Insta-Daddy: The Saga of a Newborn Father

By R. Lawrence Taylor

Insta-Daddy is charming, poignant, and humorous look at not-so-suddenly-entering parenthood. It’s about how many of us are married into a parental role, not always having the prerequisites completed in your nonexistent parenting class work.

Read and share along.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Dec 6, 2021
• ISBN: 9781662429491

Book preview

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Insta-Daddy

The Saga of a Newborn Father

R. Lawrence Taylor

Copyright © 2021 R. Lawrence Taylor

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2021

ISBN 978-1-6624-2948-4 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-6624-2949-1 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Just Add Water

Two Mysterious Women

Off We Grow

Anything but Spiders

Time Well Spent

The Replaceable Couch

Opposition in All Things

A Father’s Guide to Understanding Your Children’s Foreign Language

To Janet

And to four little human beings,

Who gave me the material to write about

And endless patience while I did.

You make my life complete.

Foreword

Insta-Daddy is a wonderful book. What makes it so wonderful is defined in the last entry of the glossary that Mr. Taylor so thoughtfully appended. Wuv: what makes the world go ’round, given by children unconditionally every day. Wuv is the feeling that permeates this story of a young daddy, from his somewhat abrupt entry into the role, through repeated fatherhood and on to repeated daddyhood.

Punctuated with humorous and telling anecdotes, Mr. Taylor’s tale is about his growth and development as a parent. He shares with us some of the mistakes you learn from—don’t we all—hoping that through them, the rest of us can do so vicariously. He shares the pain of not being able to help and the joy of being thought of as an all-powerful superhero. Through it all, however, he continues to share his deepest insights into the art of parenting. In doing this, his love for his family is clearly the inspiration, and it has done him, and us, well. His thoughts and suggestions on raising confident, responsible, and loved children rank him with many of the experts in this area today.

Insta-Daddy is a delightful book and read. If read and taken to heart, it will surely lessen the accuracy of the last part of Mr. Taylor’s definition of Love: needed from more adults every day.

Chuck Nolan, MD, FAAP

Pediatrician

Professor of Pediatrics

University of Utah Medical Center

http://healthcare.utah.edu/fad/mddetail.php?physicianID=u0029096#tabAcademic

From the Author

I am not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV. In fact, aside from my schooling in psychology, I am hardly an expert. However, what I am is a father—an experienced, dedicated father, one who fervently accepts this responsibility and relishes the honor of raising my children; preparing them for life in our society, on this planet, and at this point in time; and preparing them for the day when they will go beyond the circle of my reach, to whatever the future holds for them in the preparation for their lives.

I started writing this sometime ago, only intending to share this history with my children. My thinking was that it would serve as a memory and as an example of our experiences. Full of laughs and tears and life’s lessons, we learned together, for sure. Most of all, it was an account full of happiness. You see, I was only preparing them for life. It was through them and because of them that I found the truest sense of purpose I’ve ever known. The key for personal happiness is a purposeful life. Having a purpose, having that purpose, is the secret of a happy life. I thank God each and every time we have personal conversations.

My hope is that the tales of my successes and failures that I relate in the following pages will help others, other fathers, and their young children. I hope it will help them understand just how crucial these formative years can be so that we, as parents, can guide these fragile humans that we’ve been given stewardship of and teach them to be responsible adults themselves.

As ominous as that may sound, it is a calling we must embrace and one that we must succeed at. Our children depend on it.

Chapter 1

Just Add Water

I could tell by looking at the reflection in the doctor’s eyeglasses that the delivery of our child was well underway. My beautiful wife, Janet, who, due to a caesarean delivery, was completely numb and draped off from the waist down. She was stuck, only to lay there in total oblivion to what was going on around her. She relied on my play-by-play skills in relaying to her how the procedure was progressing.

