This baby is really dragging his heels, mostly into the side of Fina’s insides. I’m no medical expert, but it feels like the waiting game is bad for my health, and it’s possible he is doing this to torture us. Uncertainty and fear of the unknown shouldn’t be weighing me down, not because I’m the World’s Best Daddy™ with experience in both child-rearing and child-birth-observation, but because most of this early stuff should be pretty easy for me. I’ve already packed my cigars for the waiting room. I’m taking my companies paternity leave and plan on working on my golf game (it’s for work, honey!) so that I can maximize my provider-ability for my burgeoning family. I jest. I plan on being an active father and making the recovery from child-birth as smooth as possible for my wife.

When men were men and could wait impatiently in the hospital waiting room or nearby watering hole for their spawn… Now all we get is access to our own epidural and the chance to support our partner through a phenomenally difficult thing.

We took what amounted to 15 hours of birthing class so that we completely prepared for being unprepared for the rigors of early childhood development and baby-rearin’. It was the 2nd time I’ve taken this class at Swedish Ballard and it was actually quite helpful in reassuring Fina that everything will be ok. In the 7 years since I took it, they have mellowed on quite a lot of hot button issues and cooled off on the hippy rhetoric.

At one point the instructor was talking about epidurals and mentioned that there was no medical evidence that taking the drugs had any ill effect on baby, and that if you were on the fence, she recommended just doing it. She even said the first one was free! J/K. Way back when, there was no way our instructor would say that about medicated birth. They would say it is up to you and that everything is inconclusive. Take the drugs! I love that (and I love drugs), and I love that they are so non-judgemental!

Seriously though, we are really excited to meet this little guy, my son, Jimmy Jr. WHOOPS, I gave away the name!!?! SORRY FINA.

James Shattuck Taylor the 2nd, or Junior for short. No, we will not be calling him little James. Fina is due tomorrow and we hope that Junior is ready to join us and the rest of the air-breathing world. We can’t wait!~

AT is excited to welcome our new addition, but like the rest of us, wishes he’d show up already!