Getting Ready For The New Baby
22 May 2010
It may happen sooner or it may happen later, but it happens to most couples and even if they have been trying hasten the process, they are rarely ready for the news. ‘We’re having a baby’ comes as a surprise to all of us and is greeted with a mixture of joy and fear.
In some ways, the father has it worse than the mother. That’s because it’s not really real to him. He’s not the one whose body is telling him that something is growing inside him. He just has to trust the information he gets from others and do something about it. Often, all he can think about is the fact that he is going to have to get his act together if he’s going to be able to feed his family.
A feeling of dread sometimes spoils the joy of pregnancy, at least on occasion. The mother doesn’t think she’s going to be able to cope with nine whole months of being pregnant and the father doesn’t think he’s going to be up to the demands of fatherhood.
Fortunately, most of us get a grip and get to work. Long before the baby arrives, we go out and look at the latest baby cribs and other baby necessities. If we haven’t gotten serious about our careers, we kick ourselves in the butt and ramp up our efforts.
Right from the beginning, we start to give up some things we want in favor of the baby’s needs. The mother who has had her eye on a new bedding collection for her bedroom agrees that the money would be better spent on a crib. The baby becomes the first priority.
Sure, the husband isn’t thrilled about the fact that he’s going to have to put off buying the husqvarna chainsaw he’s had his eye on. Nonetheless, he does put it off, usually without complaint. He knows he didn’t really need it that much anyway.
Babies are not real to fathers until they are born. Before that, they just have happy fantasies about kicking a ball around the backyard with their son or walking hand in hand with their pig-tailed daughter. The fact that babies are helpless little creatures who don’t think twice about waking you up at night or peeing on your good pants when they’re sitting on your lap is only a distant concept until it actually happens. Fathers aren’t the ones who feel the baby growing inside, so thinking of it as an infant doesn’t really come naturally to them.
None of that really matters anyway, though. While a pregnant mother doesn’t give a moment’s thought to feeding the baby while its inside of her, it gets fed anyway. While a father has absolutely no experience at being a father, it happens anyway. Nature seems to have done a good job of preparing us, since billions of couples have done their job as parents pretty well over the years.
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
Leave a reply