Marie is exhausted. She’s getting up six times a night for bathroom visits. On Friday morning, Marie’s Apple watch informed her that she got 27 minutes of deep sleep. She’s tired all the time. She is less independent by the hour. By 3:30 PM, Marie can barely complete sentences. We’re not quite there yet, but I’m expecting a moment when she just points at something and says “That,” indicating that she wants me to fetch. I have to put her socks on and take them off. She’s slower. She has less endurance. That may seem like an obvious and unnecessary observation, but just two weeks ago, she was approaching ten miles on her morning runs. She was considering signing up for a half-marathon in month nine of her pregnancy. No longer. Her gait has changed. She now waddles. Her belly is now approximately 15% of her body mass so she’s leaning back whenever she moves. Her back hurts. Her legs hurt. Her breasts, her hips, her feet. Hurt.
And she’s happy. We both are.
We’ve turned a corner. This past week has been borderline exuberant at times. Things are coming together. We have a crib. We have a playpen. We have a dresser with a bolted-in changing table. We have diapers and wipes and onesies and bibs. We have a butt spatula. We have the cutest fucking socks I’ve ever seen. You could fit two or three Jolly Ranchers in them, max.
We’re getting excited.
For the past nine months, there’s been a fair amount of trepidation heading into Project Offspring. Even though we signed up for this with open eyes, there’s been consternation and even dread about the monumental paradigm shift that comes with parenthood. We’ve been focused primarily on two things:
Duty - the tidal wave of responsibilities that come with an entirely dependent being’s needs and the accompanying developmental ramifications and societal judgment if we fail to meet those needs.
Opportunity cost - all of the child-free fun we won’t be able to participate in for 18 years (as Reggie keeps reminding me.)
But this week, our perspective changed.
It started with a conversation with Finn, a friend and a first-time father of a nine-month old baby girl. I had asked Finn for advice and knowledge he’d garnered from the early months of parenthood. We struggled together for about ten minutes to do a telephonic mind-meld. He was struggling to synthesize everything that he’d learned in the past nine months into a handful of useful bullet points. And I was struggling to ask intelligent questions. It’s hard to ask for specifics and nuances concerning completely unfamiliar processes.
When the conversation ended, I started thinking about the wisdom of medieval guilds. For nearly every trade, apprenticeships — with the grades of beginner, novice, journeyman and master — were the standard method of education for hundreds of years. With most subjects, you don’t learn by asking questions. You learn by doing and making mistakes. The same must be true with raising children. Hopefully, the mistakes that we make won’t inflict too much permanent damage. But the most useful piece of wisdom that Finn imparted was also the most soothing. When he was describing all of the duties that he performed while his wife and baby were nursing and resting, what became clear is this: once the baby arrives, there’s no time to worry. All of the big picture hopes and fears that we’ve been obsessed with for the past year will immediately disappear under an avalanche of sleepless tasks — burping and cleansing and changing and feeding and grocery-store trips and pediatric appointments and laundry and laundry and laundry. None of that intimidates us. It’s actually a profound relief that we won’t have the luxury of fretting-time.
With our fears allayed (or at least postponed), we have more time for optimism. We’re getting really excited. We want to meet our son. We’re excited to learn his preferences. It’s still so weird that we have no idea what kind of personality that he’ll have. There are stereotypical personality traits that only children often have, but they are by no means guaranteed. Very soon, we’ll know his favorite toys, what puts him to sleep, what intrigues him, what drives him crazy. But right now, he’s just a question mark that kicks a lot. Speaking of which, he does seem eager to meet us.
Marie is pretty sure she has internal bleeding from the little monster. He’s found a favorite spot to kick on her right side in her lower ribcage. But he’s versatile. He’s also punching toward the birth canal as if plotting an escape. And he occasionally decides to perch for hours in a spot that sends constant throbbing pain down Marie’s sciatic nerve. The boy is getting stronger. He’s almost ready for the world. And it may be hubris, but we think we’re ready for him.
I may waddle through Costco, but I can still run 5 miles like normal...