papahood

When I was younger I wanted to be a Pediatrician. I really didn't know why. I guess I wanted to be a doctor and I loved children so I assumed a Pediatrician was the best choice. As I grew older, I realized that I did well at school, but I did not want to spend a better portion of my life in school in order to become a doctor. I soon lost what I wanted to be in life. One thing that stood firm is the desire to have a family. I wanted to be a father.

About 4 years ago, I met a young lady and fell in love. We both came from troubled pasts and we definitely brought that into the relationship. We didn't always make the best decisions, but we loved each other and no one could tell us not to be together. We ended up getting pregnant. She freaked and I was overjoyed. We were living in Nashville at the time and she decided that she wanted to move back to Ohio to be closer to her mom. I reluctantly agreed to go with her because I wasn't about to miss out on being a family. We made the move and began to start building a life here. The pregnancy was rough. We fought with each other, she fought with her mother, and we fought with ourselves.

About 20 weeks into the pregnancy it's normal for you find out the sex of your child. We had the belief in our head that we were having a boy, but we were pleasantly surprised to find out we were having a little girl. We didn't have a name for girl. We had settled on Noah for a boy, but the only names we thought about for a girl were Olivia and Emma. We thought long and hard about it and came up with the name Grace. Grace Noel to be exact. It was fitting. We had not been ready to be parents and we are horribly flawed, but we were going to bring a blessing into this world. I was going to have a second princess to look after. I was under prepared in a lot of ways, but in my heart I was so ready.

One of my favorite things is having a girl lay her head on my chest and sleep. As the pregnancy grew closer and closer to the due date, I began to anticipate this more and more. I imagined spending Saturday mornings on the couch and watching tv while Gracie slept on my chest. I could not wait. Gracie couldn't either. About three weeks before Gracie was due, Kristie was admitted into the hospital with preeclampsia. We were informed that since she was 37 weeks along they were going to induce Kristie and we were having a baby sooner than we thought. We started the induction on a Thursday night and Gracie was born a short three days later on July 4th at 5:13pm. She weighed 7lbs 3oz and was 20inches in length. My little princess was here and I did not waste time on having her sleep on my chest.

Gracie is 18 months old now and she is an overwhelmingly beautiful little girl who has daddy completely wrapped around her little fingers. She's prettier than I dreamed, smarter than I imagined, and just as willful as I feared. I am in love with being a Father and I welcome all the challenges that come along with it. I am far from perfect, but I can see it in her eyes and hear it in her voice that it doesn't matter one bit to her. I am going to enjoy spending the rest of my life getting to know her and watching her grow and hopefully start a family of her own. I'm not ready to start this process over again with another little one, but it is for sure something that I want to do again.