Random Thoughts on Impending Parenthood

This package was waiting on the porch when I came home from work:

Snugride Classic Connect 30:  Only the best for my spawn

Shit just got real up in here.

I was really looking forward to having a weekend this week.  For the first time in two months, I'm not traveling or working.  And what did we spend most of the weekend doing?  Setting up the nursery, moving furniture around, cleaning things out, putting together the crib.   

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I thought that once all our summer travels were over (we've visited five different states since Memorial Day), I'd have some time to chill out before the baby comes.  But after this "free" weekend,  I look ahead to the next week:

1. Tomorrow we're finally having our new sewer line put in.  This means we had to clear out a section of our basement so they could jackhammer up our floor.  It also means that for an entire day I won't have access to my computer or TV, or indoor plumbing.  How am I going to get anything done?  HOW DO PEOPLE LIVE LIKE THIS?
2. Tuesday morning we have a routine appointment with our regular OB/GYN to check on the progress of Cletus Fetus.
3. Thursday morning we're meeting for the first time with our new pediatrician. 
4. Thursday evening we have the first of our two-session class, Caring for Newborns.  
5. All day Saturday and half the day on Sunday we signed up for a childbirth class at the hospital.  (Goodbye, Weekend.  I hardly knew you.) 

If you're counting, that's four separate baby appointments this week.  It's not even here yet, and this baby is already taking up all of my time.  I was hoping to cram in more leisure time before it got here, since I know that once it comes my life will be over.


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We're taking classes, re-arranging our house, visiting daycares, and thinking about things like cloth diapers, but the truth is there's no good way to prepare yourself mentally for a baby.  I know that it will be a lot of work.  An unrelenting, incessant amount of work.  Like, way more work than I've ever had to do in my easy life.  I know I will never get any sleep again.  I know that I will never have any free time again.  I will never get any privacy again.

I hear that it can also be fulfilling and rewarding, but the truth is I have no idea how I will take to parenting-- if I will like it, find it redeeming, or be any good at it.  It's a huge block box, sitting right on the calendar, dominating my future.

Am I eager to meet the new human who comes out of my wife's hoo-haw?  Sure.  I'm ready to meet the challenge.  And to feel the love.  But I don't have any delusions about it being all baby breath and pixies.    
     

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From all the posts on FB on Father's Day, I understand there are a lot of people who respect, admire, and adore their father.

I wonder what that's like. 

Not to get all Dr. Phil here, but I do not have a very good relationship with my father.  I don't have much respect for him.

So it makes me wonder what my future kid, now due in less than two months, is going to think of me.  It's a fascinating and frightening proposition that there will be someone out in the world whose image of "Dad"-- what they think of when they hear that word-- will be me.

"What did you learn in school today?"