A Million, Billion, Trillion Tiny Feelings Pt. 7

Notes from a father's first pregnany

June 19, 2017

Today was our first appointment with our doctor. He is young his face beamed with excitement when we told him Emily might be pregnant. The nurse took some blood and she and the doctor left us alone in the exam room for fifteen minutes. When the doctor returned, his smile was indomitable.

“You’re about eight weeks,” he said.

He assured us that there were several other options for our prenatal care but repeated several times how honored he would be to guide us through this process. We thanked him, told him we’d talk it over and walked back down the hill toward home.

Our house is in a quiet neighborhood right at the edge of the campus of the University of North Carolina, making our walk to their family medicine center an easy five-minute trek. As we walked home today, I pictured our future.

I imagined us at first holding the little wonder in our arms, walking up the hill for a checkup with him or her swaddled tight in a thin baby blanket. Then we’d push the massive stroller that brims with diapers and wipes and extra onesies and a sleepy infant or a crying toddler. Then, someday, we’d walk alongside our little boy or girl, holding their hand as we cross the big local highway that separates our neighborhood from the campus. Soon, he or she is a young man or a young woman, heading for their own physical before they head off to college. Then they’re adults, gently shuttling their mom and dad up the hill to our appointments. Maybe they move back home after college. Maybe they have their adventures in New York or Los Angeles or London and decide the come back home to where they were raised. Then they walk up the hill themselves, with their wives or their own bulbous, pregnant bellies, to see their doctor to talk about their little family. Someday, they’re middle-aged. Someday, they push our wheelchairs up the hill.

Someday.