We’re having a baby.
We’re having a baby. Her name is Camille, and she’ll arrive to our planet in mid-February. Christine is twenty-one weeks along and has been feeling great these last few months. Her skin is as smooth as a dolphin’s back. She glows. The first two months, however, she was nauseous, throwing up in neighbors’ yards and in her lap in the car.
But so far, so good.
To see your first child on a screen during a sonogram is a pretty wild experience. I’m sure seeing it alive in your arms is even more wild. When we saw her this last time for the anatomy scan, we could see her bones. We called her Skeletor.
What was so wild was seeing the thing you had hoped for, or dreamt about or conceptualized, for so long. Having A Baby was an abstract concept or to-do that one day, perhaps, we’ll get to, we’ll cross off the list. But now, seeing Skeletor move in real time, even feeling her inside Christine like a forthcoming burp, makes the abstract very real, and that’s a strange, cool thing.
I’ve been asking everyone about their wisdom for being a dad, for being a girl dad. The general sentiment is that you’ll have no idea what you’re doing, but you’ll figure it out. Nearly everyone has talked about the bewilderment of taking your child home from the hospital that first time. “You mean I get to keep this?” they asked. Apparently you do, with no return policy.
Right now, I feel confident. After a grueling MBA program while working full-time, I feel as though I can learn anything. Anything surely includes a tiny human child, right? It’ll be fine.
I also feel like my expectations and values are realigning toward parenthood. That is, I’m working on building more margin into our lives so I can spend more time with my family, not constantly thinking about economics, politics, or work. We’ll see how well that experiment goes…
At any rate, Christine and I are really excited to meet Camille, to build a family and a life together, and to go with God as we do so. Over time, we’ll write down our story here to capture it for our posterity, a posterity that includes our little tiny baby Camille.
See you then 👋🏼
