At the risk of sounding totally Cliché, I feel like I am living in a fantasy, I watch my husband working hard to prepare our home for baby, and I can’t help but imagine all the ways I am going to love him when he first becomes a father. I have complete faith in my husband as an honest person, as a loving soul, and as a capable father. Sure, I tease him from time-to-time saying “Oh you just wait”, “You don’t know what you’re in for” and the like (doesn’t every woman do that when carrying their husbands child?) but the truth of the matter is, He is ready. We married nearly three years ago, and had a lengthy two year engagement, all that time I wondered if this man was ever going to be “ready”. Friends and family would ask me when we were going to have kids and my reply was always the same “When Shane is ready, I can’t force him to be a father I need to wait for him to be ready, I know I could snap into it in an Instant, but if a man isn’t ready… he isn’t ready!” Well… now I know he is ready! Granted, we have spent the last two years with very little choice over the matter (in reference to our battle with infertility), but when he said he was ready… I knew something BIG was in our future, and my husband will forever be a different person.
I know my husband will be at my side during our planned Home Birth. I know he will be frantic with concern, as I go through the painful stages of labor the natural way (God willing). I know he will be drilling our midwives as he fears each painful progression and sits back helplessly wishing he could carry my pain. I know without a doubt that he will look at our son for the first time and in an instant there will be a new sparkle in his eye. He will be different. Not the man I currently know, every step of our journey from that moment forward, my husband will be an unpredictable soul. He will be faced with internal conflict as he leaves for work each morning. He will be a little less invested in his career life, and more invested in time spent at home. He will find decision making even more difficult then he already does, and for once, he will understand my constant need to “manage” my household, because he will feel a responsibility so overwhelming it will consume him. He will be terrified each time his family gets in the car to go somewhere, and he will listen for the sounds of his child breathing as he sleeps. He will act a little less rushed, and take the time to carefully clean up the mess of a dirty cloth diaper, and will consider how his parents handled each moment when his son challenges him the way he used to.
I am incredibly excited to have this little boy enter the world and complete our family, but even more so, I am excited to watch the relationship I share with my husband blossom into something new. I recently received some very valuable advice from a friend that is closer to the other side of the parenthood journey, “Always put your relationship with your husband first, your children are important, but they grow up and leave you, your husband is the one that stays behind to grow old with you, if you allowed that to fall apart, you will have nothing left.” Not to say that our childrens needs aren’t important, but that the relationship with your children changes over time, your only constant in all of it is the strength and quality of the relationship with your spouse. In turn, our children grow up being stronger, more confident people, because they witnessed the strength and power of a truly loving and supportive relationship. Shane and I love each other beyond even words could describe, but even more importantly we want our son to know and feel it too.
