A Million, Billion, Trillion Tiny Feelings Pt. 8

Note from a father's first pregnancy

July 9, 2017

The sickness has arrived in earnest. Emily has spent the last four days in bed, under the covers, leaving bed only to vomit in the toilet. She’s assured by those of our friends and family who’ve had children that, while this is the most intense and life-disrupting phase of pregnancy, it is fleeting. Twelve weeks they say.

 “Just get to twelve weeks and you’ll start feeling better.”

That’s three weeks from now.

I run to the store and get her ice pops and Gatorade. I change and wash the bed sheets regularly. I rub her back as she hovers over the toilet and sometimes I try to make her laugh in between the deluges of bile.

I find myself growing more caring and attentive than I ever have been with little thought, effort or anticipation, like some long-dormant instinctual switch inside of me has been turned on. It’s almost as if I can feel her pain, and not in the physical sense. Rather, I can feel what she needs. I can anticipate what is going to make her moments just a little bit better. I guess my mind is getting ready to be a father.

A father.

I hadn’t really thought of that term for myself until just this moment. Of course, I’ve envisioned and replayed a million other scenarios in my head, from the mundane to the exultant, none of which included my official title as “Father.”

I’m going to be someone’s father soon.

Until then, I’ll be husband to a wife who is very sick, very exhausted and in dire need of respite.

July 11, 2017

We saw you for the first time today, kid. We saw your face, your ears, your arms and legs. We saw your brain and the way you were laying down in your mom’s belly. We saw the cord that connected you to her, that fed you life and let you grow.

But it was your heart, your tiny little heart, pumping furiously on the grey-black screen of the ultrasound that made me lose it.