It hath started

So I had my fingers crossed about the whole morning sickness deal skipping out on my wife's pregnancy as she already gets car sick, motion sick and whatever other queasy, nauseous feelings are out there.  No such luck. 

As I've said before, she's had occasional feelings of bloating, sick, and headaches, but this weekend was a new evolution. She felt sick the entire weekend and I had to pull over twice on the 4 hour drive home because she thought she was going to projectile vomit on my dashboard.  At one point, I was asking her if she could fit the vomit in a Burger King cup because I didn't want to pull over in the middle of nowhere. There never was any vomit, but some crying did follow before she finally crawled into the back seat and curled up in the fetal position to sleep. 

I'm terrified that its going to be like this every day the rest of the way. I've read in three different places that that is possible, and that would be my luck.  

Making things even more fun was the fact that I kept having issues with my car during the drive, a plastic runner under the engine had come loose and was dragging on the freeway before eventually snapping off.  But a small piece remained, and would drag anytime we hit a dip in the road or changed lanes.  That 60K tune up just got $200 more expensive, guaranteed.  I'll drop a grand on this trip to the mechanic, no doubt about it.  Oh well.

The wedding was great, by the way.  Lots of fun, Alicia looked great and I had a great time with her friends' husbands.  It's always a little dicey when you are forced into situations with with your wife's friends' husbands or significant others, but I'm really fortunate that this particular group of guys is a lot of fun to be around. 

I'm just laughing to myself because one of my wife's friends is an absolute disaster, every time there's an event with alcohol - she's that sloppy train-wreck that is doing something inappropriate and out of control.  Funny but at the same time, tragic.  The girl who got married wrote Train Wreck an email after my wife's bachelor party because she was such a shitastrophe the entire time.  So how did she respond?  By passing out in a chair outside the wedding and disappearing most of the night.  My last vision of her was being carried by two groomsmen down the street.  The told us at breakfast yesterday she'd be "having a talk with herself".

By the way - we escaped the entire weekend without anyone guessing Wife was pregnant.  I did head off some drinks with sprites dressed up like cocktails, and we had the waiter pour sparkling apple cider instead of champagne, but it actually wasn't that hard.  

Road Trip!

I didn't post yesterday because I had a horrible stomach ache and decided to head home, as it was a slow day at work.  The fact that I also got a haircut, went to crossfit, picked up my dry cleaning and took the dogs for a walk before I'd usually get home was just a bonus.  What? I felt better!

Some meathead in the middle of the metcon last night pointed to me, like he wanted to go head to head or something.  WTF?  Who does that?  People get super competitive at crossfit, which can be good because it pushes you beyond what you think you are capable of, but that's a little ridiculous.  Besides, I was silently racing the two guys next to me and whooping them, you can't be tardy to the party like that.

So not much on the baby front.  Wife (I need an Alias for her to protect the identity of the innocent) is doing well, she claims she's starting to feel nauseous in the mornings but its hard to tell if it is because of the pregnancy or not - she gets car and motion sick at the drop of a hat anyway.  She used to drink a lot of coffee and Coke (switched to decaf) so she's been getting some headaches in the morning as well.  She took some tylonel the other day for it, so naturally the book I'm reading covered the uptick in the possibility of miscarriage if someone takes ibuprofen or aspirin during pregnancy.  Whatever, I'm sure one time isn't the end of the world.

I drove into work this morning because we're heading down to the Central Coast for a wedding this weekend right after work.  Wife is in the wedding, so its going to be strange to be sitting and milling about on my own.  There was also some discussion on what I'd wear to the rehearsal dinner, because I honestly could care less and was planning on showing up in a button down shirt and jeans (invitation said casual).  There just seems to be more important things to worry about right now, know what I'm sayin'?

Wife is not a big drinker, so it'll be interesting to see if she gets cornered about drinking this weekend and how she deals with it.  I have a feeling she'll be fine, but we'll see how it goes. I kind of like it being our secret, so it would kind of suck to get the cover blown off by some friends before we even get to tell our families.  Oh well, in 7.5 months, it wouldn't matter any way.