We were about to witness this miracle called birth, our own procreation. The moment we had only dreamed about for the previous nine months was here at last. Those nine long months of waiting seemed to last much longer, but at last, we were about to finally meet our child. We spent so much time daydreaming about this child, and it was finally coming to an end. I was so wired, and questions raced through my mind with lightning speed. Would he be a superstar athlete like Peyton Manning? Perhaps he’d be more of a war hero and leader of men, leading mankind to a positive change from society’s ills. Maybe he’d be like John F. Kennedy or Mahatma Gandhi. Of course, she might go on to become the first woman to walk on the moon, putting her size 8 footprints next to Neil Armstrong’s. Then again, she might be the one who would find a cure for MS. Either way, this child would be special. I just knew it. I just didn’t know how special it would be.

Either way, all those long nights of preparing the nursery and late-night runs to 7-Eleven for the most bizarre cravings were at long last coming to an end. The endless nights of continual tossing and turning and having inexplicable bouts with tears, nausea, and constant worry if everything was all right—they were all over too. By now, we were both ready. We wanted it to be over.

This was our second attempt to have a child. Our first pregnancy ended sadly in a miscarriage, so you understand that the last nine months of being extra careful were also burdened by being extra worried. But there we were. We had made it. So full of excitement and anticipation, we could hardly contain ourselves. We were having a baby.

Is everything going okay? Janet asked quietly.

Oh yeah, it looks like they’re just getting started! I responded nervously as I squeezed her hand reassuringly.

The suspense was too much. I stood up to see over the drape just in time to see the doctor lay the scalpel on Janet’s abdomen. I quickly sat back down. Blood? Blood! No one said anything about blood! I knew what the procedure would be, but seeing them actually cutting her left me feeling a bit squeamish. Suddenly, my mind raced with more questions: Would there be problems? What if some unforeseen problem arose? What if it were Janet that had complications and didn’t make it? I simply had to get a hold of myself. I told myself, You just gotta hang tough, brutha! Only let her see peace and calm in your face. For the love of all that is good and holy, man up!

So I did. I looked over at Janet’s face. She was beautiful. It was a moment emblazoned in my mind.

Well? she asked quietly, with an anxious look in her eye. How does it look?

Everything is perfect! It is going to be smooth sailing from here out, I whispered as calmly as I could. I then prayed it would be.

After a few minutes more, Doctor Labrum, Janet’s obstetrician, announced triumphantly that he was about to deliver the child, so I stood up once again, just in time to see this little head poking out of Janet’s tummy. That’s a baby? I thought to myself. I had to look at Janet again just to make sure I was in the right room. Dr. Labrum had no sooner cleaned out this little being’s mouth and nose when it let out the eeriest cry I had ever heard. I must admit it was quite a sight to see this little purple head sticking out of Janet’s stomach and screeching. It seemed to be a scene from the movie Alien where the creature came out of one of the men’s body and created all kinds of havoc and mayhem. I almost expected the baby to jump out and scoot across the room and hide in the corner. But it did not.

Doctor Labrum finally delivered the rest of the baby out of Janet’s stomach, and I could tell right away that being a Super Bowl quarterback was not in this child’s future. But she was beautiful. I am a curious man by nature, so the view I had kept me engaged. I was a bit concerned. Not only did my little girl have a purple head, but she was covered with a white putty-looking substance that I later learned is a protective substance called vernix. That was fine with me as long as that was where it was supposed to be and not missing its assignment somewhere else.

I watched a nurse intently as she carried our baby off to a distant corner of the area to minister to her needs. Being a curious man, my brain cells where firing away and in overload. So much to take in, so many questions! I turned my attention back to Janet just in time to see that the good doctor had her uterus resting on her abdomen. That is to say, he had it on the outside of her abdomen, resting on her stomach area, and was suturing it closed. You could tell by how quickly I determined the gender of our baby that I was some kind of savant. Well, right away, I knew that this was not a natural location for it, and that there must be something amiss.

Ahem, uh, Doc? I nervously asked, Isn’t it true that if you take a woman’s uterus out of her body that it’s called a hysterectomy?

He just smiled a learned and patient smile. Once again, he schooled me with an amazing tutorial of the female reproductive system. A tutorial I was sure Janet was thrilled to be the model of. He went on to explain