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I\u2019m sure this won\u2019t be a shock to any of my zero readers, but as excited I am for the impending arrival of my second child, I\u2019m also extremely emotional and often suppressing feelings of guilt towards my first, bringing in a second so soon, and while she\u2019s still in a stage of her life where the world is her oyster and should really have the undivided attention that many children at her age really should be getting.<\/span><\/p>\n Everything I\u2019m doing, I\u2019m realizing is counting down to the last times in which I\u2019ll be doing all sorts of mundane things \u2013 as a father of one.\u00a0 The last time bathing my daughter, putting her down to bed.\u00a0 The last day in which I\u2019ll be logging her feed times and nap minutes.\u00a0 Picking up her toys and resetting all of her play area books and blocks.\u00a0 Washing and then preparing the next day\u2019s bottles that are hers and hers alone.\u00a0 The next time I go to bed, and awaken the next morning, I won\u2019t even be there to wake her up, since mythical wife will be required to be at the hospital very early.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I can\u2019t guarantee I won\u2019t be fighting a tidal wave of emotion before bedtime next.\u00a0 Because once I\u2019m a father of two, who knows how long or if things like these will ever get back to a similar point, or what\u2019s really going to happen in the future.<\/span><\/p>\n Although I am supremely confident in mine, and mythical wife\u2019s capacity to love our children, and that everything will be just fine in the end, it doesn\u2019t change the fact that I\u2019m still harboring all these feelings in the days leading up to the big arrival.<\/span><\/p>\n A little over a year ago, #1 showed up at 34.5 weeks, definitely, unexpectedly early, and most certainly classifying as a premature arrival.\u00a0 This caught me, mythical wife, and all concerned parties completely off-guard, and if not for our own preparations, would have been in a really tricky situation after it had happened.\u00a0 Even still though, it did lead to some scrambling, and as much as we look at the 15 days of her in the NICU with some angst despite knowing it was the best place for her to strengthen and start her life, it did afford me some time to truly get the house ready, seeing as how she didn\u2019t actually get to come home for over two weeks.<\/span><\/p>\n That\u2019s hardly the case, this time.\u00a0 #1 showed up unexpectedly early, but #2 couldn\u2019t possibly have been more content to stay in the oven, leading mythical wife down a path of new pregnancy experiences like debilitating insomnia and the general discomfort for having a small watermelon inside of her.\u00a0 She\u2019s not on track to be full-term, she is very much full-term at the very instant I\u2019m writing this line right now.<\/span><\/p>\n We passed the milestone of #1\u2019s early arrival, and have been doing nothing but getting ready for #2.\u00a0 Mythical wife has gotten her hair done in advance.\u00a0 Which made me realize that I could go and get my haircut in advance, something I couldn\u2019t really do last year because of the surprise arrival plus the start of the pandemic.\u00a0 The second nursery is almost entirely complete.\u00a0 My job has been kept abreast and is fully prepared for me to be out for a few weeks as I\u2019m going to finally cash in some of my vacation time that I\u2019ve been sitting on for this specific reason.<\/span><\/p>\n All things that were not the case the first time around.\u00a0 And for all those reasons that frankly nobody could have any control over, I\u2019m still feeling guilt, irrational as it might be, I can\u2019t always help it.\u00a0 #2 is almost certain to be bigger and stronger upon her arrival, having almost an entire month to keep cooking.\u00a0 The NICU, god forbid, should be avoided this time around as a result, and she will probably get lots of things that my first couldn\u2019t get, like getting to sleep with us in the hospital room, taking to the breast, and coming home pretty immediately; all things that #1 did not experience, even if she won\u2019t know it, we do.<\/span><\/p>\n Eight, full months of knowing this day was coming, and all the preparations and readiness, and I\u2019m still feeling increasing anxiety and unpreparedness as we get closer and closer.\u00a0 Like I said, I have all the confidence in the world that everything\u2019s going to be fine, but the whole point of all these dad brogs is to chronicle the shit that goes on through my head, as a father of one, and soon to be a father of two.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019m sure this won\u2019t be a shock to any of my zero readers, but as excited I am for the impending arrival of my second child, I\u2019m also extremely emotional and often suppressing feelings of guilt towards my first, bringing in a second so soon, and while she\u2019s still in a stage of her life … Continue reading 2 Under 2: the Last Times (#051)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[36,100,193,71,192,177],"class_list":["post-48017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-angst","tag-comparison","tag-dad","tag-famiry","tag-kids","tag-mythical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48017"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48017\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48019,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48017\/revisions\/48019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}