I’ve wanted to talk about this for awhile.  (It’s the second post here, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t wanted to get it off my chest.)   It’s the role of not just becoming a father, but the role of having an unexpected baby.  Here’s a gift from God, but it’s been delivered to you in a time that you’re not prepared for it.

My wife just graduated law school, is working hard studying for the bar (working hard is an understatement… more like working like an underage child in a shoe factory), living in my in-laws’ guest house and I have just found a job.  There’s one good thing about the entire situation: I have a job.  It took me longer than I wanted to get one, so when I did it was with much relief.  Anyway, we’re two weeks away from the bar exam and my wife’s sister finds out she’s pregnant.  That gets Stunning (that’s my name for my wife here) thinking about herself and she begins to worry.  She takes an old generic test… one that she had from her last time of getting worried… and finds out that the baby test does nothing to calm her fears (that was her plan… take a test and not have to worry about it anymore), but it instead confirms, as in positive.

Wow.  What a way to turn a world upside down.  Stunning and I had a 5 year plan, which I included a baby in at the end of the plan and she included the baby in a 10 year plan.  What I’m about to say might be difficult for some to read and frankly now it’s difficult for me to type, but I didn’t want the child. 

There are some people in this world that try and try and try and can’t get pregnant.  There are others that want a baby more than anything else.  There are others that get pregnant right away, but lose the baby.  All of these people deserved to have a baby more than us.  There was so much guilt between the two of us about these feelings.  How do you tell other people that the gift of life you’ve created isn’t something you want.  We wouldn’t be able to travel.  We wouldn’t be able to save the money we wanted to get a house, a new car, as fast as we wanted.  There was a whole bunch of “Now we can’t” going on in both of our heads.

Well, I’m here to tell people that might be reading this… that might be in the same situation… to wait.  Step back and just wait.  As the days went by, those feelings began to fade.  They’re gone now.  I can’t describe to you how much I already love my son.  Tonight, I held my face to my wife’s belly and just listened.  You could hear him moving in there and then he started to kick or punch or head-butt my face.  There is no feeling in the world that can describe that.

I’m sorry I felt that way at the beginning.  I think more than anything it was a kind of grieving process for the passing of what could have been… That’s gone now.  Sure, I still think of my planned trip to Germany next year that won’t happen and about the Lexus IS250 that I won’t have… but they all pale in comparison to the knowledge that in March I’ll be holding my beautiful baby son.  He’s going to be magnificent.