On the Precipice of Fatherhood

I built our future daughter’s bassinet this evening and organized her room a little bit. I sat down in a comfy rocking chair we inherited from my wife’s side of the family, and rocked as I reflected on this past summer, and all the preparation we did in anticipation of her arrival.

A couple of days ago on Thursday, the 3rd of September in 2026, my wife had an abnormally high blood pressure reading at her (now weekly) routine appointment. They admitted her for monitoring and tests to determine preaclampsia risk. If needed, induction could have happened that night. I was at work when she told me, and immediately began finishing my main tasks, getting ready to leave. My wife remained cool and collected during her whole experience, and thankfully her BP dropped rather quickly and test results came back fine and the baby looked great. I can’t stop admiring everything she’s done and sacrificed to foster the development of our daughter. I know these final weeks are stressful. There’s something profoundly beautiful about seeing the woman you love carry and grow another human being that’s literally a part of both of you. Deciding to create one feels like the biggest physical expression of love we could do. We’ve created such a beautiful house and life together. Everything is in better order than it’s ever been. It feels only right to create our own little human to share it with.

I never saw myself as someone to ever have kids. I’m unsure why. It feels like such a great responsibility, to bring another human with consciousness into existence. I felt this way until I met my wife, who’s dedicated her career to working for non-profits in k-12 art education environments, and is so naturally wonderful with children. When teaching children she radiates a joy I’ve only ever seen them elicit. Yet, I still had apprehension. Last year, in our 10th year together we looked around at our settled life and decided it was time to try. It didn’t take long. After 2 months of trying, and two positive tests she took while we talked on the phone to confirm and I swept stairs at work, we started preparing. But how do you start preparing for something like this? Especially when it’s still 9 months out and you can’t tell anyone yet?

One of the first things I did was turn the mirror on myself. Having a kid had been in our sights for awhile, and I had spent the last few years preparing. I was focusing on building healthy habits by eating less, better, and incorporating a fitness routine. But something in my mental health was lacking in a surprising way. I couldn’t get anything done. I wasn’t depressed, sure maybe a little anxious at times, mostly about future scenarios that involved the baby and an inherent inattentiveness I could never shake no matter how much I tried. It was like there was this sort of concrete barrier between me and getting my daily tasks done, or completing projects once I started. Turns out it could be a mental disorder, in which one lacks executive functioning. I have personal thoughts/opinions about the “disorder” label, and I plan on writing about it more extensively in the future. As a result of this executive dysfunction I was recently diagnosed with ADHD. It’s kind of lame to be one of those people proclaiming about being diagnosed with something like this later in life, but when treatment is as easy as ‘amphetamines’ and taking the prescribed dose under medical supervision gives me a whole new outlook on my capabilities and increase my ambitions, it’s hard not to. I wish I could see where I’d be if I had gotten treatment at a younger age. Instead of dwelling on missed opportunities, I’ve been too busy working for the future.

Something I kept telling my psychiatrist about was how my kitchen had been half painted for months, now a foreign concept only 5 months into treatment. In addition to painting, there was also a half remodel going on. I had removed this set of awkwardly spaced apart cabinets and a long piece of this very heavy terrazzo-like counter-top spanning the two of them—alone I might add—and incorporated a restaurant-like table and chairs to give us an eat-in kitchen. Open shelving was going on the far wall after moving the fridge to the center. This also had been sitting, half finished, for months. I was staring down the barrel of fatherhood, of the rest of my life. I had so much I wanted to do but couldn’t find what it took within me to complete it. We had been living with a kitchen that was only in a little better condition than where the above house project post (which I may or may not update) leaves off on before I decided to finally talk to someone, especially with our child coming. It truly wasn’t until treatment that this project that had become a chore, became something I eventually unconsciously started working on, I needed it to be complete. Even though I need to make some more adjustments—perhaps in the future increase my budget for better cabinetry and shelving material—I can still call this project finished. Something I rarely feel I can do. I felt spurred.

