The first thing that came to mind, when five months ago my wife told me we were having a baby, was that everything changes.
In general I have no idea what will change or exactly what will be. What I do know is that this narrative, which is my life, is about to hit that point where the plot thickens and the twist will rearrange our whole hustle like an F-5 tornado.
Case in point — I no longer have the luxury of considering the passage of time in years. Time itself has changed. Everything is now measured in weeks.
When I mentioned to another pregnant couple we were five months along, they looked at me like I haven’t read the prenatal equivalent of The Handbook for the Living and the Dead.
Exercising my short-term thinking is a challenge for me in this situation. I tend to look at the big picture and consider things holistically. Just over four months from now, our son will be born. It would have been nine months that we were awaiting his arrival. At three months we heard him and saw him for the first time.
My natural tendency to consider things in longer terms is likely an inherent self-defense. Months take a while to pass. A week, however, is just a few days in total. Maybe this is why there are so many dead-beat-dads. Perhaps they wash-out before their child is born and are unable to cope when they finally arrive – because it all happens so fast.
What I have learned so far from this experience is that the more things grow, both literally and figuratively, the more micro they become when I regard them (and keeping things short has actually allowed me to wrap my frontal lobe around what our new life is going to be about).
As of today, we are 21-weeks into the pregnancy.
Marinate.
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Tags: babies, expectant fathers, parenting
