By now, you can probably hear me and your father talk about you endlessly every night, heck, every moment that we are together. By now, you probably already know that our goodnights revolve around what your name will be after you are born and about how I always complain that my name will be reduced to a mere middle initial because your father wants his name imprinted all over you. Don’t worry, I have no qualms about it at all. Truth be told, I am actually even prouder that he considers you to be his own wonderful creation. And that I co-created you with him. (My conversation with your father will have a different perspective though: “He co-created you with me.” Don’t mind us. Someday you will understand and will laugh about our silly competitions)
By now, the conversations you hear between me and your father may already have wielded your opinion about how we will be as parents. So, as early as now, am writing this to manage your expectations (and in the same way, manage our fears of not being the best parents we hope we could be).
Your father and I, we are not perfect. We’re far from it actually. At 29 and 30, we’re still children prematurely pushed into adulthood because of you. Let me tell you a little secret: I haven’t planned a future with your father because I never really believed we’d end up together. And you coming into our lives is a welcome change from that mindset. As you can probably tell from our nightly discussions and arguments.
Though I cannot speak for your father, I can tell you little things indicative of how I think he will fare as a father:
• Am not sure if you remembered the time we fought about him waking up at 2am to watch a football match between Spain and Netherlands? I cried a whole lot then because he preferred watching the FIFA finals over me losing sleep, turned out he was blogging about how he would wake up the same wee hours of the morning to take care of you when you are born.
• Your father tosses and turns a lot when he sleeps, that is why I am having second thoughts about having him sleep in the same bed with you. However, now I am pregnant with you, he always makes it a point to check whether you are comfortable, if my sleeping position does not hurt you, and if his embrace is not squeezing you inside my tummy. And he does not like my idea of keeping his bed separate from yours.
• He has zero organizational skills. In fact, he even voluntarily refers to his life as an “organized chaos” – Not to worry though; he is learning to clean up our house for starters. Lately, he has claimed the kitchen and the bathroom to be his domain.
• He’ll insist on turning the music louder than a normal person can tolerate, but I can assure you that he’ll instinctively cover your ears to shield you from the sound of thunders during a storm.
• He does not like talking to people, except a select few. And you’re on top of that selection – since he apparently talks to you a lot, even tries to verbalize you thoughts sometimes. Which I do not always agree with.
• Your father never learned to say goodnight to me. What he learned to do every night though is to listen to your heartbeat, though most of the time, it’s just my stomach digesting my dinner; to kiss and have a short conversation with you; to kiss and hold my hand till I fall asleep; to wake up to turn the aircon off whenever I complain that it’s cold already.
• Your father has had lots of women before me, a few serious ones, but he assured us that none of them could claim to be mothers of his child. You’re his first. (We might need to revalidate this one though. :)
• He is a wonderful child to your grandparents and a great kuya to your cousin. I am sure he’ll be even better as a father.
• Your father is my best friend. Sure, we fight a lot, we criticize each other a lot, we compete a lot about who is better at everything, we throw tantrums to annoy each other. But at the end of the day, we accept and try to live with each other the best way we can. I look forward to the day when you, too, could be best friends.
