My Room?

Now comes setting up the baby's room. You know, the baby's room. No? Oh, you're not familiar with this room? Well, perhaps you'll recognize it as what it's currently known as--your music room. It's the extra room that you proclaimed as your own when you moved into your house. It's the room that you use to escape to when your wife was watching some bulls**t movie on the Lifetime network, usually starring Judith Light from TV's "Who's The Boss?" that deals with how horrible men are. Now that room, your sanctuary, is going to be covered top to bottom in fluffy bunnies and baby accessories.

--From "The Guy's Guide To Surviving Pregnancy, Childbirth and the first year of Fatherhood" by Michael Crider.


OK, it ain't that bad. And keep in mind, this book I just quoted--while completely hilarious--has a positive review from Jenny McCarthy slapped on the cover. Anyway, with a newborn coming into a condo, one thing that pops into my mind is space. My space. No, not MySpace, but space that is mine. I call it the office. It's that room filled with collectible toys, graffiti paintings, loads of hip-hop magazines and lord knows how many CDs.

I need to take one for the team, I thought. After surveying my kingdom, eh, the "office," I realized that I had a few too many CDs on the racks. So, I parted with 317 of them on e-bay, sold to a kind gentleman in Michigan. (Don't worry, you wouldn't have wanted any of these.)

Here's a portion of what left the condo:


This might be hard to believe, but I just uncovered about 100 more that should have been sold as well. Look for more goodies on e-bay soon. This probably sounds absurd, but I've been called worse. I consider this my ultimate act of humility and offer profuse apologies to the artists I had to part with including Snoop Doggy Dogg, Ice Cube and even--**sniff, sniff**--Nine Inch Nails. Sorry guys.

Advice: No's 1-3

Since pregnancy can be both a wonderful and nerve-racking experience, I'm guessing it's normal to be somewhat nervous about what lies ahead. Thankfully, it's easy to stay calm through a technique I've encouraged my wife to practice--simply take a look around when you are in public. Everyone you see is a result of pregnancy and most are doing fairly well--even if those cousins and uncles are a bit off balance (not our families, of course).

This brings us to this first of many entries on advice. All these people you see--it doesn't matter if they know you or not--they're more than willing to tell us about having a baby and what to expect. There's lots of unsolicited advice to be had and at even at its worst, it's quite interesting. What follows are the most recent bits of advice we've received. The quotes will remain anonymous to avoid antagonizing our friends and relatives.

1) "If you have a boy, nothing you own will be yours anymore. Kiss it all goodbye."
I guess that means my kid could be potentially swiping piles of rap magazines and What's Happening DVD's.

2) "Buy diapers. Lots of 'em."
This one's pretty straightforward.

3) "Ignore anything you read in those pregnancy books." --received three times thus far!
See honey? This is why I haven't finished this one.

Stay tuned for more advice! Feel free to send some in. Believe me, we need the help!

And they say...

Men cannot be pregnant.

Tell that to Val Kilmer.

What's Up Doc?

I had my first OBGYN visit this week. He looked me over and declared me to be a man. Really though, I went with Jess to get a rundown on her pregnancy.

Let's just say I was a wee bit uncomfortable in this type of doctor's office. The main problem with our surroundings wasn't the pregnant women though, it was the lack of entertaining periodicals. Where's the Sports Illustrated? I'd even have settled for a copy of Us Weekly! Guess SI isn't read too frequently in there. They did have copies of Parenting, Motherhood, Fatherhood, Pregnancy and Cat Fancy--if I remember right.

After we were ushered in, our Doc asked some basic questions. Thankfully, are you pregnant wasn't one of them. (I obviously didn't know what to expect.) After a short while, he got out what looked like a Fisher Price My First Microphone set and placed it on our baby's current home--my wife's belly. He announced that we'd be hearing our baby's heartbeat soon. He also said that sometimes it takes a while to find amongst all the stomach rumbling (OK, he didn't say that last part.). After a few minutes passed of sounds that weren't far from Jaques Cousteau's undersea recordings, he playfully complained that Jess was his first patient of the day and he hoped it wasn't indicative of how his Monday would go. Finally, we heard the heartbeat. While visions of E.T.'s glowing red heart bounced through my brain--don't ask why--we heard something like a choo-choo train (i'm trying out my babyspeak). There, it was evidence that something was in there. Doc also told us that a sonogram is a waste of money at this point because it doesn't tell you anything.Wow! A competent, no-nonsense dude that's out to save us a buck--sounds good. Mr. M.D. strikes a balance somewhere between frugal and fantastic, so we're quite happy with him.

We'll provide another medical update in about a month. Maybe I'll bring my own copy of SLAM.

Our library

This is our library. I call it the "Tower Of Titles." Thankfully, it's not a leaning tower.

Yet.

If you ever need books on pregnancy--and this isn't even getting into "baby" books yet--please come see us. We have 9 to choose from. Want the womb? We got one. Need to know what to "expect"? Check. Need to know what dad's are supposed to do? Got ya covered.

At least we're not in double digits.

Yet.

Hopefully we can learn something from these books. We're probably going to learn a heckuva lot on the fly.

Have any advice for us? Post a comment!

Full disclosure--some of these books were given to us.

How It Happened...

For some background, lemme tell you how this all happened.

No, not that.

Trust me, you wouldn’t even want to know that anyway.

The first thing to note is that I didn’t believe my wife was pregnant. When she announced she’d missed her period, I scoured our place and tried to find it the missing punctuation point. (And people say I don't help around the house!) No luck.

Next, I got a pregnancy test. After she doused it with urine and we waited half a minute, it read “+.” I got another one. Make that another three. All positive.

After spending close to $100 trying to confirm the same thing several times, I still didn’t believe it. My wife set a doctor’s appointment and I waited for the official word. This is how my mind works–I wasn’t convinced, even after shelling out the hundred bucks. When my hapless Redskins are favored to win, I’m wholeheartedly convinced they’ll prevail. When I’m staring at multiple positive pregnancy tests, I’m doubtful. Figure that one out.

Maybe the tests were error prone–hey, they’re only 99.5% effective! I’ll admit, the odds were slim that we weren’t going to have a new addition, but it was only when she came home from the doctor that I accepted it.
She called me immediately and the thought that first entered my head was wow! There were times in my life when I never thought I’d be in this situation and here it was.

I’m Gonna Be A Daddy!