Kayaking with Dr. Spock
Eugen Buchanan

Having a child is a rite of passage every bit as much as sticking one's first combat roll. Unfortunately, I was all too aware from friends reaching this milestone that kids and kayaking don't always go hand-in-hand. So with my wife due in February, I did what any expectant father would do: I called a few buddies to go kayaking down in Mexico. A last hurrah of sorts, I figured, before paddling gave way to parenting.

Timing, of course, was still an issue. I would return, I told my well-endowed wife, on Jan. 10-in plenty of time should she experience a premature runoff. Hall pass granted, I then pitched a few paddling friends on the last hurrah angle and booked reservations with Agua Azul Adventures in the heart of Mexico's aptly named Sierra Madre. And the trip wasn't entirely self-serving; to help justify the time away from wife and zygote, I vowed to not just run waterfalls but also to polish up on the nuances of parenthood.

To help with the latter, I enlisted the help of the renowned Dr. Spock and his timeless Baby and Child Care book. If anything could help prepare me for fatherhood as much as a boating trip to Mexico, this was it. Bringing it along meant exposing my jugular to my boating buddies, but I was willing to risk jeers from my peers if it meant becoming a better father.

Like my wife disguising her pregnancy with maternity clothes, I tried my best to hide the book on the plane, stuffing it inside an in-flight magazine to serve as a shield. Inevitably, I was discovered. "Hey! Look who brought a baby book!" said my rowmate Dave when he glimpsed the cover. "I bet you only get 10 pages read the whole trip."

Soon my remaining friends joined in; the heckling had begun and we hadn't even touched ground. Vowing to prove my detractors wrong, I ignored their remarks and attempted to digest the good doctor's advice. My reading plan, I quickly learned, was ambitious-almost as ambitious as our plan to paddle six of the next seven days. It would take a few shuttle break-downs to get through the book's 939 pages. But I absolved to put my head down and punch through it-just like powering through a hydraulic.

Like negotiating a long rapid, it didn't take long to get disoriented-especially when I turned to the 14-page-long Table of Contents. Subheads such as "The Parents' Part," "Common Behavior Problems" and "First Year Feeding" soon had my head swirling as if I were upside-down in a whirlpool. But then I saw it, the first Spockism I could relate to: "Many fathers feel they're being called on to give up all their freedom and former pleasures. Others forget their hobbies and interests. Even if they do occasionally sneak off, they feel too guilty to get full enjoyment." Is that the way I would feel at the brink of my first waterfall? Before I had time to answer, my reverie was interrupted. Sitting next to me, Dave broke out a battered copy of Tom Robey's A Gringo's Guide to Mexican Whitewater, dangling it like a carrot in front of a horse. I put Dr. Spock away.

After changing planes in Houston, I gave the doctor another chance. Once again his words struck home: "For too long fathers have gotten away with the clever ruse that they lacked the intelligence, manual dexterity and visual motor-skills to change a smelly diaper." What better way to enhance one's intelligence, manual dexterity and visual motor-skills, I reasoned, than by paddling? I made a note to apply the skills I learned on this trip to my baby's bottom back home.

After taking a bus to Ciudad Valles, a few miles from our basecamp on the Rio Micos, we pacified ourselves by sucking down a few Coronas while waiting for our pick-up. We used the time to meet the rest of the clients, getting to know one another like couples in the Lamaze class my wife and I had just finished back home. This, however, was a markedly rougher crowd. When I used my limited Spanish to say "I am happy," Jeff, a return client from Washington, saw the opening and pounced. "Yeah, well you better enjoy it," he chided. "Your life's over." Heckle session round two had begun. Naturally, I countered. "How do you know?" I asked. "Do you have kids?" His response put an end to the subject. "Nope," he replied. "I had a vasectomy when I was 20."

At camp we settled around a fire with another pacifying round of Coronas, and I took the time to assess what I was up against. The respective kid-factors of my cohorts didn't look promising. Homer, my cousin from Salida, Colo., was the only one with child. The rest were staunch birth control boaters: John: kidless; Jeff: kidless for life; Dave: kidless, wifeless and dogless; 21-year-old Annie: still a kid; Mike and Dion: married seven years, no kids. I wasn't going to find much sympathy from this crew.

Retiring to my palapa, I sought advice from the venerable doctor, glancing through such subheads as "The Reluctant Weaner," "The Important Sucking Instinct," and "Breast Engorgement Due to Plugged Ducts." As I read, I noticed baby reminders everywhere. Outside, the lapping of the river took on the metronome of a wind-up baby swing. Above, mosquito netting hung down like a mobile. And in the cot next to me, John's raspy breathing painted a future of having to share a room with another body. The reminders continued as I awoke to parrots squawking the next morning. "Better get used to it," said John, unable to resist an early morning jab. "Soon that'll be your baby."

