168 Hours in a Week

There are points in one’s life when one becomes the stereotype, despite one’s best efforts not to. Ok, it’s not that I’ve tried not to be a stereotype. It’s just that I’ve never cared much about what I should (or, if you prefer more clarity on the tone behind that word, “should”) be doing with my life, so I’ve bumbled into anything stereotypical about my life in a manner that surprises me every time. I mean, not some of the details. I’m a lawyer, for goodness sake. Much of my waking life involves lurching from one stereotype to another in that regard.

But the broad brush strokes of my life, the existential moments, have not followed from the typical life path of a person my age. Perhaps some, even many, are shared with my generational compatriots, but I’ve seen people worried and anxious about things I can barely comprehend, from what fashion is “in” (what does that even mean? can someone please explain to me who gets to decide this and why anyone pays attention to them?) to whether young Rutabaga Rose is overscheduled enough. I don’t even really mean to discount the inevitable crises of adulthood (though, come on, just give up on the whole “what’s fashionable” thing, for your own sanity and ours). It’s just that I haven’t lived the same life.

Maybe that’s obvious.

Maybe some people who know me would find that comment laughable, because I am pretty darn conventional in many respects.

So what does this have to do with impending parenthood? Good question.

I feel like Ms and I could reasonably be seen to be, finally, running headlong into the delayed onset adulthood that so characterizes our generation.

Before I go any further, I want to clarify one point Ms and I have both alluded to in connection with this blog. There are things about our experience that will be entirely unique because we are individuals whose interactions will produce unique outcomes. On the other hand, there are things about our experience that will be – to any of you who have gone through this – amusingly mundane. So when I write here, I am, generally, not seeing myself as experiencing anything outside the norm but am using this site as a vehicle to communicate our experiences to (a) people who haven’t been through a pregnancy, (b) people who find our writing amusing or insightful (gosh, that’s so sweet of you! thank you!!), and (c) serial killers who make skin suits from their victims. In other words, this blog is never a plea for sympathy. Also, I’m going to talk quite a lot about me. That’s not me being preoccupied with me. It’s me trying to provide an honest and complete snapshot of what this process is like for me.

Having gone through all that, what’s bothering me tonight – and “bothering” is an inadequate word if I’m honest – is that … how are two professional, involved, ambitious, engaged, curious people supposed to do everything? I expect Ms will have quite a bit more to say on this point and, indeed, far more serious concerns about it than I will. But tonight we were talking about the things we have to do in the next few months, the things we’ve committed to doing in the next few months, and the things we want to do in the next few months.

There simply isn’t time. Or energy. I am working one draining job and teetering between having a very serious hobby and a second job. I want to take a trip to see family abroad whom I haven’t seen in over a decade. I want to be involved in my community, serving on boards, volunteering. All of these things are important to me, and there’s a much longer list I won’t bore you with because, ultimately, the list won’t be relevant. It’s just that they’re things I’ve been doing for somewhere between 20 and 30 years in some cases. They’re part of me. They’re part of the way I look at my community and the way I see myself integrating with it. In some cases, they’re things that have already been absent from my life for the roughly 9 years I’ve been practicing law but that I want to bring back into my life because my life was happier with them in it.

Now there is a huge, vast, enormous change on the horizon. It’s a wonderful, thrilling, happy change that I literally couldn’t be more excited about, but it’s a … nexus point. A paradigm shift. Who will I be?

Life is change. Changes happen all the time, even massive change. If you expand the data set from what has happened to what plausibly could happen, well, there’s really no point in creating a life that depends on stability. Or, perhaps, it’s best to create a life in which stability derives from one’s ability to surf change.

This isn’t really like that. It’s not like having a car accident or losing a parent or graduating from school for the last time or finishing the Bar Exam or … or … or. It’s a point where you have to look at your life both as a whole and as a collection of parts and decide – really decide – what to keep, what to discard, and – crucially – what to keep at a lower priority, and at the end of it what your life, as a whole, will be. At least until something changes again.

