Dad Is Fat (6 page)

Pregnancy is an incredible sacrifice. I used to think morning sickness should be used to describe us people sick of getting up in the morning, but morning sickness is no joke. It’s incredible what a woman’s body goes through when she’s growing a baby. I can barely digest cheese, and Jeannie has endured five full-term pregnancies. Suddenly, simple actions like eating, sleeping, peeing, and tying shoes become Olympic hurdles. I only remember Jeannie complaining once or twice: “I’m tired. I’m hungry. I’m cold. Let me back inside.” Being a supportive spouse, I would explain that I’d let her back in the house once she moved those cinder blocks. A deal is a deal.

During pregnancy, the dominant hormone is progesterone, which is a Latin term for
shut up and get away from me, you horrible man who ruined my life
. By the way, here is a piece of advice for you soon-to-be-fathers out there: pregnant women don’t like to be called “bitches” AT ALL. You’re welcome.

I’m jealous of pregnant women. When pregnant women have cravings, it’s “adorable” and when they put on twenty or
thirty pounds in nine months, it’s “healthy.” Yet when I have cravings and put on thirty pounds, I’m considered a “fat tub of turds.” I’m not sure, but I believe this is sexism. Everyone wants to rub a pregnant women’s belly, but when I ask people to rub
my
belly, I get kicked out of Dave & Buster’s. It’s just not fair. I put on more weight than Jeannie during each of her pregnancies. I justify it by thinking, “Well, just another thing I’m better at than she is.”

Still half the size of my stomach
.

Pregnancy is an abstract concept to grasp. You see the baby bump, and people are congratulating you and your wife, but you really don’t know what’s going on in there until you see that 3-D ultrasound. Very early on, you can see a fully formed baby who is kicking and sucking its thumb. I remember being shocked when I first saw my son on a twelve-week ultrasound. He already had more hair than I did.

It can be confusing deciphering our society’s view toward pregnancy. Culturally, we cherish a pregnant woman. We acknowledge the sacrifice. People will give up their seats on buses. We say “Congratulations” when we see a pregnant woman, but there is usually an element of scandal associated with it. Pregnant women are either too young or too old, or it’s too soon after another pregnancy, or she’s going to get in trouble at work. She’s too poor, too rich, too successful, too skinny, too fat, too crazy, too busy, too single, too married, too too.

“Oh my God! Your sister is pregnant? She was just a
kid
twenty years ago!” Why are we always surprised to find out someone is pregnant? Really,
getting
pregnant is the most amazing unamazing thing ever. Of course conception is miraculous, but it
is
how we all got here. My mom got pregnant. Your mom got pregnant. EVERYONE’S mom got pregnant. Yet still we’re shocked it could happen to any other woman. We are shocked when a teenager gets pregnant. We’re shocked when a fifty-year-old gets pregnant. But, really, that’s how it’s been happening forever. As human beings, we end up acting like we are the first generation on this planet to deal with pregnancy. We are most shocked when really attractive, successful women get pregnant. It’s unbelievable. “Did you hear Beyoncé got pregnant? It’s almost as if she’s a human being!” There’s always that unspoken commentary of “Why would she do that to her career?” How many Grammy Awards would Beyoncé need to win before it would be time for her to have a baby?

I think there may be a belief mothers are no longer sexy or somehow an exception if they are sexy. The concept of a MILF is rather insulting if it’s based on the belief that having a baby makes you unattractive. So, therefore, the rare mother who
is
attractive needs her own special term. Actually “MILF” is pretty insulting anyway. Sorry I brought it up, ladies. I think Jeannie gets sexier with every baby she has. And I’m not just saying that because she will most likely be reading this book. Hi, Jeannie. Sorry I destroyed the microwave last night, again. Can you clean it up? Think about it, though: When you see a gorgeous woman, and then you find out she’s had a bunch of kids, doesn’t it make her like a hundred times hotter?

