What About Dad?

There's a lot of attention focused on late-in-life moms. Not so much on late-in-life dads. I admit it: at first, my mommy-come-lately experience was all about me, me, me too.

I was overwhelmed by my own feelings of you-have-got-to-be-kidding-me hysteria. Plus, once the pregnancy test came back positive, morning sickness hit with a vengeance--and lasted all day for the next four months.

It took me a while, but I finally realized that Rob had feelings about our unexpected blessing too. Here's what I wrote in BABY CHANGES EVERYTHING in the chapter for dads entitled It takes Two to Tango:

Well into my fourth month, my nausea dissipated and my emotional fog lifted. And I finally asked Rob, "How are you doing with all this?"

No response.

It was the end of a long day and we were lying in bed, so I thought maybe he had fallen asleep. Nope. I glanced over to see my husband just looking at me as if to say, "Are you talking to me?"

Rob seemed stunned to have any attention focused on him. He'd spent weeks pacing me as I mentally and physically wrestled with this pregnancy. If he'd now admitted to utter exhaustion, I wouldn't have been surprised.

"I was happy, but there was a part of me that was a little bit afraid," Rob recalled. "This certainly didn't fit into our plans. But more than that, I was concerned about how it was going to affect you and me. I was kind of waiting for you to whack me for getting you pregnant."

Better late than never, I realized my pregnancy threw Rob's life into upheaval too. He joked, "We saw light at the end of the tunnel--and it was an oncoming train."