I speak from experience, as I have been through it three times. Each time as driven me to a point of near insanity, where I feel as if I am going to come unraveled at the edges and just blow apart. My only regret in life now is that I can do it just one more time.
Perhaps, the first was the roughest, though I did not know it at the time. I began having grand mal seizures that latter would be diagnosed as the beginnings of great cancer. Preparation for parenthood is a great change--perhaps the largest and most important right of passage that you will ever pass through. Pretty much you go it alone, as all the attention, yours included, is focused on your wife, and her trials and tribulations. So much so that it easy often easy to ignore the internal stress and worry of what is a foot in your life, which is about to change forever.
A woman has a wealth of support, almost from the cradle to the birthing room, a man is always seen as some sex-maniac-cause-of-it-all who only bumbles his way to finish line in a comic sort of way to pass out cigars and congratulate himself. Perhaps that's the way it was in the days of black and white TV. I don't know, but there is much more to it than that.
Let me state first that in the ten years of our marriage both my wife and I have spent time in the hospital. Both of us have been very sick. Both of us have been cut on. Both of us agree that it far easier to be sick, to be cut on in the operating room, and to endure large amounts of pain. Than it is to be the one to watch the other suffer, to care for the suffering partner, and to wait in the waiting rooms of hospitals. So much so that when it became clear that we could no longer have children and one of us would have to have a surgical procedure done to prevent it. We fought over who would get to be the one to be cut on. I won.
Pregnancy can be looked at clinically as a disease. There is much suffering that goes with it. It really hurts to watch someone you love suffer. Some women can be pretty darn mean to you while you go through it. There'll just be some times when you feel you like saying 'the Hell with it all,' And when you feel like that you can be overwhelmed by this incredible guilt. A guilt that will call into contention your own sense of being fit to be the father you are about to become.
The only advice I can really give you is to just muddle through the best you can. Accept the pains, insults, the accusations, etc. They turn out to be really good training for being a parent.
And when that little critter arrives, don't be afraid of it. I think I was actually afraid of my first one. I suppose I was a little standoffish, bowing to the feminine wisdom of my wife, until about the six-month. Then what a discovery I made. My first response was I want to see that first six-months again.
What I did the second and third time. I wish I would have done the first, and I wish I could do again, and again. Get your face right into it. Get spit-up on a lot, get poop and pee all over yourself. Never miss a chance to rise from your bed at the most God-awful hour of the evening to go and get that baby. Be sure to fall asleep in the Lazy-boy with that baby nuzzled snuggly up against your chest, and your nose buried on that little head. You may think that you are loosing a night's sleep, but truly you will walk through the next day knowing that you have slept the sleep of kings.
Babies are a real paradox. They're hard, difficult challenging, stinky, worrisome, bothersome, binding, tiresome, frustrating, and maddening, but the very worst part is that it all goes by far too quickly.
