On Fatherhood Pt.4

Two months ago - May 28th to be exact - my wife and I were blessed with the birth of lovely, healthy baby. We didn't find out the gender ahead of time, we wanted it to be a surprise. It was an incredible moment in our lives, full of joy and happiness. I already have a hard time remembering life before we had a baby. Yet it was also an intense, seemingly forever moment of time, packed with raw emotions - fear, pain, suffering, helplessness - and far more blood than I imagined.

The baby seemed to take forever to arrive. First, there was the long pregnancy, ending two weeks late. Often times people will say about anything that takes a while to arrive, "oh, the waiting is the hardest part". Those people are right. Sort of. But also not at all. The waiting was excruciating - going to work everyday, being ready to bolt out the door at the second the text message arrived declaring the imminent arrival of our dear little baby. This lasted for two weeks - two long, long weeks of unceasing alertness and readiness. That text message never came. Instead,  the waiting ended with us having to evict the stubborn little peanut from the womb with medical induction. The waiting was over.

Next, there came the actual hardest part - the neverending labour - nearly 40 hours of intense, painful contractions. I am in awe of the stamina and strength of the woman I love. While I slept - albeit fitfully - she suffered through a night of constant, uneven contractions, contractions that went on for over a day and a half. We arrived at the hospital, after more than 24 hours of contractions and multiple phone calls to the nurses station advising us "oh, just give it more time". Once we got there, we were told we may be sent to another hospital, as Surrey Memorial didn't have enough beds to accommodate every expectant mother in triage. We watched as one couple was sent to Royal Columbian, another to Peace Arch, and a third sent to Abbotsford. Then the water broke, and we were allowed to stay. 

We got a room, some pain medication was administered, and a brief couple hours of sleep followed. Then came a couple of hours (that felt like an eternity) of gut-wrenching pushing, which very nearly ended in a C-section, and resulted in our little darling being born on the operating table in case a last minute attempt at anything but a C-section failed - thankfully it didn't.

I tried my best not to look towards the doctors as they worked, not because I'm squeamish - but because I wanted to focus on my wife, on comforting her. I made the mistake of looking over once - and seeing far more blood than I ever imagined seeing at a birth. They don't tell you about that during prenatal classes - none of the videos or talks or books mentioned how incredibly visceral things could get.  

They lifted this tiny, incomprehensibly small person onto my wife's chest, and wrapped them in a towel. I cried. I squeezed my wife's hand, and practically sobbed out a few words - "we have a baby girl."

I spent the entire pregnancy boldly declaring "I'm not a baby person"; "When do they stop shitting their pants? I'm excited for them to be that age"; "I wish we could adopt a fully grown person who doesn't need anything from us". 

The moment I laid my eyes on her, I was smitten. I've never felt love so deep and powerful - it's such a raw, tangible feeling that tears at your heart. I became a baby person in the blink of an eye.

On Fatherhood Pt.3

Monday, May 16th was our due date. It's now Wednesday, May 18th. I know due dates are really, at best, a suggestion. But I was kind of hoping the baby would be here by now, if for no other reason than to preserve my sanity. Seriously, I don't understand how my wife is so calm right now. 

I'm starting to feel like Lenny and Carl watching sun creep across the floor of Moe's bar.

I've set my phone up so I only get notifications from her, since Facebook reminding that it's someone's birthday every morning while I was at work was really starting to stress me out. My new job, the one I talked around in my last blog post, is about a 45 minute train ride from home. It's not that far, but it's far enough that I'm pretty much always ready to run out the door at this point. 

I know my family and friends are on edge, waiting impatiently to hear the news that the baby is here. I've been greatly amused by the probing text messages and over-analyzing of my beer check-ins on Untappd. Especially the beer check-ins, with people suggesting that because I haven't checked in a beer over the course of an evening means that maybe, just maybe, it's because I'm at the hospital. I have co-workers who are disappointed to see me in the morning, because it means the baby isn't here yet.

It's weird, being so excited to meet someone I don't know and have never met before. To be absolutely thrilled at the thought of holding our baby. A couple years ago I would've recoiled at the idea of becoming a father anytime soon. Now it can't happen soon enough.

The fact that I'm bursting with excitement doesn't belay the fact that I'm still filled with sheer blind terror at the idea of becoming a dad, of my wife becoming a mom. That's still very much present right now. I probably won't quite grok the concept of what I've gotten myself into until the little poop factory bundle of joy is the room with us.

Life is weird. People are weird. We're so full of contradictory emotions and thoughts. It's a wonder our species has made it this far. Being excited and scared; nervous and happy. It doesn't make a lick of sense (neither does that expression, but the hell with it). I guess that's just part of the human condition. Just something else to introduce our little one to when the time finally comes.

On Fatherhood Pt.2

This is part 2 of an ongoing series on fatherhood, and my journey towards becoming a dad. To read part 1, click here: Part 1
 

Two weeks ago my wife and I started taking prenatal classes put on by Douglas College's North Surrey Continuing Education Program. The classes have been super informative, and while we've only done two classes so far, I feel like I've learned a lot of stuff I never knew, and a whole lot of stuff I never knew I didn't want to know.

For instance, did you know that it's a scientific fact that all 3D ultrasound images are actually of Cave Trolls, and not babies?

It's also proving to be a seemingly unlimited source of unintentional hilarity. Seriously, some weird and funny shit goes down at these things. For instance, this week we were learning about what to do when labour starts, and the instructor - and we'll talk more about her in a minute - separated us into two groups, of moms and dads. We had to make a list of all the things we thought we'd need to bring to the hospital with us. The list the women came up with comprehensive, and spanned the whole range of household and personal items. They knew what they were talking about, and had clearly thought of this stuff already. The list us menfolk concocted was, well, let's just call it rather brief and only slightly embarassing. Our initial list, and the one we were all content to go forward with before we were scolded by the instructor, consisted of three items:

• Woman
• Baby (I pointed out that the two were technically one "thing" until much later, but was shot down)
• Ipod

After our scolding, we acquiesced, and expanded our list to include a carseat, clothes, blankets for ourselves to sleep on, and some snacks. Oh and granny panties. Apparently those are important for some reason that I won't go into here.

Our instructor is a very nice lady,  in that late-forties-early-fifties age range that's hard to distinguish between, and starting to go through menopause, so she's always really hot, and leaves the front door propped open with a trash can to crash and bang in the wind. She's also British, and uses weird British slang. She's also prone to getting super distracted and going off on tangents about her kids. It's been quite the experience watching this woman imitate what labour is like, and the sounds she makes are nothing short of haunting: 

This is, of course, just a crude approximation. The real thing sounds much more like a goat than this.

Supposedly once this class is finished, there's going to be a reunion class about a month or so after all the babies have been born. I'm already afraid of being around my own child, largely due to the projectile vomiting I've heard so much about, and so the thought of being in a room containing 8 other tiny vomit factories fills me with a sense of almost palpable dread. I guess I'm just not a baby person.

Crystal and I have discussed this before, and we've both concluded that we're not really baby people. You know the type. The people who see a baby and let out an unconscious gasp of excitement and perhaps a little squeal of joy, perhaps followed by cooing noises about tiny feet. Those are baby people. Me, not so much.  What's the age when they stop defecating in their drawers all the time? I'm excited for that. I guess I just really want a tiny person I can have weird surreal conversations with.

All that being said, I find myself growing less frightened of infants by the day. Perhaps it has something to do with just how damn adorable my new niece is, but they're starting to seem less scary all the time.