I thought it would be a good idea to ask some of my friends to write a few guest posts for my blog to get some different points of view. I started with my friend Matt Wiggins because he is about to become a first time father, literally any second. He wrote the following as the 'Before' post and he'll be writing an 'After' once the after happens. One of my best friends on the planet also became a first time Dad a few short weeks ago and he has written a post for me that I will be putting up tomorrow night. I've asked some other folks, and have a few more in mind. I hope you enjoy, the rest of this post is Matt's writing.
As a relocated Ohioan living in the South, I’m still unnerved by people I don’t know smiling at me. Granted, it doesn’t happen all that often (Charlotte is really an annex of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York), so I was doubly unprepared for all the smiling that started happening when I was out in public with my wife when she was about 6 months into pregnancy. (It only took me a few weeks to realize that they were smiling at her, not me.) There were knowing smiles from veteran moms and dads and sympathetic smiles from other pregnant moms and it was generally a pleasant experience.
Until a week ago. At this point we are only a few days from her due date and the smiles she now gets are nervous, apologetic smiles. For instance, last Saturday we were in the ice cream aisle of the grocery store (where else?) and a young woman and her friend entered the aisle talking to each other and did not notice Lisa’s belly until they were nearly even with us. But when she did, I felt the breeze from her head whipping around. Her raised eyebrows and wide eyes could be easily be translated as saying, “WE GOTTA GET OUT OF HERE, SHE IS ABOUT TO HAVE THAT BABY RIGHT NOW!” When the baby didn’t pop out a second later, she caught herself and shared that aforementioned nervous, apologetic smile. If we had been thinking ahead, we could probably have gotten parents of teenagers to pay us to visit their house and scare their children into abstinence.
However, that’s not the only change I’ve noticed. Chris and I know each other through the WWII reenacting community and two weekends ago we attended a living history event. Most of the guys there know that Lisa and I are expecting and generally conversation steered towards the topic of our imminent bundle of joy throughout the weekend. This was dramatically different from the reenactment I attended a month before our wedding where the highlight of marital conversation was: “Get out before seven years, after that alimony’s a bitch.” Nope, this time around guys who I have known for years, guys I have spent many hours, if not days, conversing with about guns, tanks, battles, helmets, bayonets, beer, and other manly stuff, suddenly got all googly-eyed and sentimental, whisked away to the birthdays of their own children.
But that’s not the strange part. The strange part is the consistency of their message, especially since it’s not just guys I know from reenacting. I’ve been hearing since our first announcement how “everything’s going to change” and, “It’s the best and hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.” In the last few weeks I can add to that: “There’s no way to describe the experience of birth,” and “Sleep as much as you can now.” And I’m not just talking a few guys here and there, I’m talking about dozens. All saying the same things. With the same goofy smiles.
Now when that many different people who don’t know each other keep saying the same things, there are two possibilities. First, it’s a conspiracy to trick unsuspecting expectant fathers into pleasant expectation as some sort of twisted revenge for what other fathers did to them. Or second, there is something incredibly unique and transcendent about fatherhood that goes beyond differences and unites all men into one sacred brotherhood. Actually, that solves it. Just typing that out convinced me it has to be a conspiracy. Guess I’ll find out soon enough.
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