Fatherhood: My Journey (Part 2 of 3)

Now on to part 2 of my journey to fatherhood. If you missed part 1, you can find it here. The second part of this journey was a lot less eventful than either the first or third part, but I think it's still pretty cool because as you'll learn in part 3, each of our kids came to us in a different way.

After struggling with infertility trying to conceive our first child, we had prepared ourselves to move to starting the adoption process pretty quickly with #2. We'd explored that option pretty thoroughly before getting pregnant the first time and were really comfortable with the idea. We did, however, want to give it the 'ol college try the 'natural' way a couple of times first. We purchased a home ovulation predictor after having no luck the first month and knowing that we were only going to try for a couple more months. It was a cheap option and hey, maybe we'd get lucky.

I can't say if it was the ovulation predictor that improved our timing or the fact that we were more relaxed since we already had a plan B in place, but we did get lucky and achieved what they call a 'spontaneous' pregnancy after a couple more months of trying. It was just a normal pregnancy to us. That's how it was supposed to happen. It did make me wish, just a bit, that we'd tried the ovulation predictor while trying to get pregnant with our first child before moving to expensive and stressful infertility treatment. But I've never been one to dwell on the past. We were pregnant! Finding out that we had gotten pregnant on our own was completely unexpected for me and brought a mix of feelings. I remember feeling shocked that it actually worked; relief that it had been so easy; frustration that it had been so difficult the first time when there was clearly no medical reason we couldn't get pregnant; and of course, extreme joy.

Pregnancy #2 was also fairly uneventful as pregnancies go. My wife had labored for 12 hours with our first child. But we'd heard a number of people say that the second labor is often much shorter, so we had plans in place for a friend to watch our daughter on short notice when we went to the hospital. One morning in September 2006, my wife woke up very early and was having contractions. She knew that "this was it." She didn't wake me immediately, but began her own preparations for the big event. A few hours later, she got me up and we nervously started getting ready to head to the hospital. Against my better judgement, she got in the shower because she knew it'd be the last time she'd be able to for a few days. Even though this was only our 2nd child, I knew enough to let her call the shots at this point so I called our friends to come watch our daughter while my wife showered. We left for the hospital about an hour later and our 2nd daughter was born 15 minutes after we got into the birthing room. A couple of my friends have had much closer calls with their 2nd deliveries, but even ours was too close for comfort for my wife and me.

It's great to look back on these experiences and consider what I've learned from them. Maybe others can learn more immediately from their experiences, but not me. I need time to process them. Lots of time apparently. This second pregnancy and birth taught me to be prepared for anything, and to take what comes my way and roll with it. We can try to plan our lives down to the last detail, but life often has it's own plans. My experience has been that I'm much happier if I can accept what life has to offer and work with it. I not try to force my pre-conceived notions of what 'should' be, but instead figure out how to make the best of what is. I just wish I was better at communicating with those around me who aren't able to (or don't want to) roll with reality in the way that I do. Sounds like another opportunity to look back on more past experiences and see what I can learn.

Stay tuned for the roller coaster situation that is part 3 of my journey to fatherhood.

Be well. Be good.