Babies | Digital Dads

Everything Changes

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

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.

dykc-ultrababy

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.

Tags: babies, expectant fathers, parenting
Posted in General Parenting | Comments

Becoming a Dad

Friday, October 2nd, 2009

I remember when I first found out that I was going to be a father. I was filled with excitement, fear, joy and a bunch of other emotions that you can’t really express unless you’ve been there.

Back then we were living in Virginia and away from all of our family and friends. The decision of how and when to tell people is never an easy thing to do, but we made the best of it and figured it out. We didn’t have things like Twitter or Facebook to tell masses of people at one time, so the news trickled out slowly and surely and it was always fun to have new people find out and get in touch.

This morning my good friend Clarence told the world that he is going to be a poppa and he did it in a way that I’ve never been part of before. He did it by posting the comic below on one of his projects called Planet Wifey. I’ve known about the news for a bit and I’m glad he got the chance (and felt that we were close enough) to tell me in person, but I love that so many other people will find out from this comic.

Planet Wife 2009-10-02

The one thing I tell every guy who tells me they are going to be a Dad for the first time is the same thing a friend from Bentley told me when I told him the news.

He looked me in the eyes and said, “You think you know that you are going to be a Dad, but you really don’t yet. Just wait and at some point, somewhere the news is really going to hit you and then you’ll know you are going to be a dad.”

I laughed it off and then I remember being at a red light, months later on my way home from work when this wave of “oh shit I’m going to be a Dad!” washed over me. I broke down crying and was filled with an even bigger mix of emotions then I had before. I laughed at myself as I realized this is what my friend meant. Now I knew I was going to be a dad.

So, now I give that same bit of advice to every new dad. I also always recommend The Expectant Father: Facts, Tips and Advice for Dads-to-Be as my book of choice for guys to read. I read them all and that is the one that stuck with me and was actually written in a way that a guy wants to read and I respected that.

Congrats to Clarence and to all the new Dads out there. It feels like something is in the water lately because there are a lot of new babies on the horizon.

What advice do you give to your friends when they tell you they are becoming fathers? I’d love to hear!