Freaks & Geeks Parenting

Wednesday March 28th is our due date, and I for one will welcome our new baby overlord.

It’s not just because this is a very exciting, life-changing kind of thing, it’s also because we are so ready for this to happen. Personally (not speaking for Terry) I’ve moved beyond the excitement phase into “c’mon, hurry up!’ phase.

I’ll try to explain this without sounding like the worst Dad ever, but at some point, even the expectant father is done with pregnancy. There’s the glowing and the strangers asking to touch your wife in a way that would be actionable if she wasn’t pregnant, and there’s the building the crib and buying the first baby clothes, and at some point you just wish he would just come out already.

We have joined a lovely group of parents who are all expecting around the same time. At one point we were actually worried that we would be the first. Now we may be nineteenth or so and we are so ready for this baby to be born already.

Terry has her own reasons for wanting the pregnancy over that I won’t go into. I just want Ronan to come out so that I can stop worrying that she’ll experience too much pain or the baby will be deformed or dead (!!) or worse, alive but brain dead. (Yeah, I’m a sick person sometimes. Deal with it. These are the emotions I’m feeling.)

Of course Terry has the worst of it because the kid is actually inside of her. Supposedly the emotional and physical changes the mother experiences are partly taken out on the father, but she’s been pretty easy to live with the past nine months. We’ve had a very low-key pregnancy, and I thank Ronan for that. But dammit, I just want him out.

I know what you’re thinking. In two weeks, I’ll want to back him back in. I admit I’ve said to Terry that it would be great if a fully toilet-trained and speaking person emerged from the womb, but that would mean the kid weighed forty pounds at birth, and I value my wife too much to really want that. I’ll just have to suffer through piles of diapers.

But right now I want the kid in my arms now. As a kid I have vivid memories of my brother being born. I was eight. My maternal grandmother came to visit for the birth; Ryan was due around Christmas. Well, Christmas came and went, and so did grandma. She had to go back to work. My Mom laid in bed and beat her stomach in frustration. “Out! Out!” she cried as my Dad packed my grandmother into the car for the ride to airport. I never really understood that feeling until now.

Thankfully Terry and I aren’t at the point where we want to beat her stomach. But Ryan was two weeks late. I can’t imagine going that long. I feel like we’re on low-key alert. Terry gets the flu – could be labor. I call someone – “Is Terry in labor?” We’re waiting… We’re waiting…

At some point a week after the due date passes, our OB/GYN will talk about inducing labor. Apparently the baby’s skin starts to slake off and the nails grow long, which could cause scratches on the baby and I presume in the womb. When the birthing class instructor told me about that, I pictured some zombie newborn crawling out of the womb and killing everyone in the room. Yes, I’m seeing a counselor. Why?

Anyway, I can’t wait for Ronan to be born. Also, I’m out of ideas for the blog.