Editor’s Note: It’s been nearly three months since we were here, but when we last updated the story of dad-life for our author, his wife had just been told that she was pregnant with number two. Life had just gotten down to some sort of order, and everything was about to be turned upside-down, all over again!

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Agony and Ecstasy: One man’s journey through fatherhood.

So, here we go again.

She’s pregnant with number two.

We weren’t even explicitly trying, but we were certainly not not trying. If you know what I mean.

And we’d always planned on having at least two.

She wanted four, and I was happy with however many she wanted.

(We did get to four, but that’s a story for another time. Several stories, actually).

With the first pregnancy she spent the first trimester in a daze; go to work, come home, go to bed. No morning sickness, but she couldn’t remember anything for more than five minutes.

This time around? It was a bit better. She had a ten-minute memory.

Good thing I was the one on home duties!

We settled into an easy routine, albeit one on a time-frame.

She would get up and have breakfast; I would get up and look after bub while she went to work and I entertained him and myself, and made sure the house didn’t burn down (yeah, we set the bar low deliberately; being in chronic pain meant I wasn’t up to much myself). When she got home, I’d do dinner for myself (she wasn’t up to food in the evening), and we’d curl up on the lounge for us to share about our respective days.

Son number one grew, said his first word around 13 months of age (ma, shortly followed by da, then dog), got more mobile, and did his very best to make sure he was never left out of anything.

No baby shower this time. We already had pretty much everything we needed for a baby, and we certainly knew that we didn’t need half of the stuff that we thought we would need the first time around! Plus, our house could only fit so much stuff.

The fateful day came, and went, with no real issues. Son number two was born, and he was the spitting image of his older brother.

Straightforward birth, quicker than the first one was. No health challenges for him or his mother.

But I knew better from the last time, and I made sure I had extra food organised for when she got wheeled up to her room in post-natal. No risk of getting my arm gnawed off this time!

There’s something so very special about that first time you hold your newborn child, and the second child was no different in that respect.

The only real difference was that we had some idea now of what we were doing.

This time, I could relax, and enjoy it, because it was a moment that was never going to come again.

I’ve got this. We’ve got this.

We’re going to be okay, the four of us.

[Photo by Laercio Cavalcanti on Unsplash]