Monday, October 8, 2012

Before Brad@Home: A lot changes during a transatlantic flight.

It started in the Fall of 2009 when I found out my wife was pregnant.
Sunday night, I went to the airport to catch a plane to Amman, Jordan. It was a work trip to orient and train the people who were at our new Middle East office. I was supposed to send a week in Amman, then fly to Tokyo to do some upgrades in our Japan office. The first leg of the flight was the transatlantic to London. I believe it left around 6pm or so and I was in the air for about 6 hours.
Meanwhile, My wife, feeling odd, decided to take a pregnancy test. This was something that she did often when she felt odd and couldn't explain it. This one came back positive. Wanting to be thorough  she took another. It also came back positive. She took a third. When that one came back positive, she decided to go to sleep and just swing by the doctors office in the morning for confirmation.
I landed in London Heathrow and began a ridiculously long layover that consisted of playing computer games, eating at a English pub style restaurant in the airport, and debating whether to pay to take the speed shuttle into London for an hour--I did not.
Meanwhile, my wife woke up and went to the doctors office. There, they confirmed that she was, indeed, pregnant with the growing fetus of my future-daughter.
I had gotten on my flight to Amman. It was uneventful and I landed in Amman. When I landed, I received a text message from my wife, asking if we could Skype-chat in the (my) morning. I confirmed that we could, giving her the approximate time that would be for her. I went to my hotel, took several pills intended to help me sleep, and went to bed. I went to sleep fairly easily since I had actually been staying up on Amman time for a few days prior to the trip.
Later, when we had more time to talk about it, I found that I was the fourth person to find out the news. The first was, of course, the doctor. Then my wife. As I was not there and very out-of-touch, my wife confided in her sister. Totally understandable and I am glad she could do it, but it dropped me down the information ladder another rung.
I woke up the next morning and went to breakfast. I remember I had a mini-croissant with marmalade, a hard-boiled egg, a small bowl of cereal, some fruit, and some coffee. I propped my computer up on the end of the table and signed into Skype.
When the camera brought up the picture, I saw my wife's belly. On it she had drawn a large, simple and silly picture of a baby.



That was how I found out I was going to be a father.

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