{By Zombie Daddy}

Some days I’m better at getting out of the house than others. I bring my daughter with me to the grocery store or to the mall while I browse. I don’t buy anything; any cash I pick up here or there goes straight to rent; I don’t work and we need the apartment so that it at least looks like we’re normal. (Aside: Those idiots who hang out in graveyards all day and all night, slowly rotting from the damp and never giving a thought to staying clean and inconspicuous just give me a headache. Make an effort. Fuckers. Take some pride in your being; you have been given a second shot at existence.)

As I was saying, I don’t buy anything. That isn’t the point of the trips to the store. The point is to care. Complacency will be the life of us. If I don’t care enough every day to get up, get out, and keep track of what is going on in the world then I will wither. The doldrums will win, the hunger will dominate, and my daughter and I will get caught as we rampage down a suburban street picking off soccer moms. So, activity, involvement. Playing among the cattle. Keeping track of who is divorcing whom, and whether or not Bat Boy has finally had a kid of his own; noting the changing fashions; watching books climb and fall from the bestseller lists; I pay attention to all of these things and pretend they matter until I almost convince myself. I train my being to react as though they are important, to behave effortlessly normal.

She thinks it’s a big waste of time, of course. “Daddy, can we eat now?” she asks every time we go to the store. “No sweetie. Not now. Now we learn.” I’m teaching her that there is value in normalcy, even if it’s only self-preservation.

Only self-preservation. It’s so hard to get through to her sometimes, to teach her that this existence we have is precarious and precious. She’s young, and impulsive, and driven by the now.

{Originally Published on Production, Not Reproduction}

I haven’t said anything about my daughter’s first (birth) dad in awhile. Truthfully, I’ve not known how to comfortably approach it here. I am sorting through conflicting thoughts and feelings about him. It is hard to know what is appropriate to share.

After a chance meeting at a pizza place with an adoption agency social worker, he did go into the office to meet with her before Firefly was born. It was…less than positive. He had already made clear that he felt no obligation toward Beth (our daughter’s first mom), and as of now he apparently feels no obligation toward his daughter either. Nobody has heard from him since.

My husband and I have never spoken with him. We’ve never even seen a picture of him. We know his name and his age and some sketchy medical history. My amateur sleuthing hasn’t turned up any online presence for him, so I can’t peek at his life through Myspace or Facebook. He is a complete mystery to me. Yet he is one-half of my daughter’s genetic heritage.

This is uncharted territory for our family. Our son’s first dad, Ray, has been around from the beginning. It’s easy to include him in what we say to Puppy: “Kelly and Ray made you, they took care of you, they decided we would be parents to you. You have his smile, his hair, his eyes.” Ray underscores it all through his continued presence in Puppy’s life. I feel like Firefly’s story thus far has a glaringly missing player. What do I say about a man who chooses to ignore her? What do I say about a man about whom I know next to nothing?

One day before Firefly’s birth I sat down with Beth and laid how we had approached our relationship with Puppy’s first parents. Our priority has always been maintaining healthy relationships for Puppy. So our separate relationships with Kelly and Ray are our business and their relationship with each other is their business–we don’t take sides when there is friction between them and Puppy doesn’t get put in the middle of anything. I told Beth that we knew Firefly’s dad hadn’t done right by her. That we didn’t want her to think that us wanting a relationship with him meant we condoned that or didn’t care about it. Yet none of that changed the fact that Firefly still deserved to know him. The only thing we would expect from her would be to not to stand in the way if he ever started up a relationship with us.

It’s not that cut and dried, of course. It’s not like we can truly separate everyone into their own corners of our life. Beth is the one who is becoming our friend, who vulnerably opened up her life to us–and who received us likewise. She’s shown her commitment to this budding open adoption in myriad ways. Her opinions matter to us, including her opinions on Firefly’s dad…

{Originally Published on The Playpen}

You know, there are a lot of articles, resources and links these days for expectant mothers, new mothers, old mothers, you name it. One of the things I realized when my daughter, Frankie, was born eight weeks prematurely was that there weren’t many resources available to dads. Even the books for new dads are all about how to keep your wife happy. What’s the deal with that?

I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t know (still don’t know, come to think of it) the first thing about parenting. This is not a “how to” article by any stretch of the imagination. Its simply me, a young dad, looking to get some thoughts out there and maybe provide a little comic relief to other dads at the same time.

As I mentioned, my daughter was (is) a preemie. And she was little….real little. My wife had an emergency C-section after some difficulties with her pregnancy. Lets start there. Going through that process was no picnic. Getting your thoughts in order is virtually impossible. “What if my kid isn’t okay?” “What if something happens to my wife?” “How come that doctor over there looks unsure of himself?” “I didn’t paint the nursery yet!” “There’s a LOT of equipment in here…this is going to cost a TON.”

So you’re dealing with that side of things while at the same time trying to provide reassurance to Mom who, yes its true, is freaking out worse than you. Not an easy situation. As I was sorting all that out, and as I was sitting in the operating room, I made the biggest mistake of my life.

“Do you want to see your new daughter?”, my wife’s doctor asked me, apparently completely unaware that I was about two seconds shy of a heart attack.

“YEAH,” I said, and stood up from my stool, eagerly peering over the sheet that was placed over my wife’s mid-section.

{Originally published on We Make Three}

If you’ve been reading this blog, you know that I’ve been married to Michael for nearly 20 years. This man saved me. I’m not kidding. And I will always love him for that.

