What am I going to do
with a baby?
I always knew I’d wanted to have kids, and had been a very
experienced uncle for years, but when the moment of truth was upon us, what
would I do with my own child? How would I
take care of him? Would he be OK? Would I be OK?
After 9 months of waiting eagerly, suddenly I found myself
nervously observing in the operating/delivery room, sitting behind a draped
cloth with my wife’s upper body, while doctors and nurses worked their magic scalpels
and tools on her midsection. In 10 minutes, the anesthesiologist announced,
“it’s a boy”, but I’d never considered otherwise. He was here, I had to be
ready. Even if I didn’t think I was.
Are you ready to cut
the cord?
I tend to overthink things, especially all of the possibilities
of everything that could go wrong. What
if I cut the cord too long or too short? What if I couldn’t even cut all the
way through it? At that moment, as I watched my son on the table, just
minutes old, I knew I had to jump in with both feet. I grabbed the scissors from
the nurse and cut the cord swiftly, which freed my son from his only source of
life up to that point and suddenly gave me a new one of my own.We headed to the recovery room where my wife was able to rest for a bit. As adrenaline pumped through my body like a gallon of espresso, I watched this little miracle lay swaddled snugly and started to feel inklings of confidence return despite the enormous uncertainty squarely before me.
After a while, we were given a room. My wife was
understandably exhausted when the nurse came and examined my hours-old son. She
asked if I wanted to give him a bath. As I pondered the joyous task, the
feelings of doubt returned? How do I even
give him a bath? He’s so little; I don’t want to break him.
She reassured me: “They’re hard to
break”. Whether that was true or not,
who knows. But she seemed to know what she was doing, and mentioned that she’d
been doing it for 20-something years, so I had to let go of my fear once again
and literally get my hands dirty to clean my still somewhat goopy child. With
each soft swab of the washcloth, he amazed me even more. Before I knew it, he
was clean. What now?
“Are you ready to put on his diaper?”
Well, I’d attended the pregnancy class before he was born
and strapped one on a plastic baby, knowing it was foolproof. Guess what: so is
diapering a real baby. Sure, I may have ripped a couple straps pulling too
hard, but my boy was fine. His scrawny little legs dangled out of the Pampers
Newborn, a size he fit in for exactly one day. As I watched his body
temperature even out after the bath as he lay upon the warming table, I knew
he’d be OK. And so would I.
Later that night, as I watched my wife and son sleep in our
hospital room, one day in the books, it finally occurred to me, as obvious as
it had been all day to our gathered family and friends. I was a father. And had
to be ready for whatever was coming next. Looking back, I’d read the baby books
before he arrived but there is no parenting book as real, as honest and as true
as the one you start to create upon becoming a father. It’s not an easy job and
the benefits are crap, literally, but there is nothing better, nor more sleep
depriving in life. Seven years, another child and yet another en route later, I
wouldn’t want it any other way.
Note: I have partnered
with Life of Dad and Pampers for this promotion, but all ideas expressed above are mine and
mine alone, for better or worse. I was compensated for this post, but I can assure
you it was much less than I’ve spent on Pampers over the last almost-seven
years.
Note 2.0: Pampers put
together an amazing Father’s Day video, which I know you will want to check out.
Spoiler alert: tears are looming that you may not anticipate.
