I Am an Expectant Father
Well, the title says it all – or at least the most succinctly important piece of it. Yes, my wife and I are going to have our first child. Starting from that point, I have some further thoughts and news…
It’s been tough keeping this a secret for the last few months. We initially heeded the cautious advice of doctors and baby-book experts by not sharing the news openly. We limited it to only our closest family. The advice is, of course, a precaution just in case the pregnancy is
lost, which often happens in the early months.
It got harder to keep it a secret when my wife developed placenta previa and was ordered to bed-rest for three months. I live close enough to work that I was able to scoot home for lunch each day to help her, but I’m sure my co-workers noticed my unusual new daily ritual of rushing out
the door promptly at noon and at 5:00.
Lila and Fetus Lee are doing well enough now that we can share the news openly. However, I must say that I’m both confused and annoyed by some of the responses we get. Yes, we’ve had many congratulations, but that’s often followed a few minutes later by another response. It’s along the lines of “Your life is over now” or “Once the baby comes, you’ll never get a full night of sleep again” or “Children are a lot of work.” Here I was looking forward to this and feeling happy and proud from the congratulations, and then the conversation plummets into the negative.
I’m sure these people don’t mean to be so negative, but they just can’t seem to help themselves. They seem to think that in some collegial, conspiratorial way they are sharing something with me. Nevertheless, it is annoying.
Look, it’s not that I don’t want to know what reality is. I know children will provide hours of fun and hours of stress. I know babies cry, sometimes for no identifiable reason. I also know they sometimes smile and even giggle. I know diapers are stinky. However, I also know it can be very soothing to hold a baby and give it a bottle. I know children will, at some point, whine and cry over not getting something they want. I also know, however, that they sometimes say things in funny ways that make you laugh. Moreover, I already know all these negative things that people feel compelled to tell me, but I am happy that I am going to be a father and I would appreciate it if people would let me enjoy that.
That said, I am eager to get on to the next bit of news for this blog…
I am informally suspending the “rants and chants” theme of this blog for the next few months. Instead, I want to do some writing whose primary audience will be my children.[1] I will post it here, however, for the value it may have to others. Moreover, since I believe the Web to be a more universal and hopefully enduring place
than my hard drive, I also hope that posting it here will ensure that my children will be more likely to have a chance to read it someday. If anything should happen to me before they are old enough to know me, at least there will be some chance that they might someday find and read this.
Beginning next week, I will be posting some essays about the lessons I think my children should learn in their lives. They will need all the help they can get to survive and thrive in this crazy world.
[1] In early 2005, we learned we were expecting our second child. By mid-2005, we knew he would be another boy. In light of both of these pieces of information, I revised many of these fatherhood articles to use plural references and
masculine pronouns.
