The next time it's my turn to write a column, I may be a dad!
As I wrote about in a column some months back, I found out just before Christmas that my wife was pregnant with our first child. Her due date is Aug. 26, which means we're officially just four weeks away from becoming parents for the first time.
It's certainly been a whirlwind year for us. After months of learning, talking about, and getting through her pregnancy, it's exciting to think the "finish line" is so near. We finally settled on a shortlist of baby boy names (we're down to our favourite two at the moment) and our hospital bags are nearly packed with the essentials we'll need when we officially race to the hospital.
Last week we started attending pre-natal classes as the Rockyview General Hospital, which has made everything feel increasingly real. At our first pre-natal class, the instructor showed everyone a video of a live birth in action, which certainly made it all feel pretty real!
Speaking of that first pre-natal class, a key theme was the general lack of preparation that all the first-time expecting parents were feeling. A lot of the students appeared to be pretty anxious as they asked question after question about what to expect in the days leading up to and during labour, and what comes afterward.
I shared that overall sense of naïvete and cluelessness – for instance, only recently did I learn that newborn babies don't need to drink water until they're several months old, surviving solely on breast milk or formula. Who knew?
For now, all I can do is learn as much as I can by reading the baby books, watching videos on YouTube, attending our pre-natal classes, and talking to the parents who have been through all this before. Fortunately quite a few of our friends are in a similar boat as us, so we have them as a sounding board. It's nice to have a support system like that in place.
Because of the pregnancy, this has naturally been a peculiar summer. Usually, my wife and I keep extremely busy on our summer weekends by going for hikes, camping, or kayaking down the Bow River. This summer, while still busy, our activities have been admittedly a lot more sedentary in nature. We've still hung out with friends and family a decent amount, but have not been able to pursue the more active, outdoorsy-type activities we traditionally enjoy this time of year.
But that's probably for the best, because it's not like our lives are going to go back to the way they were once this kid is born – far from it.