We bought our house as a two bedroom, but we knew from looking at other houses with the same footprint that the large back room was originally two bedrooms. With the news of my wife’s pregnancy, reconverting the house into its original configuring was imperative so the baby’s room and office would be separated. We initially balked at doing it this year, the office would need a door installed, we thought permits would need pulled. Once my ADHD treatment started and baby gifts started arriving at our doorstep and piling up on the other side of the office, I quickly began ‘nesting’. Nesting is what it sounds like, I imagine birds building their nest in advance of laying eggs. I needed to make sure the house this new human of ours was coming into was ready. And building her a bedroom became a priority.

Luckily I can tap into my brother who has spent time working in carpentry and other various trades for residential maintenance matters. A simple partition wall is in fact, much easier than I anticipated. No HVAC or electricity (hopefully?) means I didn’t need to pull a permit. Soundproofing insulation went a long way to reduce the noise from the other side, even though I was short one or two batts, and I refused to buy another $90, 16-batt package. I’m saying this now too, before we installed the drywall, because we definitely didn’t need to unscrew panels after installing because we forgot. Even then, the biggest lesson I learned from this project was that drywall mudding is a true art. My brothers side (he did the nursery) came out silky smooth. My side (the office) looks like someone on amphetamines couldn’t figure out how many coats to put on. But a wall is a wall, and will suit my needs just fine.

We all know about Mothers Intuition. But I seem to have a touch of Nesting Fathers Intuition. In between buying sheets of drywall for each side I noticed my car acting strange in ways I couldn’t explain to my mechanic. When I checked the coolant and saw a chocolate milk looking substance, I knew it was toast. The mechanic confirmed a failing head gasket. Thus begins a 2 week long journey you can read about above that led me to looking for a new car on top of everything else going on. I ended up finding a beautiful blue 2022 Nissan Frontier that checked all my boxes. Plus, it made buying the other half of the drywall much easier.

There was a bunch of other random projects. As a result of building the wall I needed to cut the door frame out where it originally was on the landing. This was a small journey in and of itself. I broke ground, drywall, plasterboard? with a hammer, then moved up to a drywall saw, but when that failed I had my 6-month pregnant wife grab the last sawzall at Lowes. This still managed to not be enough, as whatever this material was absolutely chewed through all types of blades from the assuredly robust variety pack I had her buy. Carbide demo blades finally did the trick. The doorway led into the office closet. I originally envisioned moving the now inset closet door to the landing, but the closet created this really neat little foyer/ante-chamber I decided to keep. I immediately envisioned, cut, shaped, and stained some curved wooden shelves to fit the existing shelf cleats from the closet. I found an oak panel to use as a threshold, and learned about all the different types of transitions there are when trying to figure out what to do with a 1/2” gap. (I needed a wooden “T” transition, went oak once again to match.) Wrapping the studs with hobby wood was probably incorrect, but once I added trim to hide the mess of the sawzall, all thats left now is to paint.

I also removed the original Louvre doors between the kitchen and dining rooms and replaced them with a single french door. This is likely the single most beneficial improvement to our lives so far. I didn’t do a terrible job of installing it either, it latches up perfectly (though after some sanding). It did involve precise chiseling, so keep in mind I didn’t say I did a great job. I still love it enough to look past the flaws, which is rare for me. It more effectively keeps smells in and our cats out of the kitchen. It also allows us a beautiful view in and out of each room. I’m amazed that all of these major projects are, aside from paint, done, just as her due date approaches. I’m still not used to finishing things like this. I can finally take this moment to sit down in her nursery, appreciate the beauty that surrounds me in our home, with a moment to reflect on this past summer, and all the work I did to prepare a functional environment for her to be born into. She will never know the old me.

The room is built, but the nursery is far from done. There is still a pile of gifts from friends and family, gone through, but only semi-sorted. Storage for all of this stuff, my next problem to solve. It dawns on me how lucky we are, to have such a strong support system around us. I’ve decided to not be concerned with this right now, after everything else I’ve done. All of the essentials seem to be in place. I’m so excited to meet this human my wife has been nurturing inside her for the last 9 months. Shes taken it in such stride. She made it look so easy. I’m sure that’s part of what motivated me to do all these sorts of things to this little piece of shelter on this earth, in addition to my family having a safe and beautiful home. Soon I will be rocking in this chair with her in my arms, and I’m so glad she’s showing up now.