The Greatest Thing I Ever Did And The Reminders I Get About It Every Day

When my wife was pregnant with our first child, even though we were trying to have a child, I was still in shock. She wanted to surprise me with the information and told me the morning we were leaving on our way to go to the doctors office. I was so out of it that I'm not sure I remember much more about the doctors visit than that. It's kind of funny to look back on, but I was afraid, and I'm not even sure why.

We waited for a reasonable period of time to let everyone else know so that we were sure our unborn child was going to be on the way and healthy. It was an awesome feeling, and everyone was quick to throw in their congratulations and advice.

One of the comments to me from a friend stuck out among all of the others and really caused me to think about my situation. He told me that, having a child was the greatest thing he had ever done. I'll repeat that in capitals now. HAVING A CHILD WAS THE GREATEST THING HE HAD EVER DONE. Here, a fairly successful person tells me that my entire life was going to change, but it was going to change for the better. I'm here to tell you today that he was correct.

I had kids a little later in life than some despite always wanting to be a father. I loved being an uncle 4 times over and loved playing with my nieces and nephews. I had always wanted to be married, and I had dated people for long periods of time but until I met my wife, I was never quite there. You can't fully prepare for everything that is going to happen when you have kids. You can get hit with so many variables that no matter how hard you try, you're going to have to learn some of it along the way. Walking into a hospital in the middle of the night knowing that your family is going to increase the next time all of you leave was pretty wild. We had a baby room, baby stuff, toys, clothes, formula, and lots of other things that we had read, been told, or were just given because other people assumed that we would need. The whole thing is pretty overwhelming.

So my beautiful baby girl is born. Something that has happened to every single one of the 7.5 billion people on the planet, but I am still in amazement, because I made this happen. My wife and I produced this beautiful little being and she shared the good and the bad of both of us.

There was one medical issue we had to overcome which came as a surprise on day 1. She had a hereditary problem that we had passed down to her, and although it was fairly mild she would need to have surgery again in a year to correct it. My heart sank.

I was in love with someone I had never even met before, and now I wasn't sure if she was going to be okay or not. We did our homework, lots of it. Found a doctor that we were very happy with and our baby girl was fine. She went through a surgery that looked like she had been hit by a truck, but she was going to be okay. After a few days she started acting normal, I felt like I could breathe again, and I did, with a few sighs of relief.

A year goes by and our baby had now turned one. We decided to try to have another child. It didn't take long, but we were quickly blessed. Nine months and a few weeks go by and we head to the hospital again. More than a little anxiety hits me because I'm concerned we are going to have the same problems after our first birth and that we'd have to put another beautiful child through what our first one went through. Even though our first was okay, there is nothing worse than seeing your child hurting, and having a feeling that you can't do anything about it.. It turned out our second did not have the same problems, and we were going to be moving forward a little easier than the first time.  I was still incomplete awe, after the 2nd birth occurred. It truly felt amazing.

One wrench in the works was that I was sick at the time with a chicken-pox like disease called hand, foot and mouth. I was dreadfully worried about giving to our baby or any of the other babies in the delivery room. So for the first few weeks I had to wear gloves, or at least I thought I did, because I didn't want to take one chance of harming munchkin number 2 or someone else's child. I had it bad too, sores all over my body (and I do mean all over) and a sore throat, which when it was at its worse made me unable to even eat ice cream. After a few weeks I was on the mend and decided that it would be okay to touch my new baby girl. This second baby was again so personal to me and my wife, as personal as it gets. Despite having happened billions of times before I really felt like I was the luckiest person on the planet to be so in love again with someone who I had just met.

On Mother's day this year I started thinking about how proud my parents were when I was born, and how proud, excited and scared their parents were before them. The population has more than doubled on the planet since I was born, but these numbers do not lessen the experience at all.

We have seen new born deer (fawns) in our back yard the past three years in a row. The first year the mother had been injured (probably hit by a car a few months earlier) and we were worried she wasn't going to make it through winter, then low and behold she gives birth, with only three functional legs. Watching the new fawn nursing from its mother reminded me of two of the most exciting days of my life, the days that made me a father.

What happens in life sometimes will go in an unexpected direction. All you can do, is try to do your best when things don't go as planned. From time to time, we may get reminders as to what is really important to us and we should always be thankful for it and focus on that.