I didn't wake up to birds chirping, or to the soft sunlight drifting through my blinds. I woke up to my eyelids being stretched over my headboard. And to "I-t's m-o-r-n-i-n-g!!!" being spit through my eardrums with enough force to send my wife flying off the bed, if she wasn't already weighted down with another potential human bomb. Yeah... I'm a father.
I should have known that being a dad wasn't going to be all the fun it was cracked up to be when the joy of hearing my (now ex) wife shout in pain ended with the arrival of a slimy ball of flesh, which had I found in a field I'd have called the SPCA in to destroy it. Then the Doc said, "Isn't she beautiful?" Sure, if you like bald toothless things that leak on your clothes.
Actually, it was an emotional moment for me. I couldn't believe that fluids from two people in halfway decent shape could make something so damn uncoordinated.
Then the inevitable, "The baby looks just like you." Sure, I haven't slept in four days; I've eaten only candy bars that are so old the machine was built around them. I have bags under my eyes that on an airplane would be considered carry-ons. My skin resembles four-year-old white bread, my hair looks like it spent the night in a bucket of eels, and my lips could be mistaken for two pieces of moon rock. That's one good-looking baby I've got.
By the time the baby is ready to leave the hospital the mother has now inherited the baby's "wonderful" disposition not to mention thirty pounds of loose flesh that can tell you which way the wind is blowing.
My ex nursed the baby, which is good for the baby and makes it easier for the father. It gives your wife something to do while you make plans to abandon her.
Personally, if I were a woman I wouldn't breast-feed a child. I don't think they're emotionally mature enough to appreciate it.
One of the most important things for a baby is sleep. Unfortunately, the baby puts little importance on the value of sleep for his or her parents. Actually, I've come to the conclusion that the baby only enjoys its sleep when it's taking it away from you. It's amazing how a baby can sleep silently for eighteen hours a day yet manage to keep you awake for twenty. The inability for one to stay a sleep with a baby in the house soon affected other living things in our home. My dog at the time was seriously ill and the vet came to our house and decided the dog had to be put permanently to sleep. I was jealous, until the dog woke up four hours later.
Before I had my first child I didn't know much about kids. I grew up an only child. My parents knew when to leave "bad" enough alone. I decided a long time ago that I would never have an only child. Disrupting your parent's life is too much of a burden to put on one child. A kid has feelings. If he's not causing his folks to have a nervous breakdown it's going to make him feel inadequate. The last thing I want to do is raise an inadequate kid. I want a kid who'll have a great self-image that will someday be torn down by his children.
Kids need challenges. It's only when a kid has no one at home to destroy that he starts looking outside for trouble. Serial killers have parents with such low self-esteem that the kids out of frustration turn to ruining the lives of small animals, then later adults whom they are not related to (hopefully before they have kids). Don't get me wrong, I've got nothing against serial killers, (I don't want to offend any serial killer activist group), but they might contribute more to society if they practiced a little more self control and restricted their killing to undesirables like politicians, lawyers, and fertilization experts.
With babies there's so many things to learn. Over the years I picked up a few tricks; like how to change a diaper. The key is waiting till the diaper gets so full (sometimes days) that you can just shake the kid over a pail and the diaper will fall in. Then you hold the kid in the toilet and flush it, the force of the water wipes the kid clean without you ever having to touch his soggy bottom. My parents didn't believe in the restrictions of diapers and allowed me to walk around naked on newspapers.
If your having trouble getting your kid to walk, I have an easy solution. Stand him in front of a puddle in new shoes. He'll be walking in minutes. Another tip. Don't hit your children. Why use all that energy on something that heals so fast.
If you still haven't gotten the picture of what being a father is really like, imagine yourself sitting in your office. You come up with an idea that'll make you rich and cure every decease that's known to man and just before you can write it down your adorable child enters screaming non-stop, "Can I have a c-o-o-k-i-e!!!!" And suddenly that cookie takes precedent over an idea that will save the world. That's being a responsible parent!
They say having a kid stretches you as a person. Sure it stretches you. You have to bend all kinds of new ways to avoid them. It's also been said that people on their deathbeds say, "I should have spent more time with my kids." They're only saying that because if they'd spent more time with their children there's a chance they could have given their children the same fatal decease, and with the kids faster metabolism they wouldn't be alive to disrupt their final and only peaceful moments.
Don't get me wrong, I love my children more than life itself, especially since having kids I have less time for life.
For you people out there still considering having children, I have a better idea. Adopt an old person. They do the same things as babies and they'll be dead before you have to worry about college.