The Dad Chronicles: A Dad is Born

On March 30th 2011 at 8:45 PM, my wife gave birth to our son Benjamin and in an instant (that instant being 19 hours of labor) we were no longer the hip, active couple from the previous summer. We had emerged from the limbo of expecting parents and entered the realm of mom and dad; our lives would never be the same.

Witnessing the birth of his child is the most unforgettable experience a dad can have. Any mother would of course say something like: Really? You should try GIVING birth. And of course giving birth, I’m sure, is a billion times more intense than witnessing it. But hey we’re men, bearing witness is all we can do. After helplessly standing around for hours while watching our partner endure what has to be the most indescribable pain unknown to man, we’re happy if we get to simply hold their hand as they squeeze out an entire human being.

So there I was, standing at my wife’s side as she used my arm for support while Benny was completing the last leg of his journey into the world. I can see him! I whispered in my wife’s ear excitedly when he crowned. His hair is brown! I said fascinated at his small, strangely oval head. Then one last press and suddenly he was there - a brand new person, who less than a year before, didn’t even exist! My eyes must have been big as plates and my jaw on the floor since of the things my wife remembers most, my expression is one of the clearest.

Benny announced his arrival with a loud cry and suddenly there was nothing more important than this tiny, helpless being now laying in his mother’s arms quietly taking in his strange, new surroundings as best his limited vision would allow. What are we going to do with him, I wondered. Already leaping decades into the future, my mind was flooding with questions: what am I going to teach him? What are we going do together? How do I keep him from becoming a delinquent? Finance his education? What about when he wants a car or asks where babies come from? Crap! Suddenly I was panicking, albeit silently.

You would think that this priority-shift would have already occurred once I knew we were going to be parents, but for dads-to-be, the reality sets in much later than it does for the expecting moms.
For me, reality hit when I first saw the two dimensional sonogram image of a small, human-like form of only a few centimeters in length happily kicking and turning in the weightless safety of mothers womb. Even after that I was sure there would still be time for my usual free time activities and “dadhood” – how naive of me.

It was clear within the first 2 weeks of being dad that Benny wasn’t always going to just lay there sleeping or being cute while I practiced the guitar, wrote or did anything else for that matter. And when he did, extreme sleep deprivation and exhaustion kept my wife and I collapsed on the couch like two gunshot victims.

A lot has changed sine then. Benny has filled with stress, laughter, sleepless nights, amazement, worry, weight gain and an indescribable happiness. Watching him grow from a fragile blanket-wrapped infant, whose range of abilities were limited to eating, sleeping and filling diapers with horrifying frequency to a laughing, smiling, mobile, highly vocal, affectionate, drooling personality has been the best time. The diaper filling however, not so much. No one tells you that not only do the loads increase with time, the contents become much scarier.

Our life has slowly started to stabilize enough for me to finally start processing my new role. Though I’m off to a late start recording the joys of being dad, we’re still at the beginning of what is sure to be a life long adventure and there’s bound to be more ponder.