Ramblings of an Expectant Dad: Part 3

You know what? I think I'm getting to be okay with all of this. I don't feel stressed, or I at least don't feel as stressed as I had before. I've researched baby furniture, we've mailed invitations for the baby shower, and we've even started cleaning out the spare room so I can start working on the nursery. I got this.

 

Ultrasound technician: It's a girl!

 

*blink blink*

 

I…

 

*twitch*

 

Annnnnd thus goes out the window any sense of having my shit together. I mean… we're having a girl.

 

(OMG Stahhhhp. Girls are great!)

 

I know, but… it's a girl.

 

I'm gonna be a dad to a baby girl.

 

A. GIRL.

 

(Caps and italics? Alright, simmer down there, sport.)

 

Look, don't get me wrong. I am ecstatically overjoyed. My gut feeling since we saw two bars on the pee stick was that we were going to have a girl. I should have been preparing for this all along. But…

 

BUT…  

 

The reality of it hits you in the face when you look at the grainy image in a darkened exam room and see a whole lot of nothing dangling in the nether-region.

 

*Insert goofy dad grin here*

 

We're having a little girl. I'm gonna have a daughter. Daddy's little girl.

 

A DAUGHTER!!!!!!

 

This is the point in our story where the worrier in me comes crashing through my psyche like the goddamn Kool Aid man. I can't even begin to explain the whirling dervishes of emotion spinning through my head right now. The questions. The worries. The HOLY CRAP WE'RE HAVING A GIRL!

 

I mean… she's a girl, and I'm a guy, and I have to wipe the no-no zone. I know I'll be her father, and a parent, and that a bazillion dads before me have had to care for their infant daughters, but this is, you know, my daughter. Will I do it correctly? Down and away, right? That's how you do it? I think that's how you do it.

 

Dear sweet bejeebus I have to clean my kid's hoo-ha. There are support groups for this, right?

 

(There is something seriously wrong with you, you know that, right?)

 

*sigh*

 

Yes, I know.  But come on! Try and tell me that no other expectant dads out there have had the same revelation, the same thought process, the same apprehension.

 

(I… well… okay fine. I'm sure they have.)

 

See? I'm not alone. And honestly, knowing that I'm not alone makes me feel a little better. Now, on the subjects of boys and Mother Nature and the monthly visit from Aunt Flo and the birds and the bees and –

 

(None of that will happen for like… twelve to thirteen years!)

 

Hey! This is my daughter we're talking about. I need to be prepared.

 

(I give up.)

 

No you don't. If you were gonna give up on me you'd have done it long before now, but here you are, my dear readers whose thoughts I mimic parenthetically, still reading after all these years. Because you know that, at least in part, much of what I write is written in jest, and those portions that aren't are written in an effort to talk myself down off of my proverbial cliffs of insanity.

 

(I see what you did there. You better not start rhyming, I mean it.)

 

Anybody want a peanut?

 

(*facepalm*)

 

Of course she's going to grow up knowing The Princess Bride. That's a given. Although… Buttercup was kind of helpless in that movie. I'm not sure I want my daughter relying on Buttercup as a role model. She should have a strong, female role model. Maybe I should make her watch Aliens, or perhaps Terminator, instead.

 

(Dude!)

 

When she's older, jeez! When she's younger, though, definitely Star Wars. Princess Leia. Rey. Strong heroines. Scruffy looking nerf herders. Scoundrels. Wookiees.

 

(I… you're killin' me, Smalls.)

 

I know, I digress. Point being… I have a lot to think about. I'm gonna be a dad. I'm gonna have a daughter. Her mother and I not only have to raise a child, but a girl. We need to nurture her and ensure that she grows up to be a self-sufficient, strong, moral, intelligent, compassionate, empathetic woman so that she's capable of facing anything this world throws at her. And let's face it – given the current, political climate in this country, that could be damn near anything in the coming years.

 

We're going to do fine. We're going to slip up, fail, preserver, and triumph. I know that. But when you're facing it for the first time, it seems a Herculean task. Not insurmountable, but daunting nonetheless.  And yes, I get that every parent faces this same exact scenario… but I'm not every parent, and my child, my daughter, is not everyone's child. So spare me the "suck it up, everybody goes through it" speech. I'm going to ramble, and I'm going to blubber, and I'm probably going to post a bunch more of these in the next less than the square root o' sixteen months until my daughter enters this world. My words are my therapy, and my therapist.

 

One thing I know… one of the first pictures my daughter will ever see will be that of her beautifully radiant mother, standing calf-deep in the Mediterranean Sea, the breeze dancing through her hair and  playfully tugging at the hem of her dress, a content smile upon her face, with her hands accentuating the bump within which our daughter now resides.

 

Her first, female role model; one for which, on behalf of my daughter, I am eternally, blessedly grateful.  With that thought, I find peace.

 

Okay, at least a little peace…. I mean, I still need to worry about someone else's child pulling her hair in preschool.  Or, more appropriately when it comes to my kid… her decking the kid who pulled her hair in preschool. Because, well, many of you have met me, and some have met her mother…

 

*sigh*

 

We're gonna have our hands full.

 

T-Minus plus/minus one hundred and fourteen days.

 

I'm gonna have a daughter.

 

*uncontrollable grin*

 

A daughter.

 

 

 

© 2017 J.J. Goodman. All rights reserved.