Many years ago, I was a party to my first pregnancy scare with then-girlfriend Julianne. It was a life-altering event. It came up negative, but there was a certain “realness” to it all that gave me great pause when it came to my views on, among other things, the status of a fetus. I could write a post on the whole experience, but regardless of my views on the legality of abortion, my views of the stakes were forever change. In part due to a baby that I hoped did not exist, and didn’t.
It’s been different, this time around, since the pregnancy test came up positive back in February. The notion that we would have aborted was, and is, anathema. I view the thing that resides in my wife’s stomach as real… as many things. Maybe human, maybe not. Yet, for whatever reason, there is an abstractness towards it that I would never have guessed would have existed. It’s real, as I think of it, yet not real, as I feel it.
The pregnancy is real, but the baby is not. At first there was the fact that I had to mentally construct it. There was no such ambiguity for my wife. The fact that coffee suddenly tasted disgusting to her was proof enough. There was also the morning sickness. The need for even more sleep than usual. Her body was going through the changes, meanwhile I was hearing about the changes and nothing more. Eventually came the ultrasound, then a while later the heartbeat. This gave me more of a construct to work with. I have seen him JB move and wiggle like a kung-fu artist. I have seen JB cover its face with his arms. And I’ve heard the heart beating.
There is still a layer of abstraction, though, that I did not expect this far along. Even as her stomach starts to swell just a little. One more layer on the reality of the situation is that Clancy is now describing actions. When Clancy rolls over, little Jumping Bean squirms. She’s feeling movement, though nothing that I can feel yet. The notion of JB squirming had an effect. Suddenly it’s not just doing things in moving pictures, it’s doing things that my wife can immediately feel. And so another layer of abstraction is peeled.
I actually wonder to what extent it is that I am or have been afraid of feeling it. Back with Julianne, I had a more black-and-white sense of things and it either was or it wasn’t and I lived a Schrodinger’s Life, in two parallel realities where she was pregnant and she was not pregnant. But both were black and white. Right now? Well, Clancy is pregnant. There’s no question about that. Barring something unforeseen, I will be a father in five months.
Something unforeseen.
With Julianne, it was real or it wasn’t. If it was real, she would have killed it or she wouldn’t have. If she hadn’t, it would have survived to term or it wouldn’t have. Either I would have a life-changing baby in my arms or I would have avoided the baby I didn’t want. It was win-win, in a way. Had it been real and lost, I would have mourned the loss, but in a very different way than now. Now I want the baby. Now, it’s not an either-way situation. I want it. I want it. I want it.
And from the start, I’ve been scared of losing it. Rather than this engaging me more, it has lead to just a little psychological distance. The added abstraction. The parallel world where it is and it isn’t. Without indifference to being a father, the abstraction is the only defense I have. The only way that losing it wouldn’t crush me.
What I haven’t been able to get myself to realize is that it would, regardless. The parallel world where this is not happening doesn’t change that. However much it persists.
May nothing unforeseen happen. Healthy baby, healthy mommy. We all want that for you, Will. I’ve not the slightest doubt you’ll be an awesome father to the Bean.
Yeah. That’s the important thing. We got word of a very small potential abnormality (I’ll write more on it later, and the repercussions, when we know yea or nay). So small that they can’t agree as to whether it’s even there. Anyway, our thought keeps coming back to… this would still be a healthy baby. Not unrelated to the gender question. Boy or girl? We’ll just take healthy. With that, we have every reason to be confident that everything will fall into place*, regardless of the thoughts swirling through or head now.
* – Not that we think it will be easy!
+1 !
Worrying won’t do a damned bit of good, so don’t. Believe it: You are going to have a beautiful, healthy baby; you’re going to love em in a way you have never imagined possible; and e’s going to be so much a part of your life that the parallel world without em is going to be as vaporous a shadow as the one where you joined the French Foreign Legion.
So much this. And it won’t come all in one day, no switch flips. It will grow and change and when JB is a year old you’ll look back on those first few weeks and marvel at how your life with and love for JB has continuously evolved throughout that year.
Hi Will,
I’m just catching up on posts from summer now, and this really caught my interest. I empathize considerably with your characterization of fatherhood. A lot of my friends who don’t have kids have asked me what it’s like to experience pregnancy and birth (and, by extension, fatherhood itself), and I always tell them it’s like a person who has always existed is gradually revealed to us. And this process continues as the child grows up and becomes an adult. Contrast this with our mythos of a being suddenly coming into existence.
Best of luck to you! You have some fun and busy times ahead of you.