It’s not just celebrity moms. We are surprised that
any
beautiful, successful woman would want to have a baby. Why would she want to do that? I don’t know. Why would your mom want to have you? As if without the ticking of some socially imposed biological clock, no women would voluntarily choose to get pregnant. People treat having a kid as somehow retiring from success. Quitting. Have you seen a baby? They’re pretty cute. Loving them is pretty easy. Smiling babies should actually be categorized by the pharmaceutical industry as a powerful antidepressant. Being happy is really the definition of success, isn’t it?

Jeannie has had all our babies at home in our apartment. Hey, we’ve got the room, right? If you are unfamiliar with home birth, like I was, you probably think of it as taking a hundred years of advancement in the field of obstetrics and just throwing that away. You just wing it. Well, that’s what I thought, too. During the birth of our first child, I remember thinking, “Hey, I can’t program a DVR, but I’m here to help. Now where would you like me to stand terrified? That will be my contribution.”

At times, it seems we elected to have our babies at home mostly to make other people feel uncomfortable. I quickly learned that people don’t want to hear about home births. Their first reaction always seems to be, “Oh, you had your baby at home. Yeah, we were going to do that, too, but we wanted our baby to live.” There’s usually an assumption of irresponsibility or laziness: “You didn’t want to go to the hospital?” I
sometimes explain that the hospital was, like, twenty blocks away and that I didn’t feel like putting on pants. “Weren’t you worried that something would go wrong?” Don’t most people worry at the hospital? Hospitals should just be renamed “houses of worry.” Actually, we had our babies at home, not in a Waffle House. “At home? Isn’t that a little too comfortable? Why didn’t you have the baby in that germ-infested building where sick people congregate? Didn’t your wife want to give birth in a gown someone died in yesterday?”

Believe me, I get the concern. Home birth sounds crazy. It is a wild experience. I remember at our last home birth, there was so much screaming at one point, I actually woke up. I thought someone had scored a touchdown or something. When I saw my wife was just having another baby, I asked her to keep it down and went back to sleep.

It may come as no surprise that home birth was Jeannie’s idea. I’m not really even a fan of cooking at home. At all of our home births, I was Jeannie’s birth coach, which is a generous title for “that guy in the way.” In reality, I would assist by performing counterpressure and get yelled at for doing it wrong. Don’t worry, it wasn’t just Jeannie and me; there was a midwife there, which means we believe in witchcraft. Actually, a midwife is a certified medical practitioner. She is
not
your “extra wife” and will not make you breakfast. I learned this the hard way. Most midwives are actually former labor and delivery nurses, which means that they have more experience with the whole labor from beginning to end than some doctors do. With healthy labors, doctors come in the bottom of the ninth and catch the ball for the winning last out, whereas midwives have been in for the whole game.

Jeannie’s first home birth was not even originally planned to be a home birth. The birth was supposed to be “natural,” without drugs in a birthing center at the hospital. It was to be at Bellevue Hospital, which I’ve always thought of as a mental hospital. Given how crazy Jeannie and I are, I thought it was only appropriate that she give birth in a hospital that was famous for its mental ward.

During the first and second trimester of her pregnancy, I remember nodding along to Jeannie’s excited tutorial as she explained all she had learned about natural childbirth versus C-section, the Bradley Method, and home birth. Like most of you reading this, I would end every discussion with “Well, obviously we’re not having the baby in our apartment, right?” Jeannie would assure me “No,” and then I would go back to whatever I was eating. Our “birth plan” was to wait until Jeannie was far enough into labor that she could have the baby naturally at the hospital in a birthing center without medical intervention or drugs. Great. As the pregnancy got into its third trimester, Jeannie became more and more enamored with home birth. She began talking about having our next baby at home. Great, whatever, and I went back to whatever I was eating. When she finally went into labor with Marre, we still were planning on going to Bellevue. The midwife came over, monitored the baby, and Jeannie walked around the apartment distressing about eventually going to the hospital.

By this time, I was aware that home birth was a safe alternative, but I still expected to be heading to the hospital at any moment. We had a bag packed and everything. The baby was in the right position, healthy with a strong heartbeat, and Jeannie just needed regular contractions to push the baby out.
Then I remember Jeannie turning to me and announcing she wanted to have the baby at home. She was way too uncomfortable to go anywhere. Um, great. I stopped eating. I didn’t know what to do.

