DNC Worldwide

Pretext

I originally thought about not writing about my journey to fatherhood on the basis that its definitely a unique personal experience for every man that goes through it. This definitely holds true but something beautiful happened today that made me change my entire outlook on sharing it with everyone. We went to the doctor for the first time and got to see the baby healthy and moving around! Pretty much the happiest moment of my life so far!

Part One: Discovery & Realization

It has been about two months since I found out for the first time that I’m going to be a dad. At first I was surprised, nervous, scared, confused, happy… Pretty much all the feelings you would expect a first-timer to feel when confronted with this reality. After all, I’ve never been a parent before and didn’t know where to begin en route to the due date, much less how to change a stinky diaper when my baby finally arrives. Two months later and some anxiety is still there, as is a little (a lot of) impatience, but not nearly as much as in the very beginning. Now everything I do and worry about is less  of “how are we going to do this” and more of wanting to create the best possible life for my child and figuring out the best way to do it.

There are a lot of challenges to deal with in the journey to fatherhood. I looked all over the web to find resources for preparation and learned plenty about what to do including: what prenatal vitamins mom should take, what to do for nausea, and what to do and  not to do during pregnancy.  I found plenty of info on all that but what I didn’t find were too many resources for the expecting father. Believe it or not, there are plenty of challenges one faces on that side of the journey as well. From finding the best place to live to figuring out budgets, knowing you’ll be a dad soon comes with many responsibilities, some unexpected and challenging.

Dealing with mommy’s hormones can be tricky as well. She’s a sweetheart most of the time but oh beware those hormones, they loom like an ominous raincloud. Just this weekend mom-to-be and I were arguing about something that I never in my wildest dreams thought I would ever argue with anyone about, electro-magnetic waves. I’ll spare you the technical details but basically, I never considered that something could be dangerous to our child and it very well could be.  Maybe .000001 of a chance but that’s still enough reason for us to want to be careful.

My point is that as a father-to-be, different things begin to matter and issues that were previously irrelevant begin to take shape. For us, I think we’re on track. We’re moving to our nice new townhouse in two weeks and we’ve got one heck of a relaxing vacation this weekend with a great group of our closest friends. (go DNC ninjas and slippers!) It’s fitting that it’s on Mother’s Day Weekend also.

Moving forward, we’ll continue to prepare the nest. I’ve also got to work on stuff like eating healthier, shopping smarter, and saving for future events like my kid’s college. (medical school?) I also need to learn how not to worry all the time about every little thing that comes along. In any case, impending fatherhood certainly is a great catalyst to get things going on a better track.

So where are we at now? Well for starters, today was our first doctor’s visit and I was very nervous about it. I hardly even talked on the way to the medical center, focusing instead on the point in my mind where I knew everything would be okay.  It went that way until we finally got to the ultrasound two hours later. When we finally got to see our child moving strong and looking healthy in mommy’s belly, I couldn’t tell you of any other moment in my life where I’m never felt so happy and relieved. I think we can have some fun with this whole experience and I’m looking forward to sharing the journey.

That’s it for now. More on becoming a dad as it happens. 🙂

Currently: 10 Weeks (our entire calendar on justmommies.com)

This entry was posted on May 4, 2009 at 11:53 pm and is filed under Fatherhood. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: babies, Fatherhood, pregnancy