I suppose that, in the grander context, I’m still a very very new parent. My adventure is just beginning. But, on the other hand, I’ve certainly had more experience changing diapers, getting a very…spirited baby to eat her food and operating on two hours of sleep than non-parents, expecting parents and even newer parents. Besides, it’s not like a million people read this blog and that I really feel acutely accountable for what’s on here sometimes. (“If you don’t like it, don’t read it,” I always say. Complaining about my complaining, being negative about my negativity, after these seven years, is like complaining that a pencil blog is about pencils or that I am hairy. Besides, negatively cathartic bitching is the first step to corrective action, in my mind.)
So, my own short and poorly written and incomplete and probably pretty inaccurate articles for new and expecting parents commences.
First: BE PREPARED TO WATCH YOUR WHOLE WORLD SHIFT.
I mean it. For one, in happens instantly. For another thing, it happens, which is to say, I felt like I watched it happen, like something deeply engrained enough in my me that I can’t control it or will it changed my entire worldview and priorities in a matter of seconds.
My wife has been my partner for my entire adult life and was the most important thing to me in the universe until 5:16am, April 16, 2010, when my daughter was born. I realized it when the team of doctors was — literally — sewing her up and putting everything back together (read the birth story here). There I was, blood all over the floor, my wife too drugged up to feel it and both of us too delirious to realize what was going on. Charlotte was getting weighed and measured after the team gave her to her hysterical mother. After that, when the nurses took Charlotte, I ignored my wife, largely. I hovered over the table until they gave Charlotte to me.
Then I walked over to the less busy part of the room, carrying my tiny daughter, where no one paid much attention to us, since they were fixing up Mama. We talked (I talked) and looked at one another. We bonded right away.
Then I realized that my wife was in bad shape when one doctor asked another, “Wait. Is that a vein?” It’s not that I didn’t care. It’s not that I wasn’t concerned. But with everyone hovering over and working on Mama, I was alone with Charlotte. She was all that mattered then and there. And I felt that my wife, though the most awesome woman in the world, was — for lack of a better phrase — second to my daughter on my list of values/priorities/cares. It switched while I didn’t even notice, in a bright room full of blood, scrubs and sleeplessness, while the sun came up over Baltimore.
This, of course, has extended into every other part of my life. Other people, even family members. Work. Volunteerism/service. Creative endeavors. Cycling. Reading. Everything. Charlotte is not only the most important being in my life. She’s also SO important that she occupies the importance of many entities. Rather than, say, #1 on my hierarchy of loves, she occupies at least #1-#20. This kind of tectonic shift, while “natural” me, has sufficed to piss a lot of people off, even other parents. No one wants to feel like you’re too concerned with other things to have the time/energy/patience for them. That’s another post, though.
