Poppa Shock: 9 weeks (depending on the math)

It is not like it wasn't planned but I didn't plan for this.

Here I am nine weeks (or not) into this and culture shock is starting to set in. I feel like Jacob on the subway in "Jacob's Ladder," when he sees the homeless man with a monsterous tail. He looks around in desperation at the others on the train for some kind of mutual acknowledgement of what he sees. No one seems to notice. Where did all these babies around me come from? Everywhere I look there is another one. Don't you notice? What is happening to me? I check out strollers like a used to check out people's mountain bikes. I used to check out women but now I check out people with babies. How tired are they? How do they look? Are they happy? I am going to be a dad.

My baby is currently a fetus that is seven weeks old yet we say s/he is 9 weeks according to some kind of obscure calculation. This situation even has its own mathematical laws. I am only at the threshold of this foreign universe, I know it. Crazy math is only a harbinger.

Isn't being born the first thing that ever happened in the history of mankind? Why does it seem like such a new concept? When the Neandertal was looking at his mate and realizing something was up, he too must have felt some kind of sea change was about to take place. Perhaps he wasn't as concerned for anyone else's well being but he must have felt something.

I once read that the knitting was the greatest invention of the millenium because it allowed parents to love their children. The death of babies and children due to exposure was so commonplace that it just wasn't psychologically feasible to become attached to the children. I don't know how to knit but I can say right now that the little creature that recently lost it's tail, grew a heart and developed eyelids has been become a preoccupation and obsession in my mind. The new centre of my universe is now the size of a bean.