New Dad

As a new Dad I've been given the advice to write down my thoughts. This is probably the absolute worst forum (public) to do it in because I am exhausted right (I'm surprised I didn't actually write "write" there) now, but here it goes.

Things are pretty fresh right now considering that 27 hours ago my first child entered this world. The range of emotions have been pretty intense. I wanted to try to remember this time in as much clarity as possible. I want to remember the feeling of seeing my daughter being born because it was more amazing and wonderful than my wildest expectations. I thought that I was going to be immune to that "magical moment" and had even planned a blog post about how I was cynical about the miracle of birth. It is somewhat too bad I didn't write that, because I would have been able to look back and seen I was dead wrong.

To give a little context, I came home from work on Wednesday night and was greeted with a pregnant wife telling me "if this isn't labor then I don't know what I am going to do." At 7pm I started tracking the contractions. It is kind of crazy how one gets when something so important is happening and you have pretty much the smallest role possible. For me, I take that one role extremely seriously and make sure that if I am asked to time contractions that I become the best contractions timer this world has ever seen. By the time 8pm rolled around I was able to inform the doctor about the length of time in between contractions, how long they had been going on and the duration of each one. The nurse that I talked to was impressed with my notetaking, which just confirmed in my head about my ability to write down numbers when M told me to.

Anyway, we drove to Riverside at around 8pm and once the nurses checked M out it was clear that this was the night. M gave birth to Lucy at 2:19am and it was the best moment of my life. Going in I was terrified about M being in labor, but it ended up literally bringing tears to my eyes. I am so grateful to have entered this stage of my life. And to know that I have friends and family that have already been so supportive makes the whole situation that much better. There will be many sleepless nights and frustrations ahead, but it will all be worth it.