Spain Dad, a baby blog

I’m sitting on the couch in our living room looking at a series of three paintings hanging on the wall. The paintings are not ours. They belong to our landlords. I doubt they are worth very much, but they are originals. They’re signed and dated. All three are landscapes, and although they don’t say where [...]

“Before we move on to the prenatal meditation, we’re going to practice proper pushing technique for those of us who are thirty-six weeks pregnant or more.” Carmen, our midwife, stepped into the middle of the room where the rest of us, six women and two men, were sitting comfortably on our mats. “Who here is [...]

Yesterday we got an email from a doula. A doula is basically a birth coach. She stays with you from the beginning to end of the birth and provides expert advise for the mother as she works through labor. Last night after childbirth class April and I grabbed some leftovers from the fridge and ate [...]

“Look right here,” April said, “Do you see anything?” She had her shirt pulled up just over her belly button, so I could see her round pregnant belly, which by the way, is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen in my life. “Right here,” she said, pressing her finger against her skin [...]

Last night April and I sat on the couch in the living room and taped together cardboard boxes. I kept hearing a stern, commanding voice like Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments reading the part in The Baby Book where Dr. Sears talks about nesting and how you shouldn’t make any major transitions around the [...]

I’m sick in bed today. I woke up from a nap this afternoon, and April was sitting next to me rubbing my back. I rolled over and said with the most energetic and sarcastic voice I could muster, “So, what do you want to do tonight?” April laughed. “Let’s go dancing,” she answered, equally as [...]

“It’s a bit of an obsession,” she said, smiling apologetically at her husband. She and her husband were sitting across from us on gym mats in a small exercise room with mirrors for walls, waiting for our midwife to arrive and begin the exercise portion of our childbirth classes. I didn’t know her name, but [...]