"Men Get Pregnant, Too (despite never pushing a watermelon through a pigeonhole)" is a page turner which will surely ignite conversations within couples who have--or are ever planning-- on having children. This is a book which treats both motherhood and fatherhood with depth and respect. The perfect gift! (see description below.)
Men Get Pregnant, Too (despite never pushing a watermelon through a pigeonhole):
They received an Early Pregnancy Test as a wedding gift. Subtle. But, this couple wasn't even sure they wanted to be parents. How to tell their mothers and fathers they may never become grandmas and grandpas was just the first of many hurdles on the journey towards eventual parenthood.
Once the baby was on its way (after an 18-month long attempt at conception), the father-to-be quickly becomes a secondary player in the process. While his wife is experiencing morning sickness, medical scares and migraines, the dad-in-waiting wrestles to find his own voice. Are these phantom symptoms real, or imagined? Can he express his own worries about whether he will be a good father? Or voice his concerns about the surprising results of a genetic test? Does he HAVE to help organize his own baby shower?
Men Get Pregnant, Too is a rare gem. It treats both motherhood and fatherhood with equal respect, while challenging couples to re-examine a father-to-be's role and his voice throughout pregnancy. It is a must-read for any couple who has--or is planning on having--children (and having to deal with their relatives, too!). From intimate conversations about infertility, health, in-laws, medical emergencies, and balancing a full-time job with a role as butler to visitors, MGPT is guaranteed to start a new debate among a new generation of parents.
I can't stand single case studies, which will dominate the feedback I generally get for these types of posts. What is a single case study? Example:
Statement: Smoking causes lung cancer, mouth cancer, throat cancer, heart disease, emphysema, and bad breath. Case study reply: "My grandfather smoked; he lived to be 96!" Great. Let's all smoke, then.
Let's do away with single case studies and have a frank discussion about vasectomies.
The first post I wrote was the day or two after my own procedure. My experience was typical. I was very nervous; there was a fair amount of pain - I'd evaluate it as 7 on a scale of 10. The surgery took about fifteen or twenty minutes, and I couldn't wait for it to be over. But, eventually, it ended, and with it ended my decades of fertility.
I drove myself home. There was a sheet of sterile gauze surrounded and supported by my jeans, my thighs, my underwear (wear briefs, not boxers!), and, of course, my testicles (yes, I still have them).
For the afternoon following my snip, I arranged for the children to be away, and my brother and my close friend to keep me company. They were fantastic; they barbecued, brought along with them several DVD's and snack to accompany the movie collection. They paused the movie whenever I limped upstairs to go to the bathroom or change the gauze. Although my brother dared not, my buddy was even brave enough to peek at my stitches - two small spots of black suture on a slightly swollen scrotum.
Whenever I deemed the gauze needed replacing, I did so on my own. Once you understand the fantastic convenience of a sterile maxi-pad adhered to your briefs (don't wear boxers!!), feeling refreshed is a snap.
I sat on the sofa with an icepack between my legs, watch sci-fi and ate burgers and potato chips with my friend and family member - it was almost the perfect day, save a slight throbbing from the place where fertility used to live.
The pain was acute for a day or two, then annoying for another four. Within a week-and-a-half it was gone altogether.
A month or two after the procedure, you're booked for a follow-up test to be sure there are no more active sperm in your ejaculate (get over it, that's what it's called). From that point on - for the rest of your life - you are ensured of non-procreative sex.
Done.
Compare that to the unreliable, awkward condom (although it is necessary to mention that a condom is still the best protection - save for abstinence - against sexually transmitted diseases and infection). Or to the birth control pill which brings with is it's own set of side effects (and its own - although slight - level of unreliability). Or the intrusiveness and risks of an Intrauterine Device . Or the physical and mental stress and complications of dealing with an unexpected pregnancy.
