Other battle-scarred veterans try to prepare you for the changes of parenthood.  By and large, I STILL don’t know what most of them are talking about.   The “not having adult fun anymore” thing is something I have given an big “eh” to as a bunch of hooey.  Kris and I have never been the go-to-bars-and-concerts clubbin’ kind of people.  We tend to make our own fun.  Our schedule has changed remarkably little – although we spend more time watching the antics of the kid and less watching DVDs.  Nothing we have wanted to do has required us to leave the kid behind, and Harry has gotten very good at eating even in nice restaurants.  If there was anything I missed about my old life, it is lost in my inability to grasp how I ever managed to be really happy without that little gap-toothed grin looking up at me.

 Harry has also proven to be an eminently portable kid, so even our weekend SCA trips have really not changed much beyond the extra crap we have to pack.  And the aforementioned extra crap is not the extravaganza I was warned about.  By and large, we have gotten by without a Pack-n-Play and a trunk full of accessories.  We pack one small bag of toys and another of clothes and diapers.  Given a travel mirror and a few cloth books, Harry contents himself with looking out of the window and playing with his imaginary baby friend.  We rarely have had to endure more than a whimper when he gets exceptionally hungry, or wants his Mommy in the back seat with him.  He went from Little Rock to the East Coast by car and to the West Coast by plane before he was one year old, and both times you could hardly tell he was there.

And the night feeds?  Piece of cake.  Harry wanted to sleep as much as I did.  He woke, he whined, he ate, he went back to sleep.  So did I.  Immediately.

No, that stuff really doesn’t matter.  What nobody tells you about, nobody prepares you for, is the total wimp you are about to become.  The tough, jaded, life-ain’t-fair person I have spent my life forging vanished the minute my son took his first deep breath.  I am not talking about oh-my-cute-little-baby-melts-my-heart wimpification.  Everybody expects to be wrapped around those little baby fingers.  Otherwise, how would all those diapers get changed?  Think about it – I have changed over 2500 dirty diapers in less than a year.  Wouldn’t that make any respectable sane adult think twice about procreation?

No.  That’s not the wimpiness I am talking about.  It’s a far more disturbing and serious phenomenon. 

I am talking about my complete inability to watch the evening news.  I am talking about seriously thinking of sending an email to the writers of House and telling them if they write ONE MORE dead baby episode, I will cancel the Season Pass on my Tivo.  I am talking about going into a three day funk when the infant son of an acquaintance passed away and the visual of the little coffin that kept creeping into my head.  I am talking about weeping – not just tearing up, but WEEPING – at the revelation that 3 children die a day from child abuse in the US.   That more die of hunger every day in the Sudan.  The thought that any person could look at the face of an innocent baby and deliberately cause them pain and hurt and fear turns my stomach completely and has caused me to rethink my opposition to the death penalty.  Hell, not just the death penalty, but the ethics of torture.  It is that serious.

Bad things happen.  This is something that I have always known.  But somehow, it has become less acceptable, less endurable, more immediate, more painful.  THAT’S what the advice books don’t tell you.  That’s what they don’t prepare you for.

 Total. Complete. Wimpification.