Thoughts On Kicking Babies

I finally felt my daughter kick for the first time. I feel like I should clarify here that she is in my wife’s womb. I guess if she were born already it wouldn’t be as special a moment. Actually it would be quite unacceptable.

Anyway, I think it’s all pretty amazing, this whole pregnancy deal. And when I say ‘amazing’ I mean it. I know ‘amazing’ is another overused term that has lost its impact because people use it to describe things like lasagna and television shows, but this is literally amazing. Miraculous, astonishing, extraordinary, beautiful. Amazing. Yeah, people get pregnant every day. It’s happened billions of times. In fact, being born is one of the few things that happens to everyone. Well, that and dying. And shopping at Walmart. Birth, death, and Walmart — the three pillars of human existence. But even so, it is still incredible.

When you’re a guy and your wife gets pregnant for the first time (especially with twins), the one question that every single dude asks you is “man, are you sure you’re ready for this?” Ready? Ready to have my whole universe rocked and my life and identity permanently transformed? Well, 1) it doesn’t matter if I am because life ain’t waitin’ for me to get ‘ready’ for it, and 2) you’d know I really wasn’t ready if I told you I was ready. It’s like if I was boarding a spaceship to another planet that nobody’s ever heard of and right as the countdown began you asked me if I was ‘ready’.

Uh. I took some Dramamine, if that’s what you mean.

Men spend their lives getting ready for a lot of things. We are ready for inclement weather, we’re ready for a power outage, we’re ready for a flat tire, we’re ready for a home invader, we’re ready to explain our political opinions, we’re ready to debate anyone about anything (or maybe that’s just me), most of us are ready for all manner of apocalypses, be it of the asteroid, zombie, nuclear, or giant Blob variety. But we, unlike women, don’t spend a lot of time preparing ourselves for marriage and babies. Girls imagine themselves as moms and wives from the age of three and on. When I was a kid I imagined myself as a dinosaur. Then when I matured, I thought about being a ninja fighting dinosaurs. Finally, when I became an adult, I started to contemplate myself as a dinosaur ninja. And then I got married. And now I’m a father. It’s been a real whirlwind.

Actually, from how hard my girl can kick I think I may have passed down the ninja gene.