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© SERGEY LAVRENTEV / DREAMSTIME.COM
did it this way, everyone would be happy, no one would
get hurt, and we would raise our kids to be responsible
members of society. And as a dad, my role was critical—I
had to be the driver to ensure all of this happened on
schedule.
But as a soon-to-be father, all of that was overwhelming. I had to focus on finding ways to control things
as early as possible, to make the wonder of pregnancy
easier for me to process and deal with, despite the flurry
of changes. I had to establish some sort of comforting
paradigm for how my children would spend their time
in utero, and how they would come into the world. So
for our first child, I approached the birth process in ways
that were familiar and made sense to me. In fairness, I
should mention that both my wife and I were raised in
traditional ways, and although we knew that we wanted
to be more connected to our children that our parents
were to us, we still agreed that the birth would be in a
hospital, and that the pregnancy and delivery would be
with the help of an OB-GYN.
Our first son, Kai, was born in the hospital, in a fairly
traditional way. Overall, it was…okay. In retrospect, the
word that comes to mind is “satisfactory.” We did attend
a birthing class for several weeks that was sponsored by
the hospital, which provided us with fantastic insight
and guidance into several paradigm shifts—no circumci-
sion, vaccination choices, cloth versus disposable dia-
pers, etc. We prepared by reading books like The Hip Ma-
ma’s Guide to Pregnancy, and spent hours trying to learn
all we could to have as authentic
and non-invasive a pregnancy as
possible. I loved the time when
Ginger was pregnant. The way she
glowed, the laughter and joy we
felt, all of the changes, even
the newness of the
uncertainty—it
was all part of a
joyous process
as we got
ready for our
first son. On
the morning
her water broke, we called the hospital to let them know
we were on our way (why do people do that?), and then
sat down and watched an old episode of Colombo and ate
granola before we went in. There was no fear, no con-
cern—just uncertainty, and a bit of tingling nervousness
as we readied ourselves to meet this little dude that we
had been talking to all these months.