After breakfast, we chose from a line of kayaks in a rack, pointing fingers like fathers in a nursery. The selection process evoked a not-too-flattering image of my wife. Eight months into it, she was beginning to look a lot like Perception's Mr. Clean-skinny on the ends and rather bulbous in the middle, like the snake who swallowed an elephant in The Little Prince. Pushing the image aside, I piled into the shuttle rig with the rest of the group and headed for the Micos, which means "monkey." "You know...those cute, small cuddly things," said Dave from the backseat. "Like a baby with hair."

The water at the put-in was baby-bottle warm. "Might want to test it by slapping some on your arm," said John. Dave threw the next punch, handing me a tube of Water Babies sunscreen. My only escape lay in the river. Cinching my PFD as tight as a Snuggly, I paddled off the first drop, severing my umbilical cord from the eddy above. As soon as I landed I wished I hadn't snipped it so soon. I also yearned for some of my wife's belly-the extra forward weight might have kept me from a flat landing.

Like a toddler taking a few stove touches to learn the word "hot," we ran the drop again and again, even after experiencing less than perfect lines. Child psychologist Jean Piaget calls the first two years of development the "sensori-motor period, where infants learn by doing..." We too were learning by doing. When someone landed flat, everyone else adjusted their behavior by leaning forward. When someone landed too far forward, everyone else leaned back. It was operant conditioning at its finest, and if my newborn was capable of learning half as quickly, she would be in fine shape.

On the paddle out at the end of the day, we ran into another group from Colorado, here to film a video. Their ringleader quickly explained why producer Paul Tefft wasn't with them: he was saddled down with newborn twins back home. Vasectomized Jeff pounced. "Better enjoy it," he said again. "You probably won't be getting out much after this either." Another harbinger reared itself farther downstream; just before camp a large stork stood pretzeled in the middle of the river. "Might want to call your wife," said John. "It could be an omen." That night I took his advice, borrowing the camp's satellite phone. She wasn't home.

The harassing continued that night when I took off my shorts and exposed an adult version of diaper rash. Drying the offending neoprene in front of the fire, I felt like target practice for a Hecklers Anonymous meeting. "You won't be needing to keep that part of your body warm any more," said Jeff. "It can freeze up now-it's served its purpose." To escape similar barbs, I retired to my palapa and sought solace from the benevolent doctor. Tonight's lesson: How Human Beings Get Their Aspirations. "A man may react to his wife's pregnancy with various feelings. There can be a feeling of being left out, which may be expressed as...wanting to spend more time with his men friends." Not if they treat you like this, I thought. Then again, maybe there was something to the doctor's words after all. The passage could be loosely interpreted to mean paddling is a natural reaction to fatherhood. Intrigued, I continued. The next chapter was entitled, "What Kind of Delivery Do You Want?" For my wife, it boiled down to one word: epidural. I was simply hoping for a painless delivery off of the next day's 25-foot waterfall on the Rio Salto.

At the fall's brink the next morning, I felt a few Braxton Hicks-like contractions as my stomach tightened with nerves. Luckily, I had another Spockism to rely on: "Trust yourself...you know more than you think you do." Helping me gain the necessary knowledge was Dave, who missed his line, exited his boat like a c-sectioned baby and swam at the fall's base. Armed with his miscalculation, I stroked for the left and sailed off into a perfect delivery, my bow bouncing up at the bottom like a baby in a jumpy-seat. Eventually we reached the take-out, located at the brink of an 85-foot waterfall called El Meco. On the shuttle home, I asked our driver what it meant. The answer shouldn't have been surprising: The Sperm.

The remainder of the week was filled with more rivers, more heckling and more reminders of my impending date with parenthood. On our last night I called home again and finally got through. Four weeks before our due date, I wasted no time in finding out the crucial information on everyone's mind...the Broncos would face Miami in the playoffs. Returning to the fire, I shared the news to a loud cheer. To celebrate the playoffs, my wife not going into labor and a successful week of waterfalls, we sang and gave toasts until we all crawled like babies to bed. The next morning, I felt better prepared for fatherhood than ever-at least for the sleep-deprivation part. I felt even more prepared when I strolled over to the campfire site, which looked like a band of toddlers had ravaged someone's living room. Chairs were overturned, clothes were strewn about and bottles lay in disarray.

After cleaning things up and saying our good-byes, we caught a bus to Tampico and hopped on our plane. On the flight home, I again pulled out Dr. Spock, this time settling into a chapter on ear infections-an especially pertinent one, I thought, since my own were hurting from time spent upside-down. "Still reading that?" interrupted Dave from across the aisle "How far did you get?"

Not very, I replied. But if Dr. Spock was a paddler, I'm sure he would understand.