A while back, I had to write something about what defines me. Below is what I came up with and I think is somewhat entertaining in a reflective way...
About a year and a half ago, I came to the realization that I had spent my entire life being incredibly selfish. Strangely enough, it was that exact same time when my wife and I had our first child. WE named him Ed Jr, although my wife accuses me of having picked out that name in the second grade. Shortly after the birth, we received phone calls and letters of congratulations from all of our friends and close family, except one.
That one person is my good friend Mike, who at the time had a one year old daughter. Instead of calling to wish me congratulations, or anything relatively appropriate, his statement was, don’t worry man, “it gets better.”
Being that I had just become a proud father, I was stunned and appalled at his statement. Considering that Mike and I have been friends for long time, I took several minutes to use my exceptional vocabulary of swear words to tell him how much I appreciated his support. After I got done venting, Mike calmly explained that I soon would forgive him and very soon I would understand exactly what he is talking about.
To provide you a little background about myself, I have spent the better part of my life recreating and having fun. The rest of my waking hours I have spent working so that I could afford to have fun. I’m also the youngest of three boys, so prior to the birth of my son, I had never changed a diaper nor held a baby that couldn’t hold its head up. To be honest, I was a little afraid of babies. For 34 years, I had successfully managed to avoid being responsible for one, even for a short period of time.
It wasn’t just babies themselves that I feared, but also the dreaded PEEPOOP. The combination of pee and poop.
Anyhow, I knew that I could overcome my fears. What choice did I have? Being a guy, I also have a tremendous ability to rationalize things by disillusioning myself. I figured that the bobblehead would only last a few weeks since I knew that Jr. and I would be throwing the football around and going fishing by 6 months. Heck, he’d probably be able to go rafting as early as three months. A raft is just an inflatable playpen, right?
As for the PEEPOOP, how many times a day can an 8 plus pound baby go to the bathroom?
Now I had heard from a lot of people about the lack of sleep associated with raising a child. They were just wimps, I concluded. I can drink beer until midnight and wake up at 5 in the morning to go hunting. Both days of the weekend, no less.
We brought Jr. home from the hospital and it was truly a happy day. My wife and I were certain that we were prepared. We had the nursery painted and child appropriate art in place. The crib and changing table were set up. We were stocked up on diapers and wipes, had a baby first aid kit, and had more toys, clothes, and random things that we could ever need.
Additionally, we had read a bunch of books, which were very informative and truly disturbing in that they mostly explained all of the things that can go wrong with your child before and after birth. Good stuff to know, except when you are a brand new parent and now have enough information to become an obsessive compulsive hypochondriac on behalf of your child.
I still remember Jr’s first night at home. We were getting him ready for bed, we changed his diaper, zipped him in his amoeba-like blanket sack, and laid him down in the co-sleeper. And that’s when the crying really started. For the next several hours we tried everything we could think of to get him to sleep. Finally, at about 2 AM, he was sound asleep in his aluminum framed rocking swing that was placed in the dead center of our bed.
I only had about six inches of space to sleep on, but I didn’t care. There was no chance that I was going to move the swing or the baby. Sleep was what I needed and even though my wife and I were fully exhausted, I think we both woke up every fifteen minutes or so to make sure that Jr. was OK. That was until about 5:30, when the crying started again.
Needless to say, it took only ONE night for reality to set in. The reality being that we had no idea what we were doing, that we had a lot to learn, and that life as we knew it had just changed forever. It was at that point when I realized that I had spent the first 34 years of my life being incredibly selfish. The even harsher reality was that I needed to change overnight. From that point forward, I had to put the baby’s needs first, my wife’s needs second, and MY needs came just slightly before the dogs.
Day after day, as we gained more experience and learned more, we became better parents. I overcame my fear of peepoop after several occasions where I was pooped and peed upon while changing an uncountable number of diapers. As far as sleep, there was a long time when there wasn’t a whole lot of it, but as of recently, Jr. is sleeping through the night. Just last night, I actually got about seven hours of solid, uninterrupted, and joyous sleep.
My recreational habits have changed quite a bit as well. As opposed to running big whitewater and going on death march hikes, we bought a camper and spend a lot of weekends camping. We take short hikes, and do some fishing, but mostly we just enjoy watching Jr. experience all kinds of new things.
We also took Jr. rafting on a calm stretch of the Blackfoot this summer. The first 20 minutes were pure happiness and the last hour was filled with anger and discontent.
Every time we go on family adventures, we gain a little more experience, and learn some tricks that make each trip a little better. My buddy Mike was right, it gets better.
Now Jr is almost two and we have #2 on the way. Sleep is a crutch :o)
