Christian D Piatt - PregMANcy: A Dad, a Little Dude, and a Due Date

PREG MAN CY

a dad, a little dude, and a due date

A laugh-out-loud journey, PregMANcy is an honest, real look into the minds and hearts of new fathers. This book isnt just for dads. Moms and any parents-to-be will also love this book because its packed with stories that hit the raw, funny places where we all really live.

Kathy Escobar, author of Down We Go: Living into the Wild Ways of Jesus

PregMANcy is a funny, charming, intelligent memoir. With honest hilarity, Christian Piatts journey toward baby number two will delight and encourage dads and moms of all varieties.

Matthew Paul Turner, author of Churched

I have certain expectations when I start a book by Christian Piatt: that it will be hilarious, thoughtful, and a little bit rebellious. PregMANcy fulfills those expectations and then some. Piatt is an excellent writer and an even better dad, and this is as engaging a fatherhood book as Ive ever read.

Jason Boyett, author of O Me of Little Faith and the Pocket Guide series of books

a dad, a little dude, and a due date

By Christian Piatt

Copyright 2012 by Christian Piatt.

All rights reserved. For permission to reuse content, please contact Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rose-wood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, www.copyright.com.

Cover design and art: Copyright 2011 by Mathias Valdez (lastleafprinting.com)

Definition of Pregmancy paraphrased from urbandictionary.com.

Interior design: Scribe Inc.

www.chalicepress.com

PRINT: 9780827230323 EPUB: 9780827230330 EPDF: 9780827230347

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Piatt, Christian.

Pregmancy : a dad, a little dude, and a due date / by Christian Piatt.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-8272-3032-3 (alk. paper)

1. Fatherhood. 2. Fathers and sons. 3. Mothers. 4. Pregnancy. 5.

Piatt, Christian. I. Title.

HQ756.P517 2012

618.2dc23

2012002421

To John Doc Edlin, this ones for you

Mattias: Daddy, you suck.

Amy: Mattias, tell your daddy youre sorry.

Mattias: OK. Daddy, Im sorry you suck.

Mattias, 3 years, 3 months

Screw it.

These two words are what started the baby ball rolling in the Piatt household back in January. After months of counseling, discernment, weepy nights, and sleepless mornings, I submitted, succumbed, and caved in like the roof of a Geo convertible.

I know screw it is an ironic choice of words, considering the circumstances. I also think its sadistically ironic that we men are biologically tuned to love sex so much, yet were usually the ones who freak out the most about the by-product. Im a typical male, visually aroused by anything vaguely resembling a boob or a booty. Also, working from home and sharing responsibility with my wife for the daily development of our four-year-old son, Mattias, makes me somewhat abnormal. And its this shared responsibility, I think, that makes having another kid such a big deal for me.

I think you take it more seriously than some dads, said a shrink friend of mine who counseled me through some of my initial anxiety when my wife and I first started talking about having more children several months ago. You know that half of the responsibility of another baby will fall on you, whereas some guys are happy to have more children since they arent really around that much anyway.

Doc, as I call him, has been both a friend and a physicianand, in many ways, a surrogate father to mewhen Ive needed him the most. A father of three boys himself, he knows a thing or two about family, and if hes as emotionally and physically available to the rest of his former clients as he is to me, his extended family tree looks like a freaking Chia Pet.

The thing is, even though I love Doc as much as I do anyone else on the planet, he can be kind of a schmuck too. On the one hand, hell offer up these insightful little gems like this that help validate why Im so freaked out about expanding our family, and then hell smile and tell me to stop being such a pansy and just man up.

My wife, Amy, who is nearing her thirty-fourth birthday, is a minister by profession. Shes not exactly your typical minister, which should be pretty self-evident, given that shes a woman. We started a church together eight years ago in southern Colorado right after she finished seminary in Texas, just as Mattias turned six months old. Weve joked ever since that raising a toddler and starting a church is a whole lot like having twins, but I guess God didnt see that as enough of a challenge for us.

I have my own life outside of the church, which is good since I have yet to receive a paycheck from the church. I help out with everything from music and leadership to outreach, toilet unclogging, landscaping, and whatever else is left unattended to at the end of the day. In some ways I like being a volunteer because it allows me to say no more often than if I was paid, though I rarely say no. Its just nice to know I could if I wanted to. I actually make a living as a writer, which explains how it is that I can at least pretend to have a career, volunteer fifteen or so hours a week at church, and still pitch in my 50 percent toward parenting.

It just seems to me that a full life is a blessing, but only to a point. After that, anything else you pile on just makes you a moron or a masochist, or both. So what Im left with is a lingering question about why the hell I agreed to this and if its something I want, or if Im doing it more or less to keep my wife happy. And at what cost to me?

My wife came down the stairs last Saturday morning with the little pee stick that showed two little red lines indicating that her ticket had been punched. I had no idea that this was coming since I didnt even know she had a secret stash of preggo tests upstairs in the bathroom. The first thing my son wanted to know, of course, was what the pee stick was.

Its a thermometer, my wife lied, not too eager at that specific moment to explain the implications of what she had only just told me by sticking the pee stick under my nose.

I wanna try it, he said, pulling it toward his mouth. Here, take my temperature.

Not a good idea, monkey, I said, snatching the still-moist stick from Amys shaky hand. This one goes in your butt, anyway. That took care of his interest in the pee stick.

She had presented it to me only a few minutes before we took Mattias to play his first soccer game at the YMCA. But the fact that this particular Saturday morning was the day before Mothers Day, and given the fact that, only a few days before, we had talked tentatively about going back on birth control at the end of the month, makes the pee stick incident more than ironic.

So there I sat on the couch, pregnancy test in one hand and coffee cup in the other, pretty much wanting to vomit but trying to smile instead. Well, I said in a carefully measured tone, giving away nothing, I guess that means pressure-free sex for the next nine months.