And All Of A Sudden, We Were Pregnant
I can remember very clearly the evening we found out we were going to have our first baby, it is something that will be with me forever. It was a moment of shared bliss which unexpectedly brought my partner and I closer together as a couple, and sent us on a new journey of discovery and joint purpose. This is the way the event unfolded for us.
We don't live close to family, they are all at least a short flight away. This has is advantages and disadvantages. One of the definite pros though is we have a constant stream of visitors coming and living with us for a week or so. Its really nice.
It was January 2008 that we started to suspect that we were pregnant. We actually had my parents staying with us at the time, so we didn't purchase a pregnancy test until after they had departed.
So Mum and Dad left, we bought a pregnancy test, my wife went into the bathroom. She followed all the instructions and then, amusingly, fled the scene. All courage had departed, she couldn't look at the results. I found her in the lounge with her head buried under a pillow.
So I wandered into the bathroom to discover the telltale additional lines, our first baby was on the way. I headed back into the living room with a huge grin on my face and was met by a barrage of demands. Demands that I tell her immediately and to stop holding out on her. So I sat down beside her and softly said "sweetheart, we are going to have a baby".
This sparked a bevy of activity. She leaped off the couch and bounded into the bathroom to see for herself. When I arrived behind her, she was jumping up and down in excitement, then settled into a moment of stillness where we just stared at each other tenderly. It really was a roller-coaster, fear, excitement, love, joy, responsibility all rolled up into less than 10 minutes, what an introduction into pregnancy.
That night was one of the most memorable, joyous nights I can remember. It can only be described with words like love, intimacy, quiet, still, beautiful, together. It was one of those evening which binds two people in a relationship. It was the sharing of a secret that can't really be understood properly for its wonder, a secret that soon would be shared with the world, just not quite yet.
Pregnancy, particularly your first, is packed with precious moments like this. These moments can not only be precious though, but massively positive for your relationship with your partner. They have the power to bring you closer together, to bind you in joint purpose. Unfortunately though, I found as the expectant father, sometimes you need to fight to protect those moments for yourself and your partner. There are so many people out there who lose sight of family boundaries during a pregnancy and try to interfere, to the extent that they will marginalize you as far as they can out of the process.
For example, one of my partner's friends went as far as to speak to my her sister, independently of us, telling her we need her in the delivery room. My mind boggled at the inappropriateness of this. The birth of our baby is such an intimate experience, no-one but my wife and I should be making decisions about who needed to be in the delivery room. The simple fact was, we wanted no-one there, the thought of having someone else in the delivery room with us was intrusive to the extreme.
We also had people telling us, in their "wisdom and experience", that the advice we were receiving from our doctor was wrong and we should listen to them instead. Naturally, as the father to be, I was excluded from all these conversations. Apparently I wasn't needed in the decision making process.
This is part of the reason why, as mentioned above, expecting your firstborn can be a bit of a roller-coaster. The highs you experience really are tremendous, all those first time experiences that are happening because you and your partner are bringing a new life into the world.
And then you have the pressures, feelings of self doubt, financial pressures, and feelings of being marginalized and pushed out of the way. This is why learning to trust your instincts becomes so important. You have to trust you'll be able to provide for your family. You have to trust yourself so you know, when the well meaning woman enters the fray, the decisions you've made as a couple are the right decisions for your experience.
I've talked to many fathers since these days, fathers from three different generations. The one thing that became absolutely clear to me was the well meaning woman is not new. She has existed forever, always lurking behind some skirt ready to interfere in someone else's family. She could be a best friend, she could be you mother in law, she could even be your Mum. No matter whose face she wears, she probably already exists in your life.
If you are facing such an issue at the moment, with a well meaning woman trying to marginalize you from being involved in the birth of your own child, there are two things in particular which you need to protect your family from.
Firstly we found that all the "great advice" we were getting, was making us second guess our doctors. The one person you really want to be comfortable with and trust in a pregnancy is your doctor. So I found it was really important to us, that I made these people aware that I was not interested in their opinions of a medical nature. We basically made medical opinion regarding our family off limits to other people.
Secondly we found that we were second guessing the decisions we had mad as a couple because of all the naysayers telling us they'd do it differently. We gradually learned that that probably the most important things a couple can bring to their pregnancy and the birth of their children, are their own instincts. Other mothers' instincts and ideas were great for their pregnancies and births, but every single one is unique. And there are only two people who know what is best for your unique pregnancy and that is you and your partner. No-one else's opinion is appropriate. You need to protect your family from other people's opinions undermining the trust you have in your own instincts and those of your spouse.
Remember, as an expectant father, people will continually try and make you feel out of the loop. They will continually leave you second guessing yourself. Trust your instincts, insulate your family from the inappropriate interferences of others and make the decisions which are right for your circumstances.
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