Happily, a healthy baby girl was recently born to our dear friends Meghan and Jay Gump. For pictures, see www.conwayjack.com
Anyway, Jay's arrival in Fatherhood and the impending expansion of my fatherhood role has gotten me thinking about what it entails, and what it inspires.
Jay is a good person to talk to about it, because he shows very little patience for either the platitudes or the pathetic jokes that tend to surface in discussions of new fatherhood. He'd much rather talk about something else than wallow in such dreck (drech? drek?). I'm glad to say, I think he's convinced me, too.
So, what else is there? I must confess that the birth of the child is, to some degree anticlimactic for the dad. He has been waiting for 40 weeks to be included in the action beyond the roles of "helpful manservant" and "co-geneticist" (not necessarily in that order) , and so when fetus becomes baby it's easy to be fooled into thinking he's now getting a promotion (see previous post re: ice cream for a partial glimpse of the truth).
The intermittent hollowness of this assumption is, I believe, the root of the pathetic humor that traditionally accompanies this event. In reality, the term "fourth trimester" is really much more accurate, much as it sounds too much like Click and Clack's "third half" of the show. Anyway, yes, the baby might recognize dad's voice from hearing it through the womb, and will tolerate him. But he probably has to wait until the overt smiling and giggling starts before he will be promoted, and then it is only to Court Jester.
Three and a half years out, and just now I'm starting to find my self entangled with J when he falls asleep, and hear myself being summoned via the monitor in the middle of the night. Mighty satisfying, even at 3:00 AM. Of course, it is much less frequent than the summonses he served to Sam for his first years of life, at all hours and in all circumstances. Also, less trauma to nipples, and no hormone rush. Bringing to a gradual close an era when I didn't really get enough cuddling with either of them for my own taste, and found that at times I was left to entertain myself at odd hours, when they were asleep, or cuddling/breastfeeding, or she was comforting him.
So, what to fill that time with? Certainly housework. I highly recommend the practice of filling some of Mom's time spent breastfeeding with parallel chores. Best done simultaneously, to remind you of how much time she's spending, and get done some of the stuff she would be doing in that time if she wasn't serving in the role of Milk Bar. But not all of that time, certainly. And, how does one feel a sense of creativity and expression in the process?
It is this impulse that leads us to assume the role of recorder -- chief photographer, chronicler, archivist. If we are, at many points, the closest witnesses of these first tender years in a mother-child relationship, we might as well do it with some artistry. And now that we are in the digital age, how much better to involve the glitter and gadgetry that go bounding across primetime and newspaper circulars every father's day?
So, if we mix doses of that creative nonfiction into the necessary blend of Manservant, Court Jester, Diaper Changer, Chief Cheerleader, it helps to pass the time towards our gradual insertion into the dyad that we adore so much. Mothers don't seem to recognize the importance of this art form in our lives. Our desire for the better camera, or bigger memory card, our predilection towards stealing time (as I am now) for writing, editing, sorting, downloading, uploading, bloggling, retouching -- these behaviors must seem ridiculous and unwise in the eyes of those whose bodies make the babies, and the milk, and the comfort. Just be patient with us. We are creating, too. And when those little bodies have grown long and lean, and the tenuous threads of IM and email have entirely supplanted that powerful cord that bound you so tightly together, perhaps then the fruits of our labors will provide small comfort in a quiet house.
So, here I sit -- the Bleary Eyed Blogger. I think of Mark with his video camera, and Jay and his Conway Jack. And somewhere out there in the future there is the possible entry of Uncle Fun onto the scene, he whose professional skills and practiced eye will raise the bar to impossible heights.
And then I read back over this entry, and think of the kids we know with two moms. And think about how tricky it must be to be the "non-birth parent" in a world where we're not even sure what it means to be a father, sometimes. Hats off to you all, whose happy children make such excellent playmates for J, and whose bonds to children must weather even one more societal storm. Hats off to you, and please feel welcome. We can all watch together, and measure our gradual approach into that cozy tempest that fills each of our homes.
