Well for those of you who haven’t already heard Christine, my wife, is due at the end of January. This is obviously a really exciting time for us. But I’m sure you’ve heard that all before. I thought I would discuss one of the stranger feelings that has reoccured over the past 8 months. “Are we there yet?”
When I first learn that we would be having a kid, I went through what I imagine to be all the standard emotions from excitement to apprehension. But after a few weeks I found myself with the feeling of why do I have to wait so long. I had dealt with the emotions and I was ready to have a kid. But I still had 7 and a half months to wait before the child arrived.
So, the result was… I kind of forget about it. Now, we still went to the doctor every month and started to buy things for the baby (crib, stroller, car seat, etc. By the way, the prices of these things in China is CRAZY!!). We organized the baby’s room, but these were all preformed as tasks, just like washing the dishes or cleaning the house. They were just things that had to be done and while doing them I didn’t have the sense that a third person is about to come into our lives.
During this time, Christine was getting bigger and bigger. It’s a long slow process that you don’t notice, like watching grass grow. Nothing seems to happen and then one day you look and she’s carrying around a basketball under her shirt and it’s no longer giving little flutter kicks, it’s practicing Kong Fu. So once again, being only a month or so away, we are very excited and have a real sense that a little person is living inside Christine. But again we find ourselves in the position of waiting.
This feeling is exasberated by the approaching Spring Festival, the biggest holiday of the year, when everything slows down. Which adds to the feeling of “is the baby hear yet?”, but alas she’s a few weeks off.
The long and short is that very soon I will be a proud Papa. Take a look at the attached gallery to see the pictures of a pregnant Christine.
