I was huddled in the corner. I looked down at my feet. I couldn’t take it, my wife was spewing out the most awful screams I had ever heard, and I couldn’t handle thinking of her in that much pain. I started to feel faint.
“Are you ok?” the doctor asked in her funny accent.
“Yeah, I’ll be fine, I just need to sit a minute.”
We settled ourselves in the birthing room. The doctor came in to check on Morgan, she was 3cm. Only 1cm more than she had been all month. We were somewhat disappointed. We had hoped Morgan would be further along. It looked as though it might be a long labor.
Not if our doctor could help it.
Morgan had decided she was going natural.
There is one thing I hear like a broken record every morning.
“Daddy, can I watch a video?”
“No, not until Jonas takes his nap.”
“I ‘kink Jonas is tired.”
“He’s not, he has an hour before it’s nap time.”
“Elijah, do you want to get in the pool?”
“No ‘kank you.” He replies in his quiet, high-pitched voice.
“It’s just a giant bath tub.”
“It’s not a baff tub.”
I hate it when he out smarts me.
It’s early in the morning, 4:00 am, my wife likes to make sure our last free night before a new baby is one of little sleep. Her contractions are 4 minutes apart and are getting stronger.
“I think it’s time to call Jer.” My wife says calmly. Jeremy is our ride to the hospital. Wait, he’s more than that, he’s our translator, a big comfort in a our upcoming time of need,
If your baby wants to leave early, you don’t really have a say, you leave early.
The joy of your child learning to crawl is quickly overshadowed by the annoyance of him getting into everything and wanting to put it in his mouth. Mmmm dirty shoes.
Sleeping through the night only means sleeping till the crack of dawn.
The toy you see at the store that you know your child will love, he doesn’t. He’d rather play with the box.
I’m too old to spend that much time on the floor.
“You’re pregnant?” The steward franticly asked when he finally noticed my wifes belly.
Even though they rip you off on baggage these days we weren’t trying to smuggle an extra carry-on bag. The workers of EasyJet somehow managed to miss my wife’s bump until we were on the plane. The steward seemed in a panic, but he hastily had my wife sign some sort of waiver and was put to ease.
My wife was only able to eat the African equivalent of Animal Crackers for the first three months. This came as no surprise because she had the same problem with Elijah. It’s pretty unfortunate. Outside of her losing her lunch, and dinner for that matter, it had other perks. I had to cook my meals with the kitchen door closed then go eat them out on the balcony alone. The smell caused an unwanted reaction from Morgan. I also had the privilege of cleaning up the “reaction”, but I was still in a better position than her.
As Morgan went to take her umpteenth pregnancy test, I was secretly hoping for positive results. Sure the whole Christmas shaft was a drag, but how can you not get excited? I still refused to show any emotion. My wife was just a little loony and addicted to urinating on a stick. I couldn’t join in the insanity by hopping on the crazy train. This time Morgan’s intuition was right. There were two lines. I was tickled. We immediately jumped on the Internet to calculate the due date.
My wife and I sat down for the discussion about kid number two. We came to the conclusion that we were ready, but wanted to wait until the following month to start trying. If we dived in right away we would have a December baby. You see I had already vowed to never have December babies because I was fully aware they would receive the Christmas shaft. I could just picture their friends saying:
