The Horror...

In the classic Francis Ford Coppola (or as Nick Cage calls him "Unckie Franky") film "Apocalypse Now", Marlon Brando plays a renegade army colonel holed up in Cambodia.  He and his guerrillas use the neutral country to avoid the US military and wage their own war on sanity and human decency.

This is what your baby is now doing to you.

All 4D ultrasounds look a little like Colonel Kurtz.  Or maybe it's Swoosie Kurtz.

Ok, so people with brains the size of a pea can hardly be insane, or wage war for that matter.  It is more appropriate to say that the baby has arrived at your door with a very large amount of baggage.  Yes, everyone has excess luggage.  Unfortunately, when we're first born, we're so small our parents have to carry our bags for us.  So if you're planning on children, start the emotional weightlifting now.  Have your wife browbeat you for no reason.  Tell the doctor to wait an extra month before giving you the test results for that toothache you had.  Maybe suggest to your boss that they cut your pay indefinitely.  Whatever you can do to get your feelings constantly in flux, do it.  It might slightly help to prepare you for this baby stress.

At the second doctor's appointment you'll get to hear all the terrible things that could be wrong with your child.  They have screenings that can help determine if you're at higher risk for a variety of different genetic problems.  Your kid got too many chromosomes?  Not enough chromosomes?  Is your child's spine developing outside of it's body?  Want to know if your baby will eventually develop a life threatening disease that won't even be noticeable until they reach middle age?  Well we can tell you!

What they don't really tell you is that for most of these things there are really only two options.  Deal with it, or the other thing.....

It sucks. Suddenly you realize how little control you have. You're Martin Sheen and you're deep in the Cambodian jungle with a madman and a legion of his military trained and brainwashed followers.  So how do you slowly rise out of that jungle river and murder your fears with a giant bowie knife?

Didn't that guy coach the Mighty Ducks?

My first step was to just try to not think about it.  Cause that'll work.  It's like the first time you heard about the swine flu.  People were telling you how bad it would be, and how everyone was going to die.  You listened quietly keeping calm and collected, all the while thinking, "Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh...."  Every time you developed a tickle in your throat you had to choke back a cough.  If you did cough or sneeze you knew it was time to write your will.  After a while you realize, the quickest way for you to get over it is by living life.  There's an old saying, "Hold on to bad thoughts too long and they turn to brown soup in your bowels.  Move on with your life and you'll poop true."  That's good advice for anyone.

It is also good to keep in mind the health of you and your spouse.  If you're young and healthy there's no reason to think your baby won't be fine.  If you make an omelette with expired eggs it may not turn out well.  However, if you use fresh eggs, you're not going to test it first or expect it to be bad, you'll just dig in.  Right?  (Seriously, that's not rhetorical, I'm not too sure about that analogy.)  

Of course there is always good old statistics to relieve your stress.  For instance, your chances of having  a baby with Spina Bifida is about the same as getting dealt a Royal Flush in poker.  Take it from someone who has played thousands of hands of poker: those are not good odds.  So really you've got an amazing chance at a winning baby, and a shit chance at the perfect poker hand.

The truly scary thing is that the fear will never leave.  You will always be worried about your child's health and happiness.  Really, that's good news.  This sort of empathy will prove you are not a cyborg.  It also means you are going to make a fine parent.  If you do not care about your child it is possible you are a cyborg built with synthetic memories to make you think you are human.  It is much more possible that you are a sociopath.  Why go through all the work of having a child if you don't give a damn about it?

So I guess there is no reason to be afraid of the giant ball of stress you've made for yourself.  You just have to live life and realize that bad things will happen, you just have to deal with them.  That's why I write.  It keeps my mind off worrying and on the happier things.  Plus it allows me to make an ass of myself in a hitherto unused media.  Lord knows I've embarrassed myself in just about every other way imaginable.

See....

Next Time:

Gender Bias