Yes, a vasectomy is unpleasant and scary, and carries with it a certain amount of discomfort. But - with the exception of the single case studies you're about the send me - it is relatively risk free, quick, only temporarily painful, and reliable when coupled with the follow-up exam.
It is a far better option than asking your partner to commit to a decades-long diet of pills, or to house a foreign body in their uterus.
Are you prone to passing out? I am, too. I've passed out four times while trying to give blood, once more when I went to visit my Mom at work - she was a nurse in the preemie baby unit, and again while watching a psychic surgery video in college. For Pete's sake it wasn't even real surgery!
I did NOT pass out during my vasectomy. Even if I had, I was lying down, in a doctor's office. Where better to lose consciousness?
Do it! Get rid of the kids for the day. Call you buddies, order some movies and some pizza, and say good-bye to fertility, condoms, birth control pills, and, most importantly, the risk of having to start aaaallllllover with sleepless nights and diaper changes.
Do it.
All you REALLY need to undergo a vasectomy, is balls.
You're a blogger. As a time management exercise, you and your spouse have agreed to set aside one day weekly during which you have the house to yourself to focus strictly on your writing. Now, there should be no excuses. Why is it then, after nine hours you're still behind schedule?
I have just returned to the latter half of a Canadian winter, after the kinetic warmth of the Dad 2.0 Summit in New Orleans. Last year, I wrote about my angst leading up to and my exhilaration heading home from the second annual summit in Houston. For the 2014 conference, I wasn't sure what to expect from this "opportunity to learn the tools and tactics used by influential bloggers to create high-quality content, build personal brands, and develop business idea". Even more destabilizing, I wasn't sure what to expect from myself.
I will include two videos in this post. The latter is somewhat self-promoting in nature (although both are closely related to the summit). In case I lose you before then, in case you only have four more minutes to give me, watch this first video only. It is a fantastic amalgamation of sound and images put together by XY Media, the Summit's organizing body. Nothing more acutely embodies the spirit and intention of not only this conference, but a new movement of modern dads everywhere:
A few of the great writers in attendance have already done a fine job recapping the weekend's events. If you're interested, you can read these posts by Buzz Bishop or Carter Gaddis.
My takeaways from those forty-eight hours were concise, and very personal. A special thank you to Isabel Kallman, founder of Alphamom.com for reminding me not to look ahead, behind, or to my left and right attempting to measure myself against the competition. Stick to your path, she said, and be true to your work.
Another common message I absorbed (the real challenge being not to let it leak away within the first week home) was...work. To achieve any level of success as a writer (or anything else, for that matter), I can't lose sight of the work involved in getting there.
What is truly magical about Dad 2.0 is how it moulded itself and its messages to each attendee. If you were to ask each father (and mother!) to talk about the Summit's strengths, they would have drastically different answers. They would surprise each other, and then most likely agree with each other. The Summit is like emotional and intellectual putty. Sculpted, made to measure, directed at nobody in particular and everyone simultaneously.
If you have children, and you have the opportunity, I recommend attending next year's meeting (No, I am not on anybody's payroll!). It can uplift you, recharge you, and I guarantee, no matter your perspective, you will find someone who agrees with you, and yet others who challenge you. You will return home a better partner, and a better parent.
Finally, here I am on Montreal's Breakfast Television, 48 hours after returning home, discussing the Summit's lasting impressions.
I am a parenting author and blogger. When I am sent pitches to review books with 'Father' or 'Daddy' in the title, I develop certain preconceived notions: there will be anecdotes about goofy parenting moments; stories of cute babies doing cute things; perhaps a touching passage about being thankful for one's competent and loving wife. Mostly, those books tread on familiar and well trampled territory.
Not so with Kirk Millson's "9,000 Miles of Fatherhood - surviving crooked cops, Mexican moonshine and teen-age angst on a journey to the End of the road"
As the late Roger Ebert was fond of writing: "It's not what a movie is about, but rather how it is about it." This story of a father and son piling into a 1974 Dart with the intention of driving from Salt Lake City to Panama could have been a simple tale of travel and sightseeing. It could have been a story of father/son bonding. It is, as a skeleton, both those things. But what pulls the reader relentlessly from page to page is a story of self-discovery, and the desire to recover a broken relationship.