Shall we revisit the paragraph above where I describe the purpose for writing this? I only linger on this because this is exactly the type of thing that can (too often rightly) have the Waggly Finger of Accusation waved at it for being a bit “oh woe is me.” So, again, I’m not looking for sympathy or understanding, just recounting where I am in my head for the benefit of anyone who hasn’t gotten here yet and for the amusement of those who have.

In any event, this is the big Generation X issue, isn’t it? So many of us went to school, started careers, delayed marriage, delayed having children, created full, rich lives … only to abruptly confront a near total interruption of who we have made ourselves to be. There’s no cynicism or disappointment or anything like that buried in there — I am happy beyond belief — but, holy moly.

I would be remiss not to qualify every word I’ve typed by simply noting that, for goodness sake, I’m not even the one growing a human being inside her while dealing with a culture that is still pretty damned awful to women who want to have a child and have an independent life. The depth and complexity of these issues for Ms … well, I’ll leave it to her to describe them as she sees fit, but I’ll just say I’m mindful.

Which brings us to part 2. If part 1 is the brief exploration of the mindset of a man coming to a much-delayed realization that his life will soon be very different, part 2 is the brief exploration of the mindset of a man who is watching his wife go through something challenging and can’t do anything to help.

We’ve been told that the fatigue fades somewhat in the second trimester. We’ve been told that Ms is very fit and healthy. We’ve been told lots of reassuring things.

But I see her come home from a day at work, or come home from a day at work followed by a post-work event, and barely make it to bed. And then barely make it out of bed the next morning. This is a woman who was, less than a month ago, a boundless, bounding fountain of energy and rainbows. Now, the boundless energy is still there, as are the rainbows, but they’re set against a backdrop of … well, I won’t speak for Ms but from where I’m sitting it looks like a combination of determination and exhaustion. She’s still wonderful and beautiful and all the things I love her for, even more now than before, but it hurts me to hear her work through which of her commitments, dreams, wishes and goals will be the first to lose out to the physical reality of making a baby.

(Do we need to revisit that this is a documentation of a mind state and not a request for sympathy because woe is me? No? Good.)

If part 1 was about secretly wondering if, you know, maybe kids who have babies when they’re young have the right idea (for the record, I’m happy with my life and wouldn’t have lived it any other way), part 2 is about the liberal, hippie man confronting his inner Provider. Right now, I want more than anything else for Ms to spend the next year relaxing, being healthy, getting prenatal massages whenever she wants to, sitting on the beach at sunset, taking a few hours to emit blood curdling howls and tear my face off for putting her in this predicament, and then bond with our baby in the unique way that only mothers can, while I work to make that happen for her. Don’t worry, even in this alternate reality, I’m not exempting myself from, to use the briefest possible terminology, being there. It’s just that I feel like I should be doing more. I don’t know what, exactly, but it’s an almost all-consuming feeling right now. The parts of my brain that are solidly ape are all about protecting my mate.

And I feel like I can’t. Hell, I feel like I shouldn’t, because Ms is an unbelievably talented, engaged, ambitious woman. What right do I have to ask her to give any of her amazing life up, even to make her life easier? And yet, the primal urge to remove some weight from her is strong.

But there are limits to what I can do because I have my own commitments soaking up waking hours. And, too often, sleeping hours.

When I think about people who don’t have decent jobs, people who don’t have a partner (single moms or, after the child is born, single dads), people who are simultaneously dealing with health insecurity, and so on two things happen: first, I can’t begin to believe how they do it and, second, my belief that a rich country like ours needs to be doing much, much more to help them only gets stronger.

We’ll get through this, of course. We’re tough, both individually and as a team. But this is a hard moment.

PS. I need to find time to write during the day. Too much of what I’m writing is focused on the things that occupy me late at night, and too often they’re exactly the sorts of things you’d expect to occupy someone late at night. I promise I’m happy. When I think about holding our child for the first time, I’ll break out in a stupid grin. It’s just absurd how full of joy I am about being a father. I just want to throw that out there. This is good. It’s wonderful and amazing and in vigorous competition with having Ms in my life in the first place for the single best thing that’s ever happened to me.