My husband is a softy. A big, burly, bearded, grizzly looking softy. No doubt he would be an amazing father. To find ourselves in this position is strange for both of us. Paul and I were not the most conventional adolescents. We both were rebellious kids who walked to our own beats. Dubstep anyone?
Paul was a drummer. He ran away from home when he was 14 or 15. He dropped out of school and got a job. Did I mention he already had a full beard? He did. I've seen photographic proof. His friends a few years older than him could ask him to go to the store and buy cigarettes and beer because he looked like a forty year old with his manly whiskers. He had good parents but he still rebelled and went out in search of something more. I, myself hung out at school a little longer than Paul had, I did make a high school cameo. I didn't drop out until after my sophomore year but had spotty attendance through the first two years. I even tried to go back to school my senior year to a small private school with no avail. I had my first job at Burger King just before my sixteenth birthday. It wasn't that I wasn't smart enough, but I couldn't stand the social bullshit that went along with school. Work I understood. They pay me, I perform to the best of my ability and at the end of my shift I leave. Easy.
Both Paul and I may have had more of a anarchistic 'punk rock' lifestyle. I wore a mohawk and had a pierced lip. I'm also guilty of not showering often. Don't even think about me shaving my armpits. My favorite pastime was intimidating strangers and making snarky jokes. Paul was in bands, spent time at bars and listened to metal. We did not know each other yet, and that is probably for the best. If you would have asked either of us if we would ever plan to get married we would have laughed at you. I might have actually spit in your face. The idea of having kids was really quite laughable.
Fortunately what makes us good people is one very important quality: we are thoughtful, self-reflective people. As we grew up, we changed. We still enjoyed weird violent movies, strange music and dark humor but we didn't allow us to get locked into something without broadening our horizons. We both always let life surprise us. And I'm glad we did.
Paul and I had our first date in May of 2009. We met at a local park and sat on a bench and talked. Then I realized four hours had gone by, I though that maybe I liked this guy. Although he looked like a young ZZ Top fan with his reddish brown beard nearly to his belly button, and his straight brown hair even longer. What I saw was kindness in his gentle blue eyes and a man that could make me laugh. We shared a strong work ethic, a strong sense of family and a wicked sick sense of humor. We soon fell in love.
When we moved in together we found out how much in common we actually had. We had so many of the same movies. Weird, rare horror movies dubbed on VHS. Sometimes we'd have four copies of the same movie because we both had multiple. I joked that I didn't want to combine our movies unless we were going to get married, that was serious stuff. I had no idea how soon he would ask me to marry him. He proposed May of 2010, a year to the day after our first date.
We were married August 6th, 2011. We had a tiny ceremony in my maternal grandmother's back yard. My family hosted and cooked, as they love to do, we are Italian after all. Talk of children came up now and then. It was always hypothetical talk. How would you handle that? Would you let a kid watch this movie? How did your parents handle that? We shared stories, good and bad, of our childhoods. We talked a lot. We would observe and compare people and their children. We were really on the same page on so many levels. Children would always be a good idea, someday.
Both of us are big fans of Mike Judge , we've seen the movie Idiocracy many times. In that film an average man is cryogenically frozen for hundreds of years only to awaken to a world where he is now by far the most intelligent man. The human race as digressed to a bunch of Jerry Springer watching, junk food eating trash. It discussed how smart, thoughtful people are more likely to hold off on having children until it's 'the right time'. Which may never actually come. and the rest of humanity is just screwing and knocking bitches up and spittin' out the babies to grow up to the ripe age of 15 and repeat the process. Thus creating this new, much less intelligent society.
This you tube video is a grainy version of the scene I am referring to.
We had been married for over a year and we were happy and in love. We didn't make a lot of money, we live in a 1 bedroom house that's only six hundred square feet and we could think of a million things that could be a little bit better if we waited to have kids. I could lose a little weight, my blood pressure is too high, we need to make more money, buy a house, get a better car... In reality, there will never be a perfect time. Like my husband has always said, there is no convenient time to have a baby or change a tire. It's just something that happens. In one you have a new tire on your truck, the other you have a new addition to the family that will grow with you. I should just go off of birth control and we will see what happens.
So we scheduled a doctors appointment. We discussed what would happen and I stopped taking the pill and replaced that with a prenatal vitamin instead. Everything else, was pretty normal. The first month I was off the pill was strange. I had cramps and felt tired and moody the whole month. I thought I had a never ending phantom period or I was already pregnant. It was nothing and by month two I was feeling better than usual. I really didn't think that we could get pregnant anytime soon. I had been on the pill for over nine years. I thought we'd be looking at another year or two.
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