Top Tip: When your wife is nearly at her due date do not attend pointless seminar’s especially with an uncharged phone.
Before we found out, I had a feeling my wife, Rachel, was going to tell me she was pregnant. We’d had a test a couple of days earlier that came back negative but I still had that ‘gut feeling’. It certainly warmed me to the idea when I saw how upset my wife was, that it wasn’t positive. It also made me realise a child is the greatest thing that can happen to a happy couple. The fact we’d been married with a home had me struggling for excuses why we shouldn’t have a baby anyway. After all we were in love, happily married with a nice place and we were financially stable(ish). We were luckier than most. We took another test because my wife ‘just knew’. Apparently, home urine tests only show positive results 12-19 days after ovulation, you guessed it…it was a positive.
Growing up the thought of impregnating a lady filled me with dread. I always had a negative attitude toward the whole idea. Firstly due to difficult times within my side of the family. Secondly due to the schoolboy mentality that “girls stink!” amongst LADs and that you should never tie yourself down with kids. I could also barely look after myself, let alone another, smaller, more mobile human being reliant on me for survival. I had tried to do it once or twice before, taking care of my little sister, but was quickly removed from duty after an incident in a Florida Walmart. Yes, at the ripe old age of 2, my little sis wandered off whilst under my supervision (I was looking at wrestling magazines). After sprinting past my hysterical parents, I found her in the gun section. She was fine, I reckon it was a lot of fuss about nothing, I was 18. Yes, 18! Fast forward 11 years and I felt no more prepared.
During our pregnancy, barring one (minor) drunken meltdown which involved chucking slices of pizza and slavering on in the kitchen about how my life was over (stay with me, I’m not always this horrendous!), I managed to keep these insecurities well under wraps for the most part.
From experience I’ve learnt that as the due date draws nearer you’ll find yourself doing lots of waiting around, twiddling thumbs, waiting to bound into action like a coiled spring. Also, battling peer pressure and avoiding any social event that could lead to debauchery as a drunk Daddoo-to-be can’t drive his wife to the hospital. Similar to the time I attended a social media seminar around the 8-month mark, around Christmas, when Rachel got carted off in an ambulance from her place of work.
She happens to work in a school, and rumours quickly circulated amongst the kids and parents that my wife had given birth on the school floor and called the baby ‘Jesus’. I was none the wiser as my phone had run out of battery rendering me uncontactable. So I was sat in a plush hotel sipping on a lime and soda listening to information that I possibly already knew and more possibly would never use again. It was only when I returned home, charged my phone and found, to my horror, seven missed calls from the in-laws, that I realised I’d made a huge mistake. When I rang back I was mortified at what had happened and took a deserved, stern telling off from my wonderful mother-in-law.
I learnt my lesson and dug out a portable phone charger which I’d received two years previous for any future emergency charge situations. Needless to say I’ve never been back to a social media surgery. Come to think of it I’ve never used that portable charger either – I think it may still be in the car.