What do toddler temper tantrums have in common with new homeowner problems and new-baby-coming “nesting” anxiety? An ironclad stranglehold on my life.
This week we’ve physically restrained/soothed a pants-less toddler on top of a potty chair, ordered all the groceries for a romantic New Year’s celebration (that’s right, pigs in a blanket), approved the installation of a water-drainage system in our basement, and washed an entire wardrobe of newborn hand-me-downs – and that was just on Tuesday afternoon!
Throughout the week we’ve also been taking down the Christmas decorations, unpacking the last few boxes, reshuffling our furniture, and inventorying which of our daughter’s things can be repurposed for our son.
The new changing table/dresser arrives tomorrow so that’ll at least clear a dozen piles from off my bedroom floor and check a few items off the ever-growing checklist my wife keeps filed inside her brain. At least once I assemble the damned thing.
Though our son (hopefully) won’t be here for a few more weeks, we’re already in the thick of it.
It surprised me how intense the final month of pregnancy got last time. This time, I’m expecting it though I don’t think it’ll make things any easier.
My theory is that pregnancy stages are cosmically designed as a father’s training ground.
From the father’s point of view, pregnancy starts with a delay to an ordinary routine that really has little to do with you (wife misses “lady time”) then eases into checking in on a loved one who has occasional bits of morning sickness or odd cravings.
This stage isn’t so bad. Sometimes you go on little adventures to find key ingredients or witness something no other person has ever seen.
During my wife’s first pregnancy I watched her disembowel a jelly donut because she craved jelly filling but had an aversion to powdered sugar. It was beautiful and terrifying like watching a turkey vulture regurgitate roadkill into its baby’s mouth.
Around the start of the third trimester, however, the urgency of these adventures switches and the tone is no longer one of, “ha ha ha, I want jelly because pregnancy is weird,” instead it becomes, “if this bag of junk isn’t taken to Goodwill, our baby will have no room to breathe.”
Pregnant women aren’t nesting to prepare their homes for the child, they’re doing it to prepare their partners.
Is it vitally important that the few bags for Goodwill tucked discreetly into a basement corner get donated TODAY!?
No!
But she wants them gone and probably shouldn’t be lifting them so here I am bringing an Aladdin soundtrack cassette to a disinterested employee at 7:30 on a rainy winter night.
Of course I resent being nested but there’s nothing I can do about it because of the whole “uncomfortably pregnant” trump card.
Anyways, it’s not so bad. At least it gives me a chance to drive around listening to the Aladdin soundtrack on iTunes.
I understand the nesting impulse. I will literally tear my home’s foundation apart at the seams (*by casually calling a licensed and insured contractor during my daughter’s nap time) in order to ensure my family is happy and safe.
But I also know how easily things can spiral out of control.
A few nights before my daughter came, I noticed some uncooked rice spilled in the pantry. When I brushed it up, I noticed the bag had been chewed. Then I noticed that the brown sugar bag had teeth marks too.
I pictured returning home from the hospital with a newborn baby and recovering wife to find a house overrun by mice and took drastic action conducting top-to-bottom inspections of the entire house.
A small amount of possible droppings on the opposite side of the house proved that we had a full-scale rodent invasion.
Even though it was almost midnight, I sped to Walmart and bought dozens of traps then stayed up all night cleaning and inspecting every item in our pantry.
In hindsight, I may have overreacted. My dozens of traps caught one mouse and it wasn’t even big.
How does one little mouse travel the entire length of our house? I don’t know, I’m not a mouse-ologist.
I don’t pretend to understand the ways of woodland creatures, but I know what I saw.
By the end of pregnancy, your wife is getting up every two hours to pee and either of you can burst into tears at any time. It really is the perfect training ground for living with a newborn.
When my wife so much as breathes differently I immediately ask “what’s wrong,” then offer her one of my four solutions: go to the hospital, take a bath, go to sleep, or eat something. It isn’t a coincidence that those are the only activities a newborn experiences in its first few months of life: it’s fate.
The journey from “is everything ok in there?” to “do we need to leave for the hospital?” is disorientingly quick but each step is essential to preparing fathers for the challenges they’ll face when soaring into a whole new world.
If you enjoy my humor writing, please subscribe below.
If you want to syndicate this column, you may contact me here to discuss the details.
You may notice that I’ve disabled commenting on this post. I’d love to hear your thoughts by email at [email protected].