You’re Going to be a Dad!“You’re going to be a Dad!” she said as I walked in the door. What? I thought.
I mean, sure we were trying to conceive, and we’re certainly ready – but it was still big news to hear. Becoming a Dad was always something on the horizon, something I definitely wanted but didn’t actually think the day would ever arrive. We are both in our early (read ‘mid’) thirties and knew that we had better get cracking on this whole family thing, but this was that moment where the beginning of the end of the extended adolescence, um …began.
Like many of my friends, I go out whenever I (we) want, play vids, drink to excess (on very special occasions only of course) and generally live the life of the autonomous twenty-something, despite our advanced age. But this was going to change all that. I had better get ready for new priorities, new challenges, new expectations – both of myself, and from others - and I hadn’t even taken my shoes off yet.
Fast forward a few hours and it was still sinking in. I was getting more excited and we were thinking about the bright future of starting our family when the second wave hit me: we still had a long way to go first. We couldn’t just start telling people, we had to wait. Wait for the ultrasound (the first of many), wait to make sure everything was ok, for certain milestones to pass. Of course, during the holidays – when one suddenly is not having any wine – eyebrows are raised, and the cat is scratching to get out of the bag.
We told my Mom first – just to release some of the pressure of keeping what has to be the biggest secret of our lives – and from there it was a few people here and there until the first ultrasound happened. The one where I heard that tiny rapid heart beating for the first time, when I saw the grainy image of blobby dots knowing that one of them was going to be my son or daughter. Then we were set to… wait for the NEXT ultrasound, the BIG one. The one that you tell people after. The one with the grainy picture that makes it very clear you have a growing child and then the fact of your impending parenthood takes a new shape – I already have a kid, it just isn’t born yet. Wow.
That was much like that first night I came home to find out we were pregnant – except like my life ‘before’ when parenthood was always in the future, this time the actual baby was always in the future, I was just a ‘Dad to be’ but now… whoa. It still hits me, I am a Dad. Our child is just relaxing on the sofa next to me, he or she can hear me when Canada scores a goal, or when I can’t seem to stop singing a jingle that’s stuck in my head. More to come, I am going to go think about this – I really can’t stop.
I’ll be back in 2 weeks with more, I have a feeling there’s a lot to discover.
-- Chris Elsworthy
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