What I Learned at Lamaze Class Today
So I’ve been pretty on the ball as the responsible daddy as far as making sure I’m reading all the books, blogs, journals, magazine articles, and whatever else I come across in order to better prepare myself, and better prepare my wife and this household for the baby’s arrival. I’ve been pretty much on the wife about scheduling classes for us to attend to and making sure we take photos and other pre-baby necessities and things parents in the movies and tv do. The reason I’m asking her to search all this stuff out to do instead of just pulling the trigger myself is cause I don’t want to pick something she’s not comfortable with. Knowing my luck I’d pick a breastfeeding class offered on Groupon or Living Social given by a hairy Dungeons and Dragons Warlord given in a Taco Bell bathroom. Then I’d say something like “Babe… it must be legit, or else it wouldn’t be available on Groupon… we paid for it let’s just ride it out.” So the first class we ever took was in fact a breastfeeding class. Now, I understand that the father of 1958 wouldn’t have attended these classes with their wives, but I feel like I need to know just as much as she does, and I want to be there for the support. We walked into this house converted into a school for milking, and were naturally the first ones there. Enya –Sail Away starts playing ever so softly in the Continue Reading →
Posted in Getting Ready, Those Odd moments...with 4 comments.
Can I Get a Round of Applause for Pregnant Boobs…
I mean… HELLO! Not to sound all Bohemian and hippie-ish, but I’m one of those guys who think the pregnant body is one of the most beautiful things on a woman. My wife is sexy. But my wife, who is carrying my son, is super sexy. There’s a two-part reason behind my thoughts of how I view the pregnant woman. The first is that I think the miracle of birth is something so astronomically awesome, that every time I take a minute to think about what’s going on inside my wife, this complete wave of a nostalgia overcomes me, and I start to think about how scientifically amazing the development of a little human is. But I’m a thinker. The guy writing this is also fascinated that an 800,000 pound metal object holding 300 people can stay in the air and take me from California to Korea in a matter of hours, and that the movies and TV shows about CIA spies seem like entertainment to us, but is actually somebody’s real life… That’s who’s writing this post. Why I mention how easily fascinated I am by seemingly explainable stuff is that if you’ve studied child development at all, then you understand that the forces of nature that have semen doing their natural thing of swimming “upstream,” racing and to meet the egg… then fighting for dibs to get inside to chillax for the next 9 months, is beyond amazing to me. For those nine months, this merperson lives in fluid, like Continue Reading →
Posted in Did He Really Just Say That?with 7 comments.
Child Care-less
Dear America, Why do you hate parents? Respectfully, Robert So I’ve mentioned before that I travel for work. I get to see all the glorious places that most will only see in post cards, and I get to eat all the glorious food that you only see on Food Network. I get to experience traditions and customs that you only see on the travel channel, but there is one thing I will never get to experience… Other countries’ benefits. That’s right Americans, we may be home of the free and proud and stuff, but we are definitely paying a price for that. And please don’t get me wrong… I didn’t serve 10 years in the Marine Corps so I could bash on the good ol’ U S of A in a blog post. This is specifically about child care. Once I found out about my wife being pregnant, I immediately started asking all the relevant questions… specifically those that pertain to work… 1) How does the insurance cover this birth? 2) If my wife has her own insurance, whose gets used for the hospital care? 3) Which insurance would the baby fall under? 4) Will I need paperwork from the job site in order to start the process? but most importantly, 5) How does the paternity leave work? (that link goes to a more credible source aka Huffington Post, if you don’t want to take my word for it) So here’s a real quick breakdown. What you need to understand Continue Reading →
Posted in Did He Really Just Say That?, Dissapointment, Fear, Getting Ready, Parenthood, Those Odd moments...with 32 comments.
The Start of “The First”
Today was a monumental day for me as a soon-to-be-father. Since Paps’ has been pregnant with the tiny parasite, I’ve answered all the typical questions like, “when are you due?” “Do you know the sex yet?” “How’s you’re wife doing?” “Are you guys sure you’re ready for this?” All are normal, and all are fine, however I’d always dreaded the question of “have you guys picked out a name yet? Well for the longest time Paps and I were not seeing eye to eye with each other on the baby names, and were definitely not seeing eye to eye with all external noise makers (aka everyone else) when it came to names for Baby X. I had even resorted to a playoff bracket type of baby naming system to ween out the small players in this game of champions. This was ongoing for months. But alas… I received a note from the tiny parasite on Valentine’s day. I couldn’t be happier, but at the same time extremely cautious because this baby name was one of my favorites that I had annoyingly pushed for. I would drop in the name during any type of conversation while talking about Baby X. I would say this name when people asked what we were naming him… I was relentless. So of course it came as a surprise to me to see my wife “cave in.” The caution builds up because I know that she’s doing this for me. And I feel bad that we couldn’t Continue Reading →
Posted in Getting Ready, The Puzzle Piecewith 8 comments.
Where did the time go?
There just aren’t enough hours in a day. So cliché. But shit man… there are simply not enough hours in a day, or let alone… days in a weekend. I thought about this greatly today as I finished the biggest portion of the painting of the baby’s nursery. I pulled off the painters tape, I sat down on the stool that once held the paint bucket, and then I stared at all the small mistakes from the paint seeping under the small pockets of air in the tape that I was now going to have to take more time out of my life to fix… Why couldn’t it have just come out right the first time? God knows I tried–and tried hard. But as I wasted, now, a second weekend in that slowly developing, painter’s nightmare of a nursery, I can’t begin to list the full checklist of the other obligations that I had to either irresponsibly push-off, or make a conscious decision to do at a later date. For instance: Fix my lawn mower. Last weekend my dogs thought it would be a good idea to chew through the pull cord on my lawn mower instead of play with the dozen(s) of toys they already have (or rip out more branches on my rose bushes like they usually do), so instead of moving forward with the plans I had of re-seeding the lawn and taking charge of my back yard again (something I could only do because I was… was ahead on my Continue Reading →
Posted in Dissapointment, Fear, Getting Readywith 12 comments.
