Saturday, March 11, 2017

Fatherhood, part 2

So I know that I'm cheating, because the whole concept of a weblog (or blog as you youngsters call it) is to log things...more or less as they happen. I'm sorry, but that just didn't happen. I'm trying in these first few posts to recount how I felt in the months leading up to my son's birth. I touched on my biggest worry in the previous post, so I'll move on to some other things I thought about.

Probably second on the list of mind occupiers was actually trying to calm myself down. A good friend of mine from Peace Corps shared with me the other day that he and his wife are expecting. He tends to worry and ponder quite a bit about things-he's a great thinker-so I tried to settle him down a bit. I asked Livia when they really needed to start getting ready and she said the last month, I tend to agree. I mean, up until month five or so, the biggest part of the job is encouraging your partner/wife to stay healthy, and being incredibly empathetic as she walks out of the bathroom (about every day) telling you she just threw up in the toilet. Well, for the first three months in our case. But, seriously, I spent a lot of time calming myself down mentally. Reading up on pregnancy and childbirth is very helpful. The Expectant Father (Brott, Ash) was the main source of my information and I'd highly recommend it. Livia used the babycenter app extensively, and it has lots of great stuff as well.

We did have a complicating factor in planning our marriage, which was mostly complicated because when you're in a position requiring a security clearance, you can't just marry a foreigner. There is a wait time (90 days) and some forms to file, interviews to be done. The wait time is the especially complicating factor (in the end we didn't wait the entire time-which is allowed-but it did delay announcing things for a while). Honestly though, planning and doing some of those things helped me feel like I was contributing and getting things done-which provided relief.

But really, for the guy, there isn't too much to do besides encourage, help, sympathize, listen, and provide/shop for your partner. So I tried to do all those things, and there was definitely a learning curve, I won't lie about that. Pretty much everything else you take care of the last month (or two). While Livia was up in Iowa and I was down in Ecuador (and Peru for a bit) my mom threw two baby showers for her, and my parents' friends lent us a pack'n'play, bassinet, and a baby rocker. A neighbor's daughter also gave Livia half a closet full of maternity clothes, as she'd given birth two months previous. I will admit, it's pretty nice that my parents (mom especially) have lived in the same place for 28 years and are involved in church, school, the neighborhood, and other organizations-people were incredibly generous. The baby showers got us almost all the clothes, blankets, burp clothes, and towels we needed until now. With all the generosity-and because we didn't outfit a room-N. hasn't cost too much-yet. We also received a bunch of stuff from some friends at the Consulate. I told my Peace Corps buddy if you have a good shower, and don't decide to redecorate-the baby won't cost you too much. As our plan was to spend six weeks in Des Moines, six back down in Guayaquil, then another month in the States, and then move to the Dominican Republic (didn't happen in the end), we really didn't know what sort of space we'd eventually have or what furniture the State Department would provide, we did not go all in on the chair/dresser/crib/bassinet purchases. While I can understand the excitement of outfitting a nursery, I tend to think it (like a lot of material consumption in American culture) is gratuitous.

When I was in Iowa with Livia for the week in October we got registries set up at buybuyBaby and Babies R Us, we toured the maternity ward and got her pre-registered at the hospital where our son was born, got the information and registered for some pre-birth classes at the hospital, and had a visit with the Ob-Gyn office and got all of Livia's medical paperwork from Ecuador translated and scanned and sent to them. So, yes, we took care of some things in month seven. But after that it's mostly eat right, exercise, take your vitamins, get the basics (clothes, towels, wash cloths, burp cloths, diapers, wipes, soap, ointment, pacifiers, sheets, blankets). But they have a list when you register, so we just used that plus whatever my mom said. And, the hospital we went to was amazing, and loaded up a goody bag when we left with pretty much everything we needed except clothes and blankets for the first week or so.

Mostly, I read somewhere, or someone told me, that, for the first six months you just have to feed them and clean their poop, so don't worry too much. While not wholly true, it's pretty close from a logistical perspective. That calmed me down a lot. Because about once a day, if not more, I thought to myself "holy shit we're having a kid." I mean it. I can't remember the date when it changed from 'Livia's pregnant' to 'we're having a kid' but towards the end there it was in my mind a lot. People at work would ask how I was doing and I'd respond "I'm having a kid in two months." Probably not what they were expecting, but that's how I was doing.

It was exciting. It was surreal. It was concerning. I was anxious. Some denial about how much it would change my/our life/lives. Livia is level-headed, relaxed, resilient. So she didn't add much worry or anxiety. Which was good. I was nervous too, but I don't think unreasonably so. We had a lot of change coming up in our lives, (marriage, then a son, then moving) so I think my emotions were understandable. Actually, with my contract not getting extended last month, add losing a job to that list, so Livia and I experienced four of the maybe ten or 12 biggest stressful events in life. Within six months. As I said, a lot of what I was doing mentally in the last three months or so was calming myself down.

A good friend in Guayaquil, and father of three, repeatedly told me it didn't matter if I was ready or not, because no one is ready. That's very true. There's a lot of value (A LOT) in learning about pregnancy so you can help your partner. I'm glad I read up on some of things I did about the first day/week/month of a baby's life. But, as for being a father, it sank in, when I held N. at two minutes old. That's when it sank in. When I stood over the tray as they cleaned him and checked this and that when he was but 30 or 40 seconds old. When I brought him over to Livia and said this is our son. She couldn't feel half her body, was shivering from the medicine, was still coming down from the adrenaline of two hours of pushing (his head got stuck in her pelvis because it came down at an angle-hence the unplanned c-section)-so that's why I brought him to her. That's when I thought: okay, let's go. Because then, it didn't matter if I was ready or not, he was there. I'd say for the last three to four months before he was born I was excited, I felt we were adequately prepared, I felt like we had good discussions about parenthood, we loved each other, and were ready to love our son. So maybe I thought that we were ready, but let me tell you, looking back on those first three weeks (heck looking back on today) we weren't ready. But, and this is probably on a Hallmark card, what mattered most was that we were committed to each other and to our little guy.

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