Dad's Diary: 12 Days Early?!

By Scott
BabyBlogAddict.com

With Jack nearing his third birthday, I've been thinking back lately to the day he was born. As prepared as we thought we were, that's how utterly unprepared we were. We took all the classes - child birth, breastfeeding and infant CPR - but nothing really gets you ready for The Day except The Day itself. For us, The Day came 12 days before it was supposed to.

Jennifer was as typically uncomfortable as a very pregnant woman could be, but we just chalked it up to her inching closer to the due date. We had never done this before. We didn't know she was actually having contractions during that episode of Lost. So the next day Jennifer went in for a scheduled appointment and never left. Turns out the non-stress test showed Jack was under stress (why do they call it a non-stress test anyway?) and needed to get out pronto. I had just gotten home from work when Jennifer called to ask if I wanted to have our baby that day.

In near shock, I muttered something like, "Do we have to? How about tomorrow?"

No dice. The baby wasn't waiting.

But we were supposed to have 12 more days! We had a farewell to D.I.N.K. (double income no kids) dinner planned at Ruth's Chris that weekend. I still had to buy the video camera. Was the nursey ready? It didn't matter. We were going to have our first child in about five hours.

I grabbed Jennifer's bag, zipped over to Best Buy to pick up the camcorder, then sped to the hospital. Total time from call to hospital arrival: 40 minutes. I was impressed. Soon after, Jack arrived into the world on a beautiful October evening. We had a son. Everything that happened before 6:01 p.m. that day didn't seem to matter anymore.

No, we weren't ready, but you adjust. We had a happy (relatively) and healthy baby that made us forget just how unprepared we were to be parents a few short hours ago.

So he's almost three. Where did the time go? Now instead of wondering when he'll get here and what he'll be like, I'm wondering about what food he's swiping from the pantry and if he'll ever actually tell us when he has to make #2.

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