Heather’s Pregnant

I think the appropriate term would be knocked up. Heather doesn’t want me to call it “unplanned” or “accidental” so we’re saying it’s a “surprise.” She thinks the other terms make the baby seem unwanted, which is certainly not the case. In her defense, it’s hard to call something like this an accident if you have a working knowledge of biology, yet take no precautions to prevent the typical results of your actions. I still think “surprise” understates the situation a little. We have three kids. I love my kids in a way that I never thought I could love anyone. But still - that’s a lot of kids. It’s precisely two more kids than I agreed to when Heather talked me into the idea after getting me liquored up on margaritas at a Mexican restaurant.

We then spent almost three years and the cost of a Porsche 911 on fertility treatments trying to have said kid, which turned out to be three kids. In a perfect world, I guess a surprise like this would have happened shortly after my consenting to impregnate Heather - before all the doctors, all the drugs, and all the treatments. But trying to get pregnant for three years made us both stronger. That ordeal helped prepare us for Heather’s difficult high-order-multiple pregnancy, which in turn was preparation for having three infants in the NICU. In the end, having three babies at home was, and still is, no big deal given what we went through to conceive them and to get them home safely. And if everything didn’t happen the way it did, we wouldn’t have Piper, Henry and Rosemary. Moreover, I might perform my parenting with the enthusiasm of a guy who agreed to have a kid because it was a slightly better option than getting a poodle.

I guess all of that is to say that everything happens for a reason. So there’s a reason for this. I just hope that we didn’t use our lifetime’s supply of good luck on the kids we have now, and that this fall I will have the pleasure of sitting in our living room with our new little baby, being thankful for life’s surprises with a bag of frozen vegetables on my boy parts - recovering from my vasectomy.