A Front Porch Entrance: The Birth of my Belle Part 2

I had been as excited as anyone when we found out two days before Christmas that we were having a second child. That night, our second night staying at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Indianapolis, was a sleepless night for me from what I suspected at the time was the massive amount of caffeine that I had consumed at P.F. Changs. I had run into their “Great Wall of Chocolate,” a marvelous desert with multiple layers of rich chocolate cake and sauce, after drinking two large glasses of Dr. Pepper. The result of my collision with caffeine was my inability to sleep, yet in hindsight it may have been the impact of the very sobering news that I was going to be a father for the second time.

My unpreparedness was reinforced by our decision to forgo an ultra-sound. Katherine had carried extra amniotic fluid during her first pregnancy and because of this we had taken the precautionary action to have several ultra-sounds to confirm the health of baby and mother. Because of our past experience, I assumed that our chance of a repeat scenario with our second child was high. This line of reasoning led me to hold off from paying for a preliminary ultrasound and instead I chose to wait to pay when it became a medical necessity. Secondarily or maybe foremost, I also felt the financial responsibility of being a seminary student who would soon be facing a job search during a substantial economic downturn. My logic easily aligned with my inherited nature of being frugal and Katherine’s romanticizing ideal of the unknown being adventurous. Ironically near the end of the pregnancy it would be Katherine’s adventurous spirit that would waiver while my frugality held fast to the end.

The absence of an ultra-sound had a strange effect on my ability to come to grips with the reality of having a second child. To be fair, my last nine months have been filled with unknowns, scattered with transitions, and at times emotionally exhausting. The last nine months have encompassed my last academic semester, the completion of my thesis, seven months of job hunting, the end of a part time job, the beginning of two part time jobs, five trips from Dallas, the selling of a car, the buying of a van, and the list goes on . . .