On Parenting

Big happenings recently with people I know. One is three months pregnant, another is about to adopt a child, and another was engaged to be married today. Valentines Day 2006 was very interesting to say the least. As a married parent myself, I couldn’t be any happier for these folks! It harkens me back to a day when many things in life that I now enjoy were once very much unknown quantities. Once upon a time I thought that eventually I would like to settle down, get married, start a family. Those goals were very nebulous and not much effort was made to make them happen—they were definitely B-list priorities. To be certain having a child would make it easier for me to go to my favorite store, Toys R’ Us, and not look like a pederast. When my father passed away I experienced a profound sense of regret that I had not made any of those tenuous goals come true. My father, like his father before him, did not live long enough to see his first grandchild and that cold realization struck me like a sledgehammer to the forehead. Being the eldest child, it should’ve been my torch to bear.

Thus when my then good friend, soon to be partner, now wife told me about this time seven years ago that she was expecting, the news was greeted with a mixture of emotions. Hooray, I’m going to be a parent!! Oh my God, I’m GOING TO BE A PARENT!! This manic swing went on for about a month until that fateful morning we went to the doctor for the customary anatomy scan. This is done to make sure that no life-threatening deformities exist, and especially to make sure that the spinal column has developed and been closed off properly. We had decided to hold off until the outcome of the scan before we told anyone about the baby, just in case something was wrong. Thanks to other obligations, mostly my college class schedule, the anatomy scan would be the first time I would see the baby in real time on a monitor. The doctor conveniently seated me right next to the monitor so that I would have an unobstructed, front row seat. The monitor itself wasn’t very big, perhaps an eight inch sized screen, but it was good enough for me. As the doctor began prodding my wife’s stomach with the ultrasound device, grainy, undefined shapes began to appear on the monitor which slowly began to form the shape of an in-utero baby. And for the first time I saw my daughter move, apparently annoyed by the ultrasound waves; now she moves because she’s annoyed with other things, usually me or her mother. According to my wife, based on the look upon my face, although the child was only a few inches long, I became wrapped around her pinkie finger at that time.

As the months progressed, I learned some early lessons about being a father. The first one came at the baby shower, where the father is almost invited as an afterthought. The focus, rightly so, is on the mother and child at these functions. But I discovered that as the father, all sense of personal identity is forfeit. No longer was I a person with a name; I had become reduced to the lowest common denominator—the donor of half of the child’s chromosomes, including the all important one that determines gender. My work, apparently, was over. While wife and child enjoyed being known by their names, I was just “the father.”

As the due date approached, there were birthing classes to attend at the hospital—free if you planned on giving birth at the hospital! For the months preceding, the whole idea of a baby being on its way was something intangible. It’s hard to explain—you know a child is on the way, you receive the gifts and such, but for me it was not until we went to the birthing classes that the utter reality of an impending birth finally hit home. Perhaps it’s tantamount to a professional athlete who suddenly finds themselves in the post-season; the time for playing for fun is over, you’re now playing for all the marbles. The birthing class was my post-season, with instruction on breathing techniques during labor and how to perform basic maintenance on your child being my reality check.

After nine months of floating inside my wife’s abdomen (I made a similar comment at a birthday luncheon thrown for me by co-workers not too long ago, and I’m confident I unintentionally freaked one of them out when I said that), the baby came by C-section so much of the birthing class was wasted. But there are many things that the birthing class cannot teach you or prepare you for, and these are lessons that I’ve learned over the past several years. For example, they say you’re never more vulnerable than when you bare your soul to someone else. Rubbish. You’re never more vulnerable than when the baby’s diaper is off. At any given moment while you are in between diapers there’s a definite possibility of catastrophic explosive decompression of the bladder and/or bowel. It’s a lesson best learned once. My first solo diaper change took a risky few minutes; it didn’t take me long to cut down the changing time to something that would put most NASCAR pit crews to shame.

Feeding time is also a learning experience. More often than not a child will open their mouth because they’re ready for more food. Sometimes they open their mouth because they have a sneeze coming on. A child who sneezes with a mouth full of food has a very wide spray pattern and there’s no way you can avoid it. After you are done cleaning pureed peas off your face (or my personal favorite, the Fruit Medley dessert), be sure to check the ceiling; an eight foot ceiling is no match for a child who sneezes with a mouth full of food.

As the child gets older, there are other lessons to learn. No matter how hard you try, occasionally a “bad word” slips through and that’s the one they remember and will give it a test run at their daycare. There’s no such thing as a quick trip to the store; a shopping excursion that would normally take you about five minutes gets turned into an hour long affair as the child just absolutely HAS to check out the toy aisles. Eventually the child will learn to “play the game.” For instance, one morning I was taking my daughter to daycare before heading off to morning classes. She was between eighteen months and two years old at this point. From her car seat she said she did not want to go to school that morning, so I asked her why not. After a brief hesitation, she said, “Because I love you.” I had then and have now no doubt that she does love me, but that was the first sign that the child had learned to manipulate emotion for personal gain. She has a bright future in the worlds of business, marketing, or as an attorney.

For all the frustration that comes with a child, I do love being a parent. I wouldn’t mind one more child, to be honest, but I think that ship has sailed. So I will have to be content with the single child and try to raise her to be an upstanding member of society while uttering words and phrases that sound suspiciously like those I heard my own parents say to me some years ago. Why? Because I said so, that’s why!