I was only 20 when we got married. Even at that young age, I realized that I had everything to learn about life. We both understood that starting a family would wait while we developed ourselves, our careers, and focused on our marriage. We had nothing for our start together other than the china and crystal from our wedding registry. Not even a couch. It was a meager beginning, but still a heady time for us. We had nothing but each other and our independence. I love how we started our relationship, and I love that we sacrificed and made our way without any help.

Life happened to us. We bought our home, built our careers, and enjoyed our lives together. We got our dog, a little Yorkie I named Chester, who became the perfect vessel for my maternal outpourings. We talked about kids. A lot. Michael is very practical. Pragmatic. He looks at the facts and makes very accurate assessments. We discussed the commitment, sacrifice, and change in our lifestyle that having a family would require. We were ready.

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Originally published on Fuse Moms

The common denominator of first-time pregnant women is not distended
bellies or compromised bladders. It is not the fear of another human
being exiting their body. Instead, they pursue one goal – preparation.
Whether it’s stocking up on diapers or painting a nursery in a soothing
color, these gals feel the need to prepare for their new arrival. For
me, it was childbirth classes…

Round One

We are at the hospital’s four-session course about childbirth. The room is chock full of rotund ladies and their husbands.

The
nurse who is teaching the class has grown children. I’d prefer to talk
to someone who carries recent scars… I mean memories… of the joy of
childbirth. To chafe me even more, she is wearing a waist-cinching
belt. I don’t think anyone in this room can imagine fitting in a belt
again. This woman is cruel. I want to run her over with my car.

(click title for more)

Originally published on For Me For Once

Jackson will be two soon. Samantha will be five in January. They are
the brightest parts of my life (along with my husband), and I can’t
remember my life without them. But I CAN, and do, remember being
pregnant with both of them. The time that I carried each of them was
sweet, fun, exciting, depressing, painful, overwhelming, scary,
life-changing and meaningful, all at once. Some days I look back on my
pregnancies with each of them and think “Dear God, how did I do that
twice?” and at other moments I wonder why everyone doesn’t have twelve.
For some reason I’m thinking a lot lately about being pregnant, or
rather NOT being pregnant, and how I feel about that, and I’ll tell you
why. (NO, it’s not because I am pregnant, so you can leave that thought
by the side of the road. Seriously. No seriously, knock it off – I am
NOT pregnant again. Fine, whatever. Think what you want.)

Here’s
why. Right now, Jackson is the age that Samantha was when we conceived
him. Just a couple of months before she turned two, we decided it might
be nice to give her a sibling fairly soon. I had always wanted my kids
to be two to three years apart, and I’m not even sure why. Part of me
wanted one child to be at least close to being out of diapers before
the next came along. Part of me wanted one who could at least bring me
a diaper for the other, if not actually change it. For some reason it
all seemed to center around diapers. That’s kind of jacked up, now that
I think about it. Hmm. Surely there must have been other reasons.

Whatever.
Regardless, we wanted them two to three years apart. And by “we” I mean
“me-and-Greg-who-showed-up-when-I-asked-him-to-with-sperm-at-the-ready”.

(click title for more)

Originally published on I Think We’re All Bozos on This Bus

Mom and Dad were industrious types, like their Irish-English ancestors before them. (Unfortunately, they became the end of the family line in that trait.) So it didn’t surprise me that they spent half a day picking grapes at a pick-your-own-grapes place shortly before I arrived for a visit. It didn’t even surprise me that they had picked a few 5-gallon buckets full, even though it was just the two of them at home then. Ten cents a pound! What more do you need to know?

Clearly, though, something had to be done with all those grapes before they went bad. So Dad and I embarked on our Make Your Own Raisins In the Back Yard project. The back yard in question was in Arizona, where it was well over 100 degrees, dry and sunny, so that was in our favor. All we had to do was figure out where we were going to put all the grapes while they turned into raisins.

Originally published on The Newborn Identity

A couple days ago I said that, thanks to Rigby, I had cared for Madeline flawlessly for the most part. I’m not going to say this statement was untrue, but I will do my best impression of a contract lawyer and direct you to the statement, “for the most part.” Before you get too worried please realize that no babies were harmed in this production. Nonetheless, I may have made one pretty bad mistake while caring for Maddie that, when I realized what I had done, made me tear up. Wait. The contract lawyer in me has advised me to revise that statement. I didn’t tear up…dudes never tear up unless “Field Of Dreams” comes on TBS…I just inexplicably found that wetness had appeared on my eyeballs.

So, as you may know, Maddie is off the bottom of the weight chart for her age not only because she was a preemie, but also because she has been adversely affected by the media’s tendency to glamorize women of nearly anorexic weights. Okay. Maybe it was mainly because she was a preemie, but I’m pretty sure that re-run of “The Simple Life” I once watched while feeding her didn’t help.

Anyhoo, the first week I was left home alone with Maddie my wife left me with a million instructions on how to take care of her. There were ten steps to be followed when changing a diaper, elaborate demonstrations of how to swaddle her, heck, there may have even been a long discussion of how to even breathe around the kid. That last one may have been an exaggeration, but it gives you the idea.

At the end of my first week as Maddie’s day-time caretaker Heather came home and was very impressed with my work. Had I correctly instituted the ten step instructions on how to change her diaper? Check. Was I able to swaddle her pefectly in ten seconds or less? Check. Did I put two scoops of formula into the 110 cc’s of water every time I fed her? Check, er, what? TWO SCOOPS? I thought it was just one!

Heather’s jaw dropped. “You’ve only been giving her one scoop?”

I cleared my throat and said, “Um, er, perhaps?”