T-minus 9 months

This week, I learned that my wife is pregnant. It's wonderful news, and I'm very excited, but I'm also, frankly, completely and utterly freaked out.

It wasn't an accident, although I'll freely admit that if it were up to me, we would have waited about another year. We've been married just a couple of months, and I would have been quite happy to enjoy being DINKs for a while longer (Double-Income No Kids for the uninitiated).

This blog is named with apologies to Armin Brott, whose book The Expectant Father is an excellent resource (a review of that book and a few others will probably be a future post). Books like his do a good job of isolating the experience of the expectant father and answering all manner of questions. What's going on with your partner? What's going on with the foetus? And what's going on with you, the dad-to-be? They validate all the feelings that men may experience through their partners' pregnancies, which really run the gamut from thrilled to scared *expletive deleted*-less.

And then, without exception, all these books tell you to shut the hell up. The story goes: you may experience these feelings, they are completely valid and normal, and your job now is to support your partner 110%, so keep any negativity or apprehensiveness to yourself. Consider yourself chauffeur for doctor's appointments and fetcher of ice cream.

Fair enough. I certainly don't want to be anything less than 110% supportive of my wife, who, for the purposes of this blog, we'll call Kate. Hence this blog: a place for me, other expecting parents who'd like to contribute, and interested readers to share their experiences and---anonymously---air those feelings that might be considered less than 100% positive.