Fear, Excitement, & 🍗

Recently, my wife and I were able to announce we are pregnant. Woo hoo! We are both definitely excited and looking forward to bringing our baby into the world. Given we are due in November, I am even going to give the baby an emoji in order to have a way to reference the baby. I’ll refer to the baby as 🍗. This seems to make the most sense since our little 🍗 could be born on Thanksgiving day.

However, plenty of life change comes with plenty of reflection. The part of all this I have been reflecting on most is my inability to get excited about this phase of the pregnancy. Last year, we were pregnant and we experienced a miscarriage. Before we miscarried, I was pretty much over the moon with excited for the next phase of our lives. This time, not so much. And my lack of excitement has been weighing on me.

As a matter of fact, I was even a little mad at myself for not being excited or overjoyed yet. I could not figure it out. I thought to myself, “I am having a child and I am not even excited about it. What is wrong with me?” Before I realized a couple things.

One, I am still a little hurt and afraid we will lose this baby too. My fears have mostly subsided given we are approximately eighteen weeks along. There are still some irrational fears in my mind. It hurt quite a bit to go through that pain. I will always look back on the end of last summer and remember the pain we went through. I am not crippled by the pain and it still does not control me. Obviously, I have been able to heal from the pain we felt and we are moving forward with our lives. The pain has left me timid but not destroyed and together, my wife and I have been able to overcome the pain and move on with our lives. The loss has left a mark on me.

Second, I am I do not have to be over the moon just because everyone thinks I should be and I do not have to conform to what everyone thinks is normal. I am who I am and I feel how I feel. I am excited. I am not excited to tell the whole world the ‘big news’ in my life. I am excited for this next phase of life. I never have been excited to share with a bunch of people the big or little things going on in my life. I am relatively private person. I am also a little too independent for my own good and one way it shows up is not wanting to share everything going on in my life, whether good, bad, big, or small.

Realizing these two things has set me free. I am now more excited to be a dad and to bring our little 🍗 into the world. I am still not excited to tell people, but I am getting better at telling people.

I am on a good trajectory and I am excited to see what the next chapter has for me as everything is about to change.

What pain do you carry? What does your pain stop you from doing? What does your pain hold you back from enjoying? How do you do with sharing what is going on in your life? Who do you share what is going on in your life with? Are there people you trust enough and you tell them everything going on with you and they reciprocate? Do you tell too many people? Do you tell not enough people?

Excited,

–JT

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Mama Bear

**DISCLAIMER: I am not pregnant and my wife is not pregnant in any sense of the word.** 

I am afraid of parenthood. For 1000 different reasons, I am genuinely afraid, both from the perspective of a healthy respect for something. My fears range from viewing a mama bear across a valley through binoculars, respecting the mama bears power and strength from afar; to, the genuine terrifying fear of someone who is fleeing from a mama bear after they accidentally stumbled into her and her cubs. 

Really, it is quite terrifying when I think about. I am bringing a small, miniature human into the world. My teammate and I are uniquely responsible for feeding them, clothing, changing, and appropriate nutrition. Then there are the psychological needs as well. We have to encourage them, love them, and provide the essential building blocks of human social interactions. All the while also maintaining their physical needs. I can’t divide these tasks between my wife and I. If one of us doesn’t do enough, in the physical or emotion needs then we have a disaster on our hands. And the thing that really gets my goat about it all, I don’t even know how good a job I did for 18 years? 20 years? 25 years? 40 years? The nail in the coffin is, there is no test drive, manual, or perfect recipe.

No amount of babysitting will ever prepare me for a lifetime of parenthood. 

Trial by fire. 

Much like our friend who is being chased by the mama bear, he only knows if he is going to live because is or is not caught by the mama bear.

Now that I’ve hopefully given you a glimpse of my minor apprehensions about having children, it is time for the coup de grâce in the conversation, “I do not get to set aside my own issues in order to rear this youngling.” All of my upbringing, good experiences, bad experiences, and brokenness will be present in the way I bring up this little “bundle of joy.” I do not get much of a choice in this either. 

Finally, we have the the wildcard in the conversation. Me and my friends.

I had a conversation with a friend about the contents I of the post and he picks it apart for me immediately. I had a conversation with a friend who knows me, who has lived with me, who has known me through my life’s struggles. He says to me, “Yeah, you really need to work through your stuff with your dad, it will make all of this so much better.”

How right he is. I am afraid of my children being negatively affected by my decisions and my wife’s decisions in the same way my life was affected by my dad’s decisions.

This is my friend who loves me and knows me.

Who knows well enough to point out where your hurts are dictating your decisions?

**DISCLAIMER: I am not pregnant and my wife is not pregnant in any sense of the word.**