News Every Daddy Blogger Loves to Share: My Wife is Pregnant Again!

We rarely argue, but one evening a few months ago Bixie and I quarreled over an unwashed sauté pan in the kitchen. I decided it needed to soak overnight; she decided to badger me about it unceasingly; we both decided that staring at the ceiling was better than having to speak to one another between the covers that night.

It was a real domestic dustup!

Flash forward to the next morning. I’m sitting in my leather chair before work, my eyes toggling back and forth between emails and our son Gus, who is incessantly spinning one of the noisy contraptions inside his walker-toy-thingamajig. Whenever our eyes meet he smiles broadly and tilts his head to the side, like a puppy curious about a funny noise.

Enter Bixie.

I pretend not to notice her come into the room, on the grounds that I feel 100 percent morally correct about our argument. But I can feel her walking straight toward me, forcing me to acknowledge her – or else I’ll come off like a total moron if I don’t.

I do.

“You can’t be mad at me anymore,” she says in a singsong voice, extending her arm toward me. Aha, I think. Here comes my apology. The old girl buckled!

I look up and suddenly my smile freezes. Everything slows down. My senses are on high alert. I focus on the details as I scramble to process them: at the end of her arm is a hand. Clutched in that hand is what appears to be a plastic thermometer of some sort. Inside the window on that device is a clear and bold PLUS sign.

What does a plus sign mean? Every muscle in my body is tight. Wait, that’s not a thermometer. Where have I seen this befo — OH MY GOD!

“YOU’RE PREGNANT?!”

Flabbergasted, I nervously joke that we can talk about this pregnancy thing AFTER we settle the dispute about the dirty pan in the kitchen. This makes us both laugh hysterically and we hug tightly and, in that long and exhilarating moment, we try to digest what is happening to us.

To our family.

We both look down at Gus, who is smiling up at us and making silly grinding noises with his four little turkey teeth. We let him hold the pregnancy test and he waves it above his head like a rattle. Waving a great goodbye to his “only child” status.

It’s funny, this whole fatherhood thing. Less than a year ago I had zero children, and less than a year from now I’ll have two babies. There will be four of us, when so recently there were just two people.

But today we’re just two people madly in love with the family we’ve started. And that family is about to get bigger on the quick.

It will be challenging to have our children a mere 15 months apart. Gus will be toddling like mad by then, but I bet he’ll still be a smiley head who can adapt quickly, fondly, to the blinking, cooing little stranger in his midst.

As for Bixie and me, I’m sure we’ll make out okay. The other day I decided to let a dirty dinner pan in the kitchen soak overnight, and she didn’t make a fuss.

The next day she wouldn’t even let me wash it. She said it wasn’t a big deal; that she wanted to do it. And she meant it.

My guess is she didn’t dare to fight about it because, well, if we went to bed angry again it might result in twins.