Try, Mister.

girl i'm in love with you baby
and i want you to know
that i'm hooked on your body
and i'm trying to be yours


The Dream - Rockin' That Sh*t

i'm burning up with a fever as i type this, but i still have a wild grin on my face anyway. if you see typos, allow. this man is high as a facking kite.

my blog has been dead for months. projects half abandoned, stories unceremoniously left hanging and cobwebs all over the place. yeah, i'm lazy, but i swear, there's been a reason.

transformation usually doesn't shock when it happens over time. usually. this one socked me in the gut. first off, it's trying to cope with the little things over time. sleep patterns. looks. appetite changes. each one's absurdity topping the last till i simply admitted that this wasn't change; this was one hundred per cent replacement.

oh, this isn't about me. i'm trying to tell you about how Sirius became Fiona from Shrek.

*
i could tell you about the waddling, the hurling, the snoring or the scary as a sonovabitch musclepull that woke you up in the night with screams bouncing off the walls. no need. lets skip a bit. i have a lot of ground to cover. if you still haven't figured out where this is headed, you probably haven't had your vitamins this morning.

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Show Some Class
i hate Pre Natal classes.
i hate it more than i hated Marriage Counselling - and i hated those something fierce. Pre Natal was annoying on so many grounds. first it took place in a hospital. bad. second, pregnant women always look so morose and temperamental. yeah we know you didnt do this to yourselves but COME ON! you enjoyed it too!

third. the waiting. interminable. it's like the world hit pause.
fourth and final reason?
those videos.
those goddamned, morale draining hypnotic horror videos.
by my fifth visit i was ready to scream when pregnancy for dummies came on. i just wanted to curl into a ball and sob. Pre Natal, like every other experience thats actually good for you, was not a high point in my life.
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A Google Generation
many years ago, even though she denies it, i taught Sirius the beauty of googling reviews for gadgets before purchase. never read manufacturer reviews, go to forums, paysites and trawl through comments to determine the fidelity of products. hell, once, when we were particularly optimistic, we even googled up some car reviews.

flash forward a few years and i'm seeing googles for breast pumps, collapsible baby baths and moses baskets.
it's all very funny really, once you snap out of the shock. women have a whole community online where they share the most...startling things. i learnt more than i had ever wanted to and added new words to my vocabulary. trimester. cervix. fondal.
google became a scary blank slate of possibilities.
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Tales, Tails and Pales
you may not know this. but there are videos of women giving birth on youtube.
between you and i, i blame hollywood. we've grown to believe in lies. water breaks. she has to be rushed to the hospital already in labour, huffing and puffing, she sweats a little, some comical screaming and boom! theres the baby, all cleaned up by God himself and wailing that cute baby cry.
thats what i grew up seeing.
so what. in the name. of sweet baby Jesus. was wrong. with the women on youtube?
screaming. mass hysteria. sweat pouring in buckets. geysers of mysterious bodily fluids exploding once the baby was yanked out.
and dear God, the babies. they looked like aliens. why was there so much BLOOD?
being made to watch those videos, i cursed the movies for their lies. their shameless, hopeless, lies.
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Coincidences Don't Exist 
i had bookmarks, i had subscriptions. i had books that gave helpful info like they were talking to misguided ignorant malefolk. in essence, me.
then, like any self respecting father of this generation, i had apps. iPad apps, Mobile apps, apps that counted down, showed me what to expect and never stopped reminding me that we were in the third trimester, with an expected showing of September 3rd, 2011. (smart cookies reading this can calculate roughly back to the date of ah, inception. chances are you'd come up with a certain vacation...but more on that later)
on saturday the 27th (a few days ago now) she asked that i take her to what we figured would be the last Pre Natal class. now here's the important part. originally, we had registered at this one hospital. pretty far from the house, at the other end of the state. now while they were good and all, i was really bothered about having to drive long distances in the AM (babies and their bad habit of coming at night). Lagos is still Lagos, and i wanted to minimize risk.
so, we registered at a second hospital closer home to act as a back up. she had been doing classes at both on alternating days and the backup hospital seemed very cautious...so she wanted to clarify from our first choice. so, saturday morning, right after environmental, we drove across the state to go ask the nice doctors some questions.
*
in the lobby she met a couple she knew from...somewhere. i was busy reading Punisher Max comics on my iPad to block out the sickly sweet voices of Pregnancy For Dummies. when she saud hi to the lady and mumbled something to me, i didn't really pay attention. but i did notice, in a forgetful kind of way, that her friend's husband had tried to get my attention. i had nodded politely and gone back to my comic book.
life. always funny.
*
as we prepared to see the doctor after a wait, i saw the couple emerging were the couple we had met downstairs. the husband looked at me, seized me by the arm and steered me away.
'sir, i dont know you. but i've seen your wife at ****** hospital when i took my wife there.'
it took me a minute to realize he was talking about our backup hospital. the one close to my house.
his eyes burned with something i couldn't recognize immediately.
'i'm begging you. don't take your wife back to that hospital again. please.'
i shook my head in confusion and started to speak when he interrupted.
'my wife went into labour two weeks ago. those people killed our baby.'
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Blood & Loss
i dont want to talk about their loss too much.
it shook me to the core, standing there hearing him speak. his wife went into labour, the doctor was inexperienced, he could only get the baby half out and had to call another doctor for advice.
from the labour room.
for 45 minutes.
9 months down the drain. all that effort. all that discomfort.
when my wife and i got home a few hours later and i slumped on the bed, all i could think of was how i couldnt even understand how such a thing would affect a couple.
and my wife walked out of the bathroom holding a wad of tissue with blood on it.
and life, as i knew it, changed for ever.
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im sorry.
i thought i would be able to tell this all in one. but this fever has me burning up bad. i have to take something for it... hopefully i'll be back to finish this up.
hang in there.
to be concluded