Oh, and tomorrow is beach day and the forecast in for 63 degrees.  I went to school in San Diego, so I was thinking I might surf a little bit - but forget it if it is going to be that cold.  I've been reading too much about sharks lately any way... 

OMG, is it mine?

So apparently the baby is the size of a sesame today, and the heart is developing but not beating yet.  Also, I read in my Kindle book today that it is very common for men to question whether or not the baby is theirs at this point in the pregnancy.  I believe the statistic was 20 out of 100, and then the author went on to say 2 out of 100 really are the result of adultery. 

Is that crazy to just me?  I've never doubted for a moment that the baby is mine, but at the same time - we were blessed to conceive on our honeymoon.  But still 20% of pregnant guys wonder if it is theirs?  That's nuts, I wonder if its a sign of society these days or some common response to being pregnant but life hasn't really changed? 

My profile name is "Your Baby's Daddy", now that seems a little more poignant...

Nothing else new to report.  I need to call my mechanic for my 60K mile tune up and my dentist just called because its time for a cleaning.  It never ends.  The sad thing is its a no brainer that the car gets tuned while the dentist gets put off.

We're going to a wedding this weekend, I'm looking forward to having Friday off and its at the beach, so that should be nice.  The weather's only supposed to be in the 60's though, so maybe a bon fire and some sports will be in order...

Well, the weekend turned out to be fine.  About an hour after my post from Saturday morning, my wife and I had a discussion about the state of our finances and laid it all out.  I think we both had some valid points, put I left and went to crossfit in a pretty sour mood.  My wife had pointed out that we hadn't explored all the possible options when it came to qualifying for a mortgage and hadn't even looked at signing up for her benefits or mine.

The reason for that is pretty simple, to me.  I pay almost all of the bills every month, and I pay 70% of the rent right now.  Having another two peoples benefits come out of my paycheck makes me want to scream.

Any way, I left on Saturday morning and went to workout with a little extra motivation.  The workout was heavy front squats, and then a 7 minute circuit alternating between 5 muscle ups (a brutal gymnastic maneuver) and 10 thrusters @ 115 lbs (probably the most taxing barbell exercise we do).  I only mention the workout because, for some reason, when I'm taxing myself things become a lot clearer.

I called my wife when I was done and agreed that I needed to at least take a look at everything before I ruled it out.  Then I met her at Barnes and Nobles (they still have them!) and we bought 5 or 6 books about pregnancy.  An older gentleman checked me out and said, "I notice a theme in the books you are buying, are congratulations in order?"  Its funny, we're 5 weeks in or so and haven't told anyone, so this stranger checking me out at the book store was the first person that's congratulated me.  I definitely was filled with... I don't know, joy?

The rest of the weekend was a blur of yard work, trying to stay out of the 100 degree heat and not much else.  I finished a book that I'd been working on on the Kindle for a while and bought a book called "Pregnancy for Men: The whole 9 months" to read on the train.  It's written by a Brit, so all the pop references and certain slang words are pale and taste bad going down. 

I noticed more of what I saw on Amazon and Barnes and Nobles, when it comes to resources for men, they all try to take a sarcastic, funny approach.  Its amazing how many cliches there are when it comes to pregnancy, but then again - we're not doing anything original here.  But the overall feel is like being at one of those comedy traffic schools, the attempts at humor are cringe worthy.

Need to make that dolla dolla

Ugh, it's 6:30 and I can't sleep.  I think part of every married (or unmarried) guy's life is wanting to take care of your wife and family.  We shoulder that responsibility and burden and probably die early because of it.

So we rent a house, a nice house, but still, we rent. We've been talking about buying a house for years and with us being pregnant, I decided to call a broker last week and crunch numbers.  As part of the process, I gathered up all the account balances and spreadsheeted away.  It turns out that my wife blew threw the budget for the wedding and had accumulated about $14k in debt.