"I was an unemployed middle-aged man in a beater car with a kid I didn't know how to relate to, and the road ahead, so recently shimmering with promise, just seemed long."
Any parent - father or mother - will relate instantly to Millson's feelings of helplessness, frustration, and self-doubt. Milsson's personal profile before pulling out of his driveway is a template for numerous parents: a professional and financial rut, a teenager with whom communication has been reduced to grunts and nods, and a family who is far from receiving your best side of humanity. This is a trip one father hopes will return both him and his son in better condition than when they left.
Though it is a human story first and foremost, this book does have elements of a great thriller:
"With a look of scorn, he reached down and yanked open a drawer. Out came an assortment of junk - broken ballpoint pens, a tangled ball of plastic coated wire, the chipped black receiver from a phone...When he laid down a battered pistol with a broken grip, he stared at me with eyebrows raised."
This is only one dark corner of a story which includes drunks, robbers, crooked authorities, hookers, rushing rivers, wild pigs and a bus wavering near a precipice. But the real ride is an emotional one. Even when his relationship with his son, as well as the trip itself, seems to be on the upswing, Millson wonders if this is all just an exercise in delaying facing reality. Even after this great adventure ends, he will still be a newspaper editor on a fixed income and the late shift, reminded by his son at one point during the trip he is not qualified to be much more.
Peter and Kirk in the Dart on the way home in December 2002. Above right, the laundry facilities in Oaxaca.
While the locations may be exotic (Mexico, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, etc.), the lessons are no more foreign than those we struggle to learn in our own kitchens, dens and living rooms.
As the heat, their tight budget, and the smarmy no-tell motels being to exacerbate Millson, his son bears the brunt of his short fuse and frustrations. A Central American version of a swear jar seems to not only rectify the situation, but reminds this father how often our children absorb the consequences of our short fuses simply by virtue of living life alongside us.
Peter, Millson's 13-year-old son, is tasked with keeping up with his school work, lest the trip be brought to a sudden halt. Intense on-the-road sessions of Spanish and algebra are fortified with a physical regime of calisthenics. However, the threat of an abrupt return to Utah should the teen fall behind academically, is an empty one. A trip home would either leave the father alone on the road, or force him to return to the life he left behind - Millson finds neither option palatable. This is one of the many honest secrets and emotions Millson shares with the reader, but keeps from his son. Through their shared fears, their exasperations with each other, and their celebrations of new discoveries, each traveller learns more and more about themselves as well as their companion.
There is a touching scene in which Millson watches his son in the Dart's rear view mirror. The sight triggers a memory of the same child as a toddler smiling from the back seat as he spits out his pacifier. They never stop being our babies. No matter how much they frustrate us, it is never too difficult to love them again. Millson is comfortable displaying his misjudgments and his parental warts; that is the real charm of this book.
This story is touching in the way many 'fatherhood' books are not. It is not about 'How to raise a good son.' or 'How crazy is it that now I drive a van'. It's about being human. About how difficult it can be to connect with your child. About the work it takes to make an emotional connection.
Peter is 24 now. We'll have to wait for his book to really understand his secrets from that journey. But Kirk Millson's lesson was clear:
"...A father doesn't have to be smart or talented or otherwise remarkable to have a huge impact on a kid's life; he just has to stay involved. For boys of a certain age, a bad day with their Dad is better than a good day without him."
Those 9,000 miles were worth every penny.
****
"9,000 Miles of Fatherhood - surviving crooked cops, Mexican moonshine and teen-age angst on a journey to the End of the road" will be released April 8th through Amazon and Barnes & Noble. For information, and pre-orders, visit www.KirkMillson.com.
