Some people might say I am impatient?
I like to think that I am just easily excited. Finding out the news of being pregnant was not only a shock to me but also it became the go to topic for day dreaming in my head.
What are they going to look like? Will we have a boy or a girl? Will they be kind (this was my wife's main concern)? Could they play upfront for Newcastle (or at the very least in goal for Northern Ireland)?
It was really quite wonderful getting lost in all these nice thoughts but outside the day dream, it was really hard to look past what needed to happen in the present day.
We had to tell people!
My wife comes from a large family and there is lots of siblings, cousins, nieces and nephews and bizarrely they all get along. I come from a fairly small family where most of us don't actually speak to each other but I am close to my parents.
This would be the first grandchild for my parents and I just knew how much it would mean to my mum to hear the news. She was first on my list of the people we needed to tell.... but then the doubt set in.
This niggling self doubt is a theme through my whole experience of fatherhood which exists to this day.
We were so early on in the pregnancy and I had read that a lot of babies don't make it (more than we ever could imagine)...did I want to tell my mum, get her excited and then run the risk of having to have an awful conversation about us losing it?
The alternative was wait until 12 weeks, which seems to be the standard for the first scan, and also when most babies are out of the woods and are more likely to keep growing as expected.
Impatient right? There is no way I could of kept it in for 12 weeks so we made the decision to make the call and just hope for the best- another key theme for parenthood!
"Hey mum, would you prefer to be called nanny or granny".. my mum being a proud Northern Irish lady didn't say anything. Then she said "what?". I said "do you want to be called Nanny or Granny?"
The penny dropped
It's fair to say the next 2 mins was just my mum screaming on the phone. There were tears, there was lots of swearing, there was multiple clarifications that I was calling to say we were pregnant. She was thrilled!
I really hoped I wouldn't have to call her back with some bad news.
After we got the 12 week scan picture (I will cover the rollercoaster of scans in another blog) we posted on the standard social media channels.
I don't post much on socials (I realise I am writing this blog and posting it all over my socials) but I wanted to put the scan picture up for one key reason....social media stores your history for you.
I shudder, but reminisce, at all the memories that pop up on my Facebook of years gone by when my hair looked like a wig and my statuses consisted of me telling people what I was eating.
But it is all there, years of memories that I would have otherwise forgotten.
So this post was really about looking back, in years to come, and being reminded of what we said and any well wishes we got from people. We can even show Orla when she is a little older.
These well wishes then became a bit addictive.
Maybe it's a sign of the times or maybe it's just my personality but I couldn't stop refreshing my social media to see what people have put or how many likes I was getting. For some reason I found myself being fixed on what people were saying (or not saying) and all of sudden my focus wasn't on the happy news of my upcoming fatherhood.
I guess my point there is, this was my happy news...why on earth did it matter what other people think? Whilst everyone was super lovely and we got so many comments, cards and messages from our friends and family...this is a rabbit hole worth being mindful of.
I also know lots of people who have struggled to get pregnant, are unable to get pregnant or have sadly had miscarriages.
The happy guilt is real.
Was it fair for me to be excited about our news? We got lucky...we didn't have to try for very long and the first scan showed that everything was progressing as it should. Not everyone is that fortunate and I could not help but feel a little muted or even embarrassed when being around people who I know did not have it so easy.
Upon reflection- I can not control the timing or the feelings of anyone else. All I should have done is just enjoy the news, be present in the moment, cuddle your wife and continue to day dream about the future.
We were basking in the excitement of early pregnancy but that was all about to change...
Except for my mum....she is still screaming with excitement 16 months later
Key learnings
- stay present in your feelings but day dream the heck out of the future and all the exciting possibilities
- your excitement should not be defined by likes and comments on your socials.
- the worry of what's to come is just starting to become more noticeable. Enjoy this early stage and everyone being thrilled for you