A pastor’s musings on fatherhood, religion, life and everything

Just wanted to see if there were any dads who stayed at home and watched the kids while your significant other worked outside the home?  I know this is a reversal of the “traditional” roles, but was curious to see what the responses would be.

Currently I work 26-30 hours per week and also take care of Cooper 4-5 days per week while my wife works full-time.  So if you have any experiences you’d like to share this can be a sounding board for full-time dads as well as if there are any women who’d like to share their thoughts on this topic.

I just had the revelation today that I’m a dad.  Yes, I know technically I became a dad on April 19th at 6:31pm when my son, Cooper, was born, but today I became a real dad!  For some background: this week at church we began to read Waking the Dead which is about reclaiming your heart, and we talked about what (if any) spiritual purpose we felt each day.

Today it dawned on me that mine is being a dad, and this is why.  Now that I’m Cooper’s primary caregiver during the day now that his mom has gone back to work full-time; it’s up to me to feed him, clean him up, etc.  But at the same time, I’m also a pastor who needs to get a certain amount of work done.  However, today I realized that it’s not about how many sermons I preach or telephones I answer or mail that I open and sort; instead it’s about me being a dad.  Giving myself over completely to my son and taking care of him – that is my spiritual focus each day.  Taking care of someone who so completely and without questioning trusts me and believes in what I’m doing is my spiritual exercise for today and for who knows how long.  But that’s okay, because I’m a dad.

    Wow, on Sunday I celebrated my first Father's Day as a father.  Being a first-time dad, I was pretty excited to see what goodies I might reap as a result of my new-found status.  And sure enough, I got a gift card to Barnes and Noble as well as we had a pizza party at church in honor of the day.  A pretty good day – an attempt to make me smarter and an attempt to clog my arteries (and all in the same day!)

    It is exciting to watch my son grow up.  Yesterday he had his first vaccines against all kinds of horrible things, and although some of them do seem a bit ridiculous, I guess they're for the better.  I know he's only two months old but the time has already flown by.  Soon my wife will be heading back to work and I will be the primary caregiver during the day.  Yep, I'm a little nervous but we had a trial run last Saturday when she was gone all day for her birthday present.  And other than the fact that he wore his nightclothes all day, we made it through with flying colors!  So soon we'll be on our own, it'll be dad and lad through the day.  I'll keep you posted on how that goes!   

Wanted everyone to know that Cooper James has arrived! He was born April 19, 2006 at 6:31pm. He weighed 8lbs. 5oz. and was 21 1/4 inches long. Both baby and mommy are home safe and sound.

How many of you dads out there, after recovering from the initial shock of it all, went to find out more about your partner's pregnancy? I know as a first-time dad, I wanted to know more about what was happening in my wife and baby's life as the days, weeks, and months went by. Admittedly, I did not know a lot about pregnancy other than the fact that she was having the baby and I wasn't! So I searched around, found a book or two on the topic and read some magazines on the subject. But as I was reading the magazines, I looked more carefully at the covers and saw that they were all geared towards women. I was not too surprised by that fact since 100% of births are done by women, but slightly perturbed by the fact that there was nothing written in them for fathers to be. I think one magazine was entitled Parents or Parenting but was geared exclusively towards women. If I was a woman, I would be outraged that this is the 21st century and they still assume that only women can properly raise a child. But as a man, I was still outraged that it didn't seem to matter that I had a part in the process of creation and also want to be a part after the birth. Sure there was a paragraph, maybe two but rarely a whole page devoted to what dad may be going through. And usually it was written by a woman. Come on, how fair is that? So women and magazine editors, do you want me to be good dad, then include me in your target audience!