[This is an entry from Steve]
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\nBefore Kate became pregnant, we bought a book about pregnancy and what to expect. Since then, we’ve bought a few more, and have spent plenty of time noodling about the internet.
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\nMost pregnancy literature is written with a female audience in mind. Invariably, when it comes time to address the father-to-be (in a condescending little sidebar, most likely), the text goes something like this:
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\n“You’re probably feeling [one or more of confused, frustrated, overwhelmed, isolated, etc.] at this point, but rest assured that all new fathers feel this way.”
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\nNothing could be farther from the truth. I’m feeling excited and confident. No confusion or frustration. I’ve got a good handle on the pregnancy, the birth, and Kate. In fact, the only negative feeling I can come up with is a bit of impatience — 6 more months of waiting for Zippy is a long time.
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\nIt’s disappointing to me that so much of what I’ve read attempts to undermine the confidence of the father before the baby even arrives.
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\nOf *course* I don’t know what to expect — and neither did any other father before the birth of his child since, oh, the beginning of time. That’s not the point. I’m confident in my abilities to lead a good life and be a good person. My marriage, my career, and my hobbies are all examples of that. In each of those cases, I have pretty much just dived in without really knowing what the hell I was doing, made some mistakes, made some changes, and enjoyed the entire process. Why should child-rearing be any different?
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\nTo some extent, the fear that the baby books are trying to propagate is, like most, a fear of the unknown. But in my case, I’m perfectly comfortable stating that, yes, I don’t know everything that there is to know about raising Zippy. But how could I? We haven’t even met yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[This is an entry from Steve] Before Kate became pregnant, we bought a book about pregnancy and what to expect. Since then, we’ve bought a few more, and have spent plenty of time noodling about the internet. Most pregnancy literature is written with a female audience in mind. Invariably, when it comes time […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-parenting","category-pregnancy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameiskate.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameiskate.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameiskate.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameiskate.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameiskate.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameiskate.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameiskate.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameiskate.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mynameiskate.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}