact of life: there are know-nothing assholes eager to share their ignorance in every profession. It took me awhile to realize that Nurse Wretched was one of those assholes. Blinded by my fear of being a deadbeat dad, I ignored the early warning signs and suppressed my inner cynic. Now on child number two, I know that I would do anything to soothe the suffering of my children. Not only do I freely give my two-month old daughter her pacifier, I've come to rely on my own innate sense of how to parent. I don't need the prejudice and senseless suggestions of Nurse Wretched to know that a handful of mixed nuts is a good substitute for a lost pacifier. And don't worry, I'm careful not to give her really big almonds or cashews since I know from experience with my son that they might lodge in her small windpipe. Thus far, my innate parenting skills have worked well. While she took a bit longer than expected to recover from the rash that the Brazil nuts caused, the mixed nuts have been just as effective as the pacifier I can never seem to find. Unsurprisingly, we all now sleep more soundly after rejecting Nurse Wretched's advice even if I must confess that I occasionally worry that my daughter will be walking around her college campus with a handful of nuts in her mouth—though I'm certain every dad worries about that.
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