What Dad Can Expect When She's Expecting

My life, since the birth of my daughter, has been filled with incredible moments that have made me happier than I ever imagined I could be. But, before I could enjoy those little moments of joy, I had to take a ride on a roller coaster called pregnancy, a grueling ten month journey, for which I was ultimately (at least partially) responsible for, and yet societal norms required me to be cast me into the backseat for most of the process.

However, the paradox of that scenario is that the only way to make those ten months of my life as easy as possible, was to jump into the front seat (NOT the drivers seat, as that may have resulted in my being ejected from the ride) to do whatever I could do to keep the ride as smooth as possible.

My wife and I had been trying for a few months to get pregnant. Well, to get her pregnant anyway (I wasn't really up for the job) and the moment my wife used the power of her urine to produce a pink line on a ten dollar piece of plastic I was filled with a euphoria that I hadn't experienced since the [insert sports team] won the [insert championship]. That is, before I had the realization:

"Holy crap! I'm going to be a dad! I can barely take care of myself, how can I be expected to take care of someone else?"

The clock had started ticking away the days until I was going to be responsible for another human life. I felt completely unprepared, and the fact that the stack of New Dad books that I had purchased made better door stops than guides didn't help. In fact, most of what I needed to know about pregnancy and babies I learned on my own through attending doctors appointments and some of the classes that our local hospital provided.

But there were definitely a few things that I wish someone would have warned me about ahead of time!

First of all, I was previously unaware that since I had chosen to walk the path of being an involved dad-to-be, that the path ahead was going to be filled with ridicule and belittlement from my friends, family, and pretty much the general population. Sounds fun doesn’t it?

Personally, I received more than one raised eyebrow from the women in the waiting room at my wife’s OBGYN when I accompanied her to her baby appointments, but I learned some valuable information there. Besides, if someone else was going to be putting strange equipment into my wife’s “hoo-ha” every month, I thought I should at least be somewhat involved!

Even though the “lady doctor” appointments made me somewhat squeamish at times, (What guy wouldn't be squeemish in a room full of posters of my wife's "inner workings"?) I made sure to attend them all so that I could get all of my questions answered, and I had a lot of them. Luckily, the doctor made a good point of at least acknowledging my presence, something I'm told not all father-to-be get the luxury of.

Although all of the normal checkups were helpful in easing some of my uncertainties about being a father, my favorite appointment to attend was the day they did an ultrasound of the baby. However, from that appointment I did learn two pieces of wisdom about ultrasounds:

1) It's not just a quick “It’s a boy!” or “It’s a girl!” appointment. My knowledge of these appointments mostly came from TV sitcoms, so I felt a little betrayed that I was unaware of that fact until that day. Actually, I found out that the appointment is mostly to make sure that the baby is developing properly and it can take almost an hour before you find out the sex, assuming baby isn’t being modest and covering themselves.

2) (And, this one's important) Try not to make fun of the ultrasound picture, at least publicly. We received several ultrasound pictures to take home, one of which was an adorable profile shot of our daughter sucking her thumb, and another one looking directly at her face, which I thought was reminiscent of Skeletor, the skull-headed villain from He-Man, which I proclaimed to be “creepy” and proceeded to receive judgment from numerous family members asking me, “How could you call your daughter creepy? (Simple, she looked like Skeletor.)

Another thing that I had to prepare myself for was the fact that as soon as my wife's bump first started to show, people began to confuse her stomach with an annex of the local petting zoo. For some reason, people will trip over themselves to touch a pregnant woman’s tummy, and will mostly do so without asking for permission.

On one occasion some random woman actually got down on her knees to give my wife's pregnant tummy a hug, then proceeded to start yelling into my wife’s bellybutton “so the baby could hear her.” (She heard you fine. Now she’s deaf.)

As you may have already noticed, there aren’t many activities during the pregnancy that allow for the father to be the star of the show. In fact, I think being in charge of the handheld scanner at Babies R Us, while we were building our registry for the baby shower (which I wasn’t even invited to) was the most primary involvement that I had with the pregnancy.

Despite the bruises to my ego, I tried to focus on helping my wife get through the next several months (trust me, a bruised ego is nothing compared to what she was going through!) and the result was that I felt more involved and probably a little better prepared by the time it was time for my little one’s big appearance.