Thank you for saying it before I did.

I am a father to a nine-week-old boy. My wife and I went through the exact same stuff as this writer. I feel better knowing this is, if not normal, at least a pattern.

I did not want to bring a child into the world until I felt I would not resent the time I would lose. I traveled as much as I could, I tried lots of different relationships, I had different careers and lives. So did my wife.

We met in our thirties. We already had fully-formed personalities and lives. She had just gotten her PhD when I met her. We were married before the two-year anniversary of our first date. My son was born nine days after I turned 40.

You change. That's not just okay -- that's GOOD.

I'm still a panty waist liberal. I still want to punch greedy people. I do miss getting the free time I had. Then again I'm already getting slightly more time than I did the first month.

Soon enough that baby will have his own personality. I have no resentments. Also, I went to Belgium twice -- and I'll be back.

We don't live in the world that our parents had. Mine couldn't afford to send me to a public university (in the early 90s) whereas they each went to private colleges in the 1960s. I would hear my mother's demands, then look at her as if she were crazy...

...because it's not like she was holding the purse strings. People that pay for you can tell you what to do. I resent that the Reagan Revolution left us without funded social resources, but I don't mind that this means they can't tell me how to create my own communities.

Having a child has been the next step in my exploration of the world. Now you'll have to excuse me, as the wife needs a nap and the baby can sleep on me.