For all our fear and trepidation, on the eve of our child’s birth my wife and I felt prepared. We’d done our homework. A quick glance at the books piled by our bedside would have revealed us to be noted authorities on parenting. She’d read dozens of tomes with brush script-fonted titles such as Fabulous Baby Yes for You, the kind that dispenses highly judgmental guidelines on precisely what weight your child’s elbows should be, every nine minutes of its life. Being a man, I was left with more masculine fare, books that interspersed calming pictures of speedboats and rugby with easily digestible reminders that I was not, under any circumstances, to eat the baby.
We were prepared. We downloaded apps that used cutting-edge scientific formulae to compare our unborn child to different fruits or vegetables each week. We even switched to locally made apps when American veg names like zucchini and eggplant began to annoy.
We were surely overprepared. We’d woven the fabric of time itself around our preparations by going 10 days overdue before entering the hospital for our induction. To me, this marked an extra 3.57% prep time, a sort of deluxe gestation experience that I would term Pregnancy+. I believe the doctors only decided it was time because their apps suggested there were no veg left to which our child could be reliably compared.
And we came prepared. Knowing it was important to pack the bare essentials for our trip to the hospital, I learned to pack better so I could bring the bare essentials for several trips. My wife’s skill for placing objects inside one another borders on interdimensional. She could fold a pint glass into a pencilcase and drink its contents on arrival. If I placed a single plectrum in an empty briefcase, it would take six men to close it. I studied her art. I learned her ways. And I brought damn near every object we owned.
And we made great use of the sad little newsagent on the hospital’s ground floor. Soon we were resplendent with chocolate bars, handheld fans and trashy mags. Her contractions began while she was boning up on the dental hygiene of Belgium’s royal family. When full labour finally kicked off, she was midway through a piece about a family in Dunbarton who craft pubic wigs for the ghosts of death row inmates.
Our son arrived three days later, bringing our Pregnancy+ bonus to a truly aspirational 4.64%. Surrounded by fans and chocolates and magazines, his screams sucked cold air into a triangular mouth, and he stared right through us with bright, black eyes. His tiny red chest heaved against my thumb, and the millions of tiny white hairs, all matted with blood, waved slowly under antiseptic lights.
Gazing at him with the realisation that his every eyelash, fingernail and arm-fold was an inexplicably momentous event, my mouth went sideways and my eyes burst into liquid like over-ripe cherry tomatoes on a Wetherspoons salad. I was not prepared.
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