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Getting Ready For The Newcomer
There comes a day in most couple’s lives when the news arrives: there is going to be a newcomer in your comfortable lives. This news is greeted with both trepidation and happy anticipation by most couples. No matter how much you’ve planned for the day, you rarely feel quite ready for a baby’s impending arrival.
The pregnant mother has one advantage over the father: she is constantly reminded of the fact that something is growing inside of her. The father just sort of takes her and the doctor’s word for it. If he was not the sole provider before the pregnancy, he is likely to be, at least for awhile, after the baby comes.
A feeling of dread sometimes spoils the joy of pregnancy, at least on occasion. The mother doesn’t think she’s going to be able to cope with nine whole months of being pregnant and the father doesn’t think he’s going to be up to the demands of fatherhood.
Fortunately, most of us get a grip and get to work. Long before the baby arrives, we go out and look at the latest baby cribs and other baby necessities. If we haven’t gotten serious about our careers, we kick ourselves in the butt and ramp up our efforts.
We start to make sacrifices in anticipation of the arrival. Instead of buying that new bedding collection for our room, we use the money to buy the crib instead. Even before the baby arrives, it becomes more important than we are and we adjust accordingly.
Sure, the husband isn’t thrilled about the fact that he’s going to have to put off buying the husqvarna chainsaw he’s had his eye on. Nonetheless, he does put it off, usually without complaint. He knows he didn’t really need it that much anyway.
Babies are not real to fathers until they are born. Before that, they just have happy fantasies about kicking a ball around the backyard with their son or walking hand in hand with their pig-tailed daughter. The fact that babies are helpless little creatures who don’t think twice about waking you up at night or peeing on your good pants when they’re sitting on your lap is only a distant concept until it actually happens. Fathers aren’t the ones who feel the baby growing inside, so thinking of it as an infant doesn’t really come naturally to them.
Just as a mother doesn’t have to think about feeding the baby who is growing inside her, since that happens automatically, neither does the father really have to think about how he is going to fulfill his role. It just happens. You do what you have to do and as the billions of babies who have managed to survive until adulthood can testify, we parents usually do alright.