The debt I can deal with, so we buckle down and tighten up and pay it down.  The problem is, she isn't a numbers person and doesn't understand why we can't buy a house.  Like literally, foot stomping, "I want a house.  Why can't you borrow money against your 401k?" type of stuff.  As if I'm going to leverage us further out to buy a house we can barely afford right before we have a kid.

I have no idea how much having a kid costs.  I believe my wife when she says she will want to go back to work, but I've worked with enough women who've said that and then can't bear to leave their children in someone else's hands to know that can change.  So best case, she'll be on disability and earning less than 100% for at least a few months, and then we'll have to figure out child care and pay for it as well.  Worst case, we'll just have my income.

Either way, I can't see a house working right now.  Not without more cash for the down payment.  We're in the Bay Area, a decent house costs at least $550,0000 so for 10% I need at least $55K.  Plus closing costs.

In the meantime, live goes on.  A hose fell off my radiator last night and my car needs to go into the shop.  My wife wants books on pregnancy and needs money to get to work next week.

They say there's never a "right time" to have a kid.  But I've focused my whole life on making sure I was one of those people that could afford a child, and it feels like I got caught on the wrong side of the spreadsheet.

So here's to a weekend with an angry wife and one car so we'll need to work together.  At least I've got a half a bottle of vodka and a mountain bike trail head 3 minutes from my house.

The baby is supposed to be the size of a poppyseed right now.  From what I've read, the brain and spinal chord develop quickly in these first few weeks.  My job is to encourage her to eat a lot of protein and fat to help her body do that.  We had pizza last night :/

That Just Happened

This is my first post, who knows if anyone will ever read this ish so it could be me rocking in the corner crying to myself.  What else is new?

This is my Jerry McGuire mission statement. 

I just turned 37 three weeks ago, got married two months ago and went on a great honeymoon in Italy. My wife is 35 and the best thing that's ever happened to me, there's times when I feel like pinching myself because I'm with her.  We got married after dating for two years, we moved in together after five months of dating.  What I'm trying to say is we did everything quickly because we knew how lucky we were when we met, and we knew we wanted kids and the clock was ticking.

Anyway, the goalie was pulled on our honeymoon.  We got busy every day except for one day when we were exhausted and overheated from hiking all over Florence in 95 degree heat.  The monthly bill came anyway.  We started to worry.  What if something was wrong?  What if we're one of those couples that needs help?  We did a little research on ovulation, how to increase your odds of success, etc.  I did a little research on the Chinese calendar, what positions are best for having a boy, etc. 

Month two of trying and we were pretty sure we nailed it.  The making the baby stuff was better, more romantic and less of a task, which it had been occasionally during month one.  So the monthly bill was due on Tuesday, and it never came.  She took a test, and it said she's pregnant. Then she got up Wednesday morning and took another test.  I got a text from her with a picture of the indicator literally saying the word "PREGNANT".  We're knocked up, its Friday.

How do I feel? Holy shit am I happy.  But alternating with the profound joy are feelings of terror and the realization that I don't know a goddamn thing about pregnancy or being a father.  I'm doing the research online, I'm ordering the books on Amazon, I'm a sponge soaking up how to be the best baby daddy I can be.  And all I keep reading is: "You are fucked".  Apparently, I'm basically living with a ticking time bomb of hormones and whining.  I don't buy it, so I'm starting this blog so if someone some day is like me and wants to know what being an expecting father is like, they can have the truth.  I'll lay it out there, the good and the bad, and I promise to be honest. Also, I don't know shit about blogging, so bare with me.

Also, I'm not just going to write about baby stuff. I think babies and kids are boring as shit, so here's a little about me.  I'd rather hang out with my dog (whom I potty trained in two weeks) than hang out around a screaming baby.  I mountain bike and do crossfit to stay in shape and I work in finance for a huge institutional bank with universities, pension funds and various government agencies as clients.  We'll see how much my interests change during this process. 

So we did the first picture last night of her with her flat stomach against a white wall.  Picture 0 and this is blog post 0.  Star date July 20, 2012, due date March 26, 2012.  May god help us all.