Dalia has started to show in the last few days. Not majorly, but in the way that’s just noticeable enough to us. Her stomach is bulging and rounding more than just from too many tacos. Our baby is in there growing!
We’ve been following the expected weekly growth plan of our baby since the beginning. From poppy seed to orange seed to sweet pea to blueberry to raspberry and now somewhere near a green olive. Making more space before becoming a prune, plum, avocado, squash and watermelon. Bursting into our lives later this year as a crying, squirming ball of energy, sweeter than any fruit in the world.
Somehow this change has moved me more than the others beforehand. Dalia felt all the symptoms and I just observed. But now I can tangibly see and feel evidence of this new life growing too, and it’s incredible.
Dalia’s mom turned 60 today and we’re in our sixth week of Covid lockdown. So much has happened and is happening in the world our child will enter. But his/her job is to grow in peace, absorb what he needs and do what she’s gotta.
While we do the same out here. Washing hands, making puzzles, bingeing shows from the comfiest corner of our couch. Laying down our last set of memories as a duo, soon to open the page on the family album from here on in.
Just about nine months ago, I wrote an opening blog post for a blog I didn’t have, on a topic I didn’t know anything about. I was in Ankara, Turkey, for six weeks of work and my wife and I were set to begin our family planning process upon my return.
And now I’m writing again, with the amazing news that we’re officially pregnant! A lot has happened in these last nine months and none of those things include a baby growing to maturity in my wife’s womb. We upgraded our apartment after two years of married life in a very modest initial shared space; my wife’s work contracts kept getting extended; and I began months of intensive work training that included six weeks in the amazingly beautiful city of Vienna. Things fell into place in so many ways but still no baby news. Dalia started to get stressed and I also started to wonder.
Fast forward to the last few weeks and the state of our lives, and without much exaggeration, the rest of the human family have changed dramatically.
First came the fabulous news that my first oversea’s post would be in Rome! It’s the kind of news that makes you wake up with a smile and see sunrays even in the depth of Canadian winter. As we were integrating and sharing this news, the folks in Wuhan, China were living at another extreme.
The novel coronavirus, now called Covid-19, engulfed and shut down the Hubei province of China. Cases were reported outside China, even here in Canada, but no one quite imagined the global reach and impact we would all soon experience. The updates over the past weeks, days and now hours, bringing most of the world into daily realities that we never realistically envisioned.
Sports leagues closed down, millions of people forced to stay at home for weeks at a time, the Iranian Health Minister got corona, Justin Trudeau’s wife, and even Tom Hanks. I think North America woke up to the threat with the NBA season cancellation, alongside Forrest Gump’s diagnosis. Well maybe everyone except Donald Trump, but that’s another story.
Covid life has been circling down upon us slowly, steadily and eerily. On Saturday, we went to a restaurant on its last night open until who knows when. On Sunday, we saw Little Women in the theatre and came out to a sign saying that the cinema was now closed. Then on Monday, we officially began working from home. Public servants working from home in a capital city is a big, big deal.
So we’re adjusting day by day. Sharing time in our comfortable home, looking tentatively forward to a life in Italy, where Covid has had a terrifying impact thus far, and now, preparing to welcome our first child into the world.
Dalia did a test on Thursday, then another one on Friday. Yesterday, she went to do her bloodwork and today, while I was on a conference call about Covid’s impact on our international operations, she was on her own call with the doctor confirming her pregnancy. We danced and jumped and laughed with joy.
The world is in a state none of us has ever seen before and we can’t wait to one day share with our child the circumstances under which she/he decided to enter our lives. Already one with a knack for grand entrances!
I’ve had one blog or another for some time now, beginning with cabbage-on-my-pillow in 2004, about my ESL teaching adventures in Jeonju, South Korea. In those relatively early days of the internet, I barely knew what a blog was when a friend recommended I start one. Since then, most of my blogs have been largely invisible, acting more as digital notebooks for me than any type of reference point for anyone else.
My wife suggests that I start a new blog about fatherhood and I, as always, don’t need much convincing. The notable thing about a fatherhood blog at this point is that I’m not a father (yet). Acknowledging that obvious and important detail, I did want to begin writing in the precious PDD (pre-daddy days). I’ve certainly had my fill of them.
I’m of the modern, cosmopolitan, tentatively decisive generation of men who only started thinking about marriage in their 30s and will join the global parental brigade after his 40th birthday. I feel no particular kind of way about this reality. I’m happy with my life now and how it’s evolved to this point and perhaps only concerned about how my almost-middle-aged body and mind will cope (poorly) with sleep deprivation.
Otherwise, my wife is truly the best part of me and a perfect complement in all the ways that matter. We met in grad school in Brussels (even though we lived a 20 minute drive from each other in Toronto for the entire preceding decade) and have barely stopped holding hands since. It goes without say that the comfort, love and support that we’ve experienced, especially after marriage, has been magical and not a feeling I ever knew existed.
Something like parenthood in that way. I’m mature, ready, serious, full of love and married to the kindest woman you could ever imagine. We are both thrilled to join genetic coils and create and expand on the life we already share.
I’m writing this introduction from the patio of the Soul Pub in Ankara, Turkey. I’ve been here for about a month now for work. Dalia and I have agreed to get the can kicking on babymaking once I return home in two weeks.
Also, after more than a decade of applying, I’ve also been accepted for training in my dream career path. A job that will allow me to meld my dual professional and personal passions for immigration and travel. And that’s also set to start soon after my return.
It’s all perfectly well-timed and a bit overwhelming at the same time. I’ve always acknowledged myself as a late-bloomer and after a full, dynamic and satisfying first forty years of life, I’m ready for the start of the next few decades on these two incredible fronts.
I hope to keep up with this blog, hopefully entertain some folks and share the joy and journey of being a Dad In The World.
Dad In The World 