The Old "Life-Changing Experience" Bit

With the excitement over the coming addition to Josie & Amadon's family, I was just thinking back to what Karissa & I experienced.
I'm not gonna lie here. There was a lot of emotional confusion within that period. We didn't attend any classes (ever the good students), and we felt we still hadn't read up enough on what to expect or what can go wrong. I read halfway through a "daddy handbook" of sorts before finally discarding it altogether, writing the author off as mildly retarded. Seriously, it's as if this guy didn't even know what a "baby" was before he finally saw one in person. Everyone makes mistakes, but this guy (hopefully) seemed to be playing up the stupidity role for the sake of informing her readers, and it kind of offended me.
Anyway, to understate the experience, it was emotionally intense. Karissa was basically quarantined to a room, while I hopped into the car to get some extra things ( we were packed, but I must have needed other stuff). On the way, I made the calls. I felt extremely akward calling friends & family, saying "It's time!" while trying to hurry back to the hospital.
That afternoon Karissa was in pain and I was playing the mind-numbing waiting game. I can't begin to compare the difference in our comfort levels, but the point is it that when we heard other parents later talk about what a "wonderful" experience the whole thing was, we wanted to punch them. Well, not the baby, just the parents.
I was excited after the birth, but worn out. I felt really bad, because Karissa was pretty much just left back her birthing area, being dosed with Morphine while both our families were celebrating about 40 feet away.
I was the first one to feed Is, and that would have been really cool, except that by this time, I was beginning to feel drained emotionally, and our moms were in there with me, and they talked about how beautiful she is, and how happy they were to be grandmas. All I wanted at that point was to be by myself with her in silence, a little reflecting time with a human being who had no awareness of anything in the world except the fact that she was comfortable, wrapped up, and being fed formula she would probably never have to realize was gross.
I saw Karissa later that night, and she got horrible sleep almost the entire time she was there. Her emotions were drained and confused too, and I didn't help much when I announced that I had just gone home to clean and feed the bunnies only to find Nugget had died the night before. Both of us felt really bad when we realized he might not have been getting enough food, because now we had a little baby to care for. We couldn't even keep a bunny alive! Granted, Nugget was about 3 years old when he died, and Marshmallow might have taken his share (she grew pretty fat around that time and bossed him around).
It was a very shaky time for our collective self-confidence, but we managed to trudge through those first weeks with a baby who had colic, became a miniature sociopath, and who now still has rotavirus & fluid in her ears.
If I had seen any of those situations she would eventually push us through, at the time I would have locked myself into a little room with a loud fan to shut out the horrors I would have to face.
But these days, I don't feel nearly as scared about those things. I don't feel horrified when I see her trip on air and bulldoze the carpet. We even know when she's whining because she thinks she can get away with it. The things that scare us nowadays are things like child molesters and other deviants who seem to possess a disturbing interest in children.
Obviously we're still learning, probably moreso from mistakes than from books. But contrary to what you see in sitcoms, it does get a little better. If the demand for patience, poopy diapers, screaming uncontrollably, or eating everything in sight doesn't kill you, you're silver (I'd say "you're gold," but I don't like gold).