It Begins

The Day: Sunday, April 13th. For months, Colleen had been tracking her temperature every morning. Apparently, this is some sort of method to detect ovulation cycles or something. All I know is that it meant the alarm clock went off at 5:30 every morning, and subsequently our dog Jackson started whining to go out. For about a week, her temperature had been stedily high every morning, so we decided it was a good time to take a pregnancy test. It felt like Christmas morning for me, waking up to find what Santa had left under the tree. Only Santa was Colleen, and under the perverbial tree was a long plastic stick with a plus sign. Needless to say, her and I were as excited as half asleep people could be. We had to somewhat contain our excitement though, because her mother had been staying with us for the weekend in the other bedroom, and we wanted to keep it a secret until we could officially confirm the results with the doctor.

So what do you do when you find out your wife is pregnant? Do you start weeping uncontrollably? Maybe start talking like a psycho to her belly? No. Real men break out the laptop and immediatly start Googling "pregnancy." So picture me laying in bed on my computer, looking for any information I can find on nutrition, what to expect, and other relavent topics. I wanted to make sure from that point we were doing all the right things. Its amazing what a great resource the Internet is for pregnancy information, but if you read too much, you will think that there is no possible way to live in today's world and have a healthy baby. Everything from water contamination to chemicals in plastic bottles are out to destroy the fetus. Even hot dogs supposably cause problems.

After randomly visiting websites for about an hour, I decided I didn't need to read any more fear-mongering, and put the computer up. I just needed to lay there and enjoy the moment. I mean, think about it...I am going to be a dad. My wife and I had created life. Its really something that you can't grasp fully until it happens. You can try, you can plan, and you can wonder, but you never know how important it is until it actually happens. I was determined to do everything I could to keep Colleen and the baby healthy. I knew that whatever happened from that point, it was going to be one of the biggest things I would ever do with my life on Earth.