There are times when things feel more real than they did in the past. During certain moments in life, an overwhelming sense of “This is really happening” washes over you and you realize things will never be the same.  Friday afternoon was one of those moments. At 12:12 pm, I was sitting at my desk at work when I received a phone call that caused that wave hit me like a tsunami.

Since Jenn entered the last month of pregnancy, she has had to have monitoring tests (ironically called Non-Stress Tests, or NSTs) twice a week. Normally, they are pretty routine affairs, usually lasting about thirty minutes. The closest that there has ever been to a complication was the one time Jenn had a new tech who couldn’t find the one of the baby’s heartbeat. So even though we were less than a week away from scheduled delivery date, I honestly hadn’t expected to hear anything from Jenn other than a text that said “I’m out”.

Needless to say I was surprised to see Jenn’s smiling face pop up on my phone. “Hey,” she began in her tone that’s usually screams “Don’t panic.”  She proceeded to tell me that her blood pressure was suddenly extraordinarily high (143/95), and that she had gained 7 pounds in since Wednesday. There was one other condition but I don’t it’s something Jenn wants recorded for posterity on Eternal Interweb.  They were going to keep her in the hospital for another couple of hours to do some more tests to make sure they were not going to have to deliver the girls that same day. After dropping that bit of knowledge on me, she then said “I just wanted to let me know.”  And with those six words, reality set in.

You see, for the past 9 months, I have known that eventually two little girls would be coming into our life. It’s kind of hard to ignore when you spend a weekend moving 6 boxes of comics from one room to another.  And it’s not like I haven’t had the,”Holy crap, I’m going to be a dad”  moment. That moment came a few months back as we were planning our “babymoon” trip to Disneyland.  I was making my usual hour-long commute to work, listening to a Disneyland podcast and planning our trip, when my mind drifted into the future. I was picturing Jenn and I walking underneath the train tressel and onto Main Street.  As the turn-of-the-century architecture came into view, I looked down and I saw two little hands holding onto mine. It was then I realized that it, although it was a dream now, in a few years, it could come true. From that point on, I was excited and ready to be a dad.

So why was this moment so different? It’s simple. It was outside the plan. Jenn and I are people who like structure in our lives. Every evening, as we eat dinner, we talk about what our schedule will be for the evening. Heck, we have our household budget forecasted out till February. So, it was very re-assuring to us to have an exact date picked out as the girls’ birthday. Suddenly, it looked the security we had in the plan was going out the window.

Thankfully, she called back about an hour later letting me know she was alright. The hospital was going discharge her and she was now on semi-bedrest. They were going to have her come in the next day and perform all three tests again. If everything checked out, she would be free to go and we’d do the same thing again the next morning. In the meantime, she was heading home.

I am writing this closing paragraph Sunday morning. Yesterday she had the tests and everything was back to normal. What that means is that Jenn and I will be heading to the hospital each morning to see if that day will be “The Day.”  I guess this a good thing in at least one aspect: Kids do not always follow the schedule you lay out. We might as well get used to it now.

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