The midwife had all the necessary medical items for a home birth with her and told me to warm some towels and cover the things that we didn’t want blood on. Um, okay. “Blood on”? I’d never attended a birth, let alone a home birth. So I went to work. When the midwife and Jeannie eventually returned from the bathroom to the living room, they started laughing. Well, Jeannie was making pain noises, but there were some laughterlike sounds in her pain noises.

I had put a shower curtain on the floor, covered the couches and our new flat-screen TV with garbage bags. The midwife asked, “What do you think is going to happen in here?” I never said I was smart.

The labor was long and painful for Jeannie, but she did it. Marre arrived as we were all kneeling on the living room floor. The baby was perfect and healthy, and we were at home. I was so impressed by the midwife. She was incredibly skillful and professional but at the same time peaceful and respectful during the process. We all celebrated with champagne, and Jeannie and I got to sleep in our own bed. We were convinced. If we were going to have more babies and the pregnancies were normal, we would have babies at home. For our next baby, Jack, we planned a water birth. At the time, we did not understand that what you plan for a birth and what actually happens are not always synonymous. Jeannie labored in the tub, but Jack arrived in her arms on the way to the bedroom as the water
was being refilled. I tried to explain to the newborn that he did it all wrong, but he really didn’t seem to care and just fell asleep. Katie, Michael, and Patrick were much better listeners. They all arrived under water in the tub and were greeted by their brothers and sisters shortly thereafter. Jeannie recovered quickly after the births, so I didn’t feel bad about asking her to “hurry up and clean the mess.” Whenever people tell me “You go on stage and make people laugh—you must be brave,” I always think of Jeannie. She really is amazing. So are midwives. If I ever give birth myself, I’m definitely going midwife.

I’m not antidoctor. I think there is way too much pressure on doctors these days to be God-like saviors, and as a result there is much arrogance in the medical community. Doctors always have the attitude of “Look, we are scientists—we’ve figured out the human body. Trust us.” Yet whenever I go for a checkup, they are always like, “It’s either a freckle, or we have to amputate your head. That will be five thousand dollars.” I think most people’s apprehension about home birth is the absence of the doctor. I mean, could you imagine if there was no doctor at Jesus’s birth? That could have changed the course of history.

I’m not surprised by how much I love my children. I’m relieved. Shortly after I found out Jeannie was pregnant for the first time, I was worried. Would I be able to provide the unconditional love of a parent? I always found those Anne Geddes baby-flower photos annoying, and it kind of puts me in a good mood to see a teenager fall off a skateboard. How could someone like me ever hope to be a good parent? Even I knew my “Oh, what a cute baby” act was not very believable. What if I saw my baby and I was like, “Yuck!”?

If you are having these feelings, too, don’t worry; it just means you’re a horrible person. The good news is when your baby is born, something happens. I can’t explain it. You just love your baby. Unconditionally. Even if you didn’t get the baby thing before, when you experience your own, you immediately fall in love and feel like you could kill or die for that baby. I was born with a heart that was two sizes too small, but when I saw
my baby, it was like the Grinch discovering the true meaning of Christmas.

The newborn stage is a special time. It’s really a sacred time when nobody expects you to do anything except enjoy your new bundle of joy. This sacred time lasts roughly twenty minutes, and then you become the publicity agent for the mother and the baby. The masses of family and friends want to be assured the mother is okay and get information on the baby. For some reason, it’s really important for people to know how much the baby weighs. This always baffled me. “How much does she weigh?” That’s rude. She’s not even a day old, and people seem to be obsessed with my daughter’s weight? She was nine pounds, but I remember telling friends, “She was eight pounds, sixteen ounces” because it sounded thinner. Either way, she carried the weight very well, but we put her on that Atkins diet anyway. Of course, there is nothing anyone can do with the information about your newborn’s weight. No matter what the weight, they say the same thing: “Oooh, big baby.”