I assumed that I would be over it by now, but I'm just not.
Here's the difference, with no explanation. I'm sure that you can guess what these statements are in response to:
"It's an amazing experience, and I'm sure you're going to have fun with it!""It's over. Your life is over."The statement that elicits such responses is simple: "We're having a baby." (Blue is a womans response. Orange is a mans.)
Men and women just react differently to each other upon hearing the news. It should not come as a shock to me, but I guess it still does. Women will often share their stories of everything except the actual birth part of having a child. (pregnancy skips right to seeing the beautiful baby) Men, on the other hand, tend to start with the actual birth part, and get right to how little time they have to themselves and such.
I know that not having alone time is going to happen. I'm okay with that. I know that we won't get to go out to dinner every weekend, and that's okay too. I know that I won't see a movie in a theater for several years, and then all of the movies will be either in cartoon form or with lots of singing.
I love my wife, and I know that she will change. I will change. We will change together. We've lived through a lot of good and bad times in our years together. Change happens everyday, with or without a little girl in the picture. (or boy, but for my purposes I know it's a girl!) The key is how we will deal with that change.
Will we yell at each other? Absolutely.
Will we love each other? More than ever.
Will we secretly wish that the other one would leave the house with the baby so that we can get some sleep? Yes.
Will we secretly wish that the other will leave the house WITHOUT the baby so that we can have some one on one time? Undoubtedly.
I guess that I'm posting this as a reminder to myself later to break the trend. When another guy says to me "hey man, we found out we're having a baby" I want my reply to be better. I want to set a trend of "wow, that's awesome man. Let's hang out!"
Any other good advice I should be keeping in mind for now or later?