Interesting question. I really had to think about it. Which may be why that fellow changed the subject. I probably wouldn't be able to give a good answer in a face-to-face conversation. Of course, we guys often have to stop and think a while in order to find out how we feel about something that's not a typical "guy thing" (like beer, baseball, or you ladies
).
On reflection, each time that I learned that I "had impregnated a woman," (1) I was married to her and (2) we intended to have another baby. So as it happens there were no "shit"s or "oops"s in my cases.
Each time, it felt like I was being given an awesome and welcome set of responsibilities: first to her, to take care of her during the pregnancy; and then eventually also to the baby. Maybe like when you get your drivers license -- now you get to drive a car, but now you also assume the responsibilities that come with driving a car. There's a particular kind of "awesome" that goes with that. A solemn kind, perhaps.
The only strong
feelings I had were (1) when we first deliberately stopped using birth control (each time), and (2) when our first baby was born.
Stopping the use of birth control was awesome. "I might make her pregnant" -- awesome.
Since we usually used condoms (before my v-ectomy), the bareback feeling was certainly stimulating of course. But the added uncertainty of the outcome -- that something might "happen" beyond simply "we'll have a good time" -- changed it from playing a friendly game of poker to playing poker for
serious money. (No pun intended.) It ramped my excitement
way up, the first time or two that we did it after we started trying.
Sometimes I use my memory of that feeling as a fantasy during birth-controlled sex, to "up" the feeling of intensity.
And watching our first baby's head pop out -- wow.
The doc had asked me to help brace one of her legs, so I was maybe a foot away and at the side. My first impression was that I was seeing a fist. ("A
fist?
There? Where did
that come from?" I asked myself.) Then I realized that the "creases" between the "fingers" weren't horizontal: they were vertical.
Then my brain resolved the "vertical creases" into two eyes squeezed tightly shut (one "above" the other) and a mouth also squeezed tightly shut. This was a
face, seen
sideways.
And the world reeled, like it did in the Millennium Falcon's first jump to hyperspace in the first-released Star Wars movie.
The doc thought I had fainted (like many new dads do). I hadn't. I was weeping. As I often do when I'm overwhelmed by that which transcends nature-as-I-have-known-it.
RSRD