I saw someone talking about this on Tumblr and it linked to…

Enjoy every moment you can with her. It’s a cliché but time does go so fast when they are growing up. One minute they are like your little one and the next minute they are on their gap year. Trust me, it’s just happened to us here in Swiss expat towers, we just don’t know where 18 years have gone.
Oh yes… be prepared for your bank account to be permanently empty from now on.

Second, I agree with the others who question your sanity. I mean you knew when the little one was going to arrive, right? At least, as we say in the US, you had a ballpark idea. So how did you overlook this little detail in scheduling the move.

Third, ditto for the work project. To paraphrase the punchline of an old joke, did you at least say to your boss: “Around late October to early November, on me you shouldn’t depend.”

Fourth, even if you didn’t actually say that to your boss in advance, what kind of [insert vulgarism for penis here]s do you work for? No one at you job had the common sense and common decency to say that someone else would fillin for you that day, or that the matter could wait a day or two? I assume your work does not prevent an imminent Martian invasion or zombie outbreak, so that delay would mean the end of humanity.

As for hospitals: Obama has every reason NOT to follow your advice regarding meals. Shorter stays in hospitals means lower healthcare costs. At the tail end of a hospital stay, you feel better and have gotten used to cable in bed and food brought to you 3 times a day, plus juice two more times. If the food were actually tolerable, you’d be tempted to linger.

As to hospital billing, I have an apropos story although it happend a while ago.

My wife and I arrived at the hospital for my daughter’s birth at 11 PM. Obviously, my wife did not pass GO, did not collect $200, but went straight to the delivery room. With rather startling speed, my daughter left her original accomodations 2 hours later, 1 AM the next day (no C-section, no drugs).

My wife was in her hospital room at around 3 AM.

Leaving aside that the daily bill for the telephone was outrageous since everyone had paid for it since its installation so its amortized cost was something in the negative thousands, they actually tried to charge me for the phone FROM THE MINUTE WE CAME TO THE HOSPITAL. I finally convinced them that since my wife had not been in a hospital bed with access to a phone for that first hour of the first “day” the charge for that “day’s” phone rental should be taken off the bill. If they hadn’t I think my behavior would have resulted in my spending the first day of my daughter’s life outside of the hospital in a jail cell.

And a special congratulations to your wife for putting up with you!

I’m sorry about the hospital visit, which must have been horrendous – even though you pass it off in a couple of paras.

My midwife, when she was leaving at the end of the final visit (you get home visits from the community midwife for 10 days after the birth in the UK) always signed off with “Enjoy your baby”, which is excellent advice to new parents.