Humor

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Growing Up is For the Parents
By Brad Rodgers

Recently, my wife and I found out the joyous news that she is pregnant with our first child. For someone who nearly wet his pants when he found out not long ago that Pudding Pops are making a comeback, I was slightly overjoyed. Everyone knows that it’s moments like that that you remember for the rest of your life. I can remember it all like it happened only six months ago. Absolutely elated upon hearing the news, I turned to embrace my wife only to find that she had retreated to the bathroom mirror where she would admire her stomach from every angle for the next seven hours. News like this is indeed life-changing. Exactly twenty-four hours after finding out the news, she claimed she could no longer fit into any of her hundreds of pairs of jeans. Two days after finding out, she began refusing to lift anything heavier than a Styrofoam cup. On the third day, I was coming home from work to a soundtrack of baby lullabye music that, at times, was calm and soothing, yet after four or five straight hours seemed to send me into a strange, silent rage. And through all of this change in our lives, we have learned a lot about ourselves.

We realized early on that neither of us was very good with a calendar. We could never keep straight how far along in the pregnancy she was – much to the dismay of our parents and fellow church members. If I know one thing in life, I’ve learned that every church member in your local congregation wants an update on the pregnancy status every Sunday. It really doesn’t matter that you just informed them one week ago and that tacking a week onto last week’s status report would provide them with an accurate answer. They want a concrete answer as of right then. And for several Sundays, we’d rack our brains in an attempt to provide an answer that was as precise as possible. However, after a while, something most parents refer to as laziness set in and we adopted a “stock answer” that was close to accurate and easy to remember. When we were asked, “How far along are you,” the correct answer was “Four months”. It became the convenient answer to the question. Maybe it was too convenient. Looking back, I think my wife remained four months pregnant for about two and a half months. Make no mistake, it certainly stunned more than a few senior adults when we suddenly changed the stock answer to “seven months.” “Seven months?” one lady asked. “But she was only four months pregnant last week!” What can I say? They grow up so fast.

We also soon came to the realization that we have very different views on what makes a good name for our baby. The names I proposed were normally mainstream, well thought-out, sentimental choices, while hers were normally silly and ridiculous. For instance, I recently suggested that we name the child “Larry” after my childhood basketball hero, Larry Bird. She wasn’t buying it, though. “Brad,” she says, “Larry isn’t a very pretty name for a little girl.” Well excuse me for living! Maybe we should just name her one of her sissy names like April or Isabella!

We have discovered much as a couple over the last six months and continue to grow together. My wife has absolutely been an emotional rock through the whole ordeal, suffering through my cravings, sleepless nights, and the seemingly endless desire to talk in undecipherable baby code at odd times. Of course, I have been there for her, as well. Recently, during a rare time in which she was weak and bemoaning her inability to lie on her stomach, I reminded her of other things that she couldn’t do such as jumping jacks or other strenuous exercises. Then I gave her a slice of cake. As we’ve grown together and learned about this situation called pregnancy, we’ve been able to shift more of our attention from our struggles now to our new goals after our daughter is born. Much to our benefit, we have received advice from leaders in health care, as well as people much more experienced in the field – our mothers.

For instance, I have been informed that, even before the baby is born, I should begin talking to her. Coming from someone who doesn’t remember what was said to me while in the womb and finding out that, despite being talked to a great deal while in my mother’s stomach, I still could not speak proper English upon my birth, I’ve always been a little skeptical. People (her mother) have been telling me that the baby will recognize my voice better once it’s born if I talk to it through her stomach. How would anyone know that? Besides, for some reason, whenever I get around babies, my voice automatically raises two full octaves and I begin substituting my “L”s for “W”s. Not to hurt anyone’s feelings, but I don’t want my baby recognizing that voice. And I greatly fear the damage done should she pick up on my “baby grammar”. After all, it’s that baby-talk that I blame for the fact that, until I was four years old, I pronounced “root beer” as “rubber bear”.

Another piece of advice that we’ve received from experts (her mother again) is that my wife should remain steady. We were told that, if my wife cried a lot, the baby will cry a lot in response after it is born. Apparently, whatever my wife does in excess during the pregnancy, the baby will do after it is born. So, in order to give the child a leg up on her education, I have put my wife on a two-hour per day regimen of reading and long division.

But quite possibly the greatest advice that we’ve gotten thus far and the advice that we always want to remember, is to enjoy this time as much as possible. Pregnancy is beautiful and should be celebrated by the couple. And I must admit that I love the fact that my wife has invited me on this long, wonderful eating binge with her. I love the prospect of tea parties with my daughter where I drink air from a plastic cup, smile, and say, “Mmmmm. Good.” And above all else, I look forward to overcoming my life-long, absolute hatred for the color pink, which I believe was created to have a similar effect on the human male that the color red has on bulls. Regardless, little Larry...err...Isabella is set to make quite a splash into our lives. I’m already filling up the kiddie-pool.

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