A Child Being Born = Blogging Delay

It has been six days since my last post which is something of a long gap for me––for the past year I've been pretty good at posting every three or four days, even if I post utterly random shit.  This time, the reason for my six day hiatus was that my partner, after hours of excruciating pain, gave birth to our daughter on Monday night.  As you can imagine, I wasn't really in the frame of mind in the weekend leading up to her active labour and the days following to do very much except concentrate on this event.

Although I generally don't use this blog to talk about my personal life, and don't plan to make a habit of this anytime soon, I felt that I should at least post some news to commemorate baby Samiya's torturous emergence into this cruel capitalist world on Monday, September 17, 2012.  Torturous for her and definitely torturous for my partner, once again confirming that the late Shulamith Firestone was correct when she wondered why it should be necessary for half of the human species to endure torture so that the entire species could prolong its existence.  Since we had a home birth, and I was present at the delivery of Samiya, I have now empirically verified that labour and delivery is terribly painful and am glad for my cis-male privilege in this regard.

Here she is!  Look at that crazy head of hair!

Anyhow, now I have a child with two x chromosomes who, if and when they decide otherwise, will be classified as she by everyone who meets her.  Socialization has already begun with some family members talking about princesses and ballerinas and all that crap that we do not want but will end up getting despite our wishes and will be trying to fight her entire life. (As I said to my mother-in-law, why the hell should we want our child to be a princess when princesses should all be guillotined along with every monarchy?  Yes, Samiya will know about the Terrors!)  This is one of the hazards about having a child with double-x chromosomes in this day and age; hopefully, though, our daughter will grow up to be a little red guard.

Moreover, with some other commie internet comrade dads I am going to blog about red parenting on a blog called Red Diaper Dads that will be launched as soon as the more senior dads get their shit together, contribute, and provide the first post(s) [yes, this is pressure you guys––you know who you are, lol!].  Until then, however, here is Samiya and hopefully all you internet lefties will welcome this representative of the next generation of revolutionaries into the world.