Preparing for the birth of your first child is a lot like preparing yourself for your first trip to prison. You can read every book in the library, talk to experts, and lube up the necessary body parts, but once the lights go out and you’re left alone in a room with a scary, slimy and pissed off mutant-looking creature with the prison guard, I mean nurse nowhere to be found, you realize that all your preparation was for naught.

There aren’t strong enough words to emotionally express that moment of joy, shock, and love when your baby first pops his head out into this bright world, so I won’t waste anyone’s time pretending to be able to write it on paper;  ahem, screen. If at some point in this blog’s life a word surfaces that encompasses all five-hundred emotions one feels at that exact moment, I will post it. Until then we’ll just call it “the moment.”

My wife and I recently experienced “the moment,” when we met our baby boy for the first time. In a flash, he was in front of our faces, cunningly appearing from an origin unknown just over the top of a blue sheet.

He was dark.

He was slimy.

He was fat.

He was pissed.

He took on the appearance of the resulting offspring if a sumo wrestler and a dungeness crab were to reproduce; His stolid body was merely a landscape of fat rolls, and his legs and arms were moving like a crab out of water. Under typical circumstances any fisherman would’ve tossed him back and gone crying to mommy.

That’s our baby? I thought as he was thrust towards us like a game of hot potato gone terribly wrong.

The little bundle of joy was 13 days past his allotted due date.

Prior, the due date had been etched in stone by a team of medical professionals trained at the most prestigious medical school by professors regarded as the most respected leaders in their fiel- ok, so it was chosen by an app. And why wouldn’t it? I mean, apps tell us where to eat lunch, what the weather will be, when the next bus is coming, etc. so why shouldn’t it predict when a human will arrive on the earth?

After my wife inputted extremely complicated algorithms like her name, the name of our cat, her favorite color, and the capitol of New Zealand, the app calculated with forty-one percent accuracy a due date of June 8^th. She then went to the Doctor and upon hearing this earth-shattering hypothesis as if it was the missing evidence in the Jimmy Hoffa disappearance, or the Hardy Boy’s Secret at the Old Mill finally revealed she agreed futilely, “yeah I think that sounds about right. That will now officially be your due date and we’ll only allow you to go 10 days past that, no matter what. Oh, and that’ll be $40.”

When I go to Chipotle they ask me more life-serious questions to determine the contents of my burrito than this.

If the rest of life was run with this same strategy you would’ve had soldiers showing up on D-Day after the war had ended.

“So let me get this straight general, you found a shell, a whale tooth, and a toboggan on the beach and because of this you want us to bomb the Germans on September 16^th and not June 6th?”

“Yeah I think that sounds about right, I mean definitely maybe, yes. It has to be that. I’m certain of it. You have to do it then, I will not stray from that date. Next I’m going to balance a pig on my head while reciting the alphabet backwards and then I’ll tell you the weather with absolute certainty.”

Despite the unqualified prediction (no offense sweetie) ultimately created by a computer programmer who probably designed this app in his mom’s basement and has never even had sex, let alone birthed a newborn, the doctor would not allow us to go more than 10 days past this date. They held onto this day and based life-threatening medical decisions off of it despite it holding no validity whatsoever.

Makes perfect sense.

And wouldn’t you know it? June 8^th came and went without any sign of a baby. So did June 11^th. And June 15^th. And June 17^th. So on June 19^th the inducement started to retrieve a baby who my wife through an app mind you predicted would arrive 11 days earlier.

Finally on June 21^st, and like a game of hide and go seek game gone terribly wrong, and after a day and a half of inducement followed by a c-section, Logan James McDevitt finally came out wherever he was, a healthy, vibrant baby boy. Luckily, we were blessed to have an amazing hospital staff who were simply awesome regardless of the due date prognostication hilarity.

As we were leaving the hospital we asked when we should know when the proper times were to breastfeed him to ensure we were getting it correct.

“Oh there’s an app for that,” a nurse quickly responded as she was filling out a three-page questionnaire for her lunch order.

And now to the “pints” portion of this blog because every parent needs a beer break:

What’s in Steve’s fridge at the moment?

Sierra Nevada Torpedo IPA.

Style: American IPA (India Pale Ale)

ABV%: 7%

Most Sierra Nevada beers have that piney aroma flavor which can somewhat be simulated by gnawing on the branches of nearby trees, however while that awesome flavor is what makes their beers great, it also is present in each batch of beer they put out,

This masterpiece is different. It is the perfect blend of Sierra Nevada goodness and euphoric IPA hoppy-bliss, giving it its own identity. Low bitterness, right amount of that sweet IPA flavor, and even has that piney, somewhat citrus overtone as well. All this flavor with a 7% ABV all in one bottle? Dangerous yet, so good. Well done.

Not the easiest to get your hands on, but can definitely find it at Whole Foods, BevMo, and sometimes Safeway and other supermarkets.

Goes down the smoothest after a stressful blowout diaper change……