We’re having a baby.

Yeah, ok, so Emily scooped me on that one, twice now. I don’t care – you get to read my writing about it too! It’s amazing what has changed. Let me give you a little timeline:

Dan – teenager through college: “I’m sure I’ll have a kid or two someday.”

Emily – college: “I don’t plan to ever get married.”

Dan & Emily – married: “We’ll have kids someday, but we want to enjoy just being married for a few years.”

Dan & Emily – married for a few years: “Babies are sticky. And there’s no way we could fit one into our lives.”

Emily – a few years beyond that: “I do want to experience being a mother.”

Dan – same time: “Babies are still sticky. And I don’t want to go back to the high-paying 9-5 job that I’d feel obligated to work if we had a child.”

Dan – about a year or two later, but a lot more grown up: “Actually, there’s absolutely no reason we can’t achieve all of our life’s goals and have a child. In fact, it’ll be great. No more than one or two children though – I don’t want them to outnumber us.”

Dan – with a newly pregnant wife: “WOOHOO! Ok, I don’t care, we can have as many children as you want.”

What changed? Well, I recently wrote a personal journal entry called “My Day” that detailed my vision of my ideal day. It’s in present tense, but all of the things in it haven’t been fully realized yet. I was reading that journal entry to myself and I had a sudden epiphany: when I read the part about interacting with our children, I visualized more than one or two. I didn’t visualize a specific number of children, but it felt like three to five.

So I went from a child thinking “sure I’ll have kids someday” to a more self-aware young adult thinking “I’m too selfish to have kids” to a man thinking “I’m ready to be a father” to a father-to-be thinking “Children are the greatest gift life has to offer me.”

I can scarcely imagine how I will feel once our baby is actually born!

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