Back in January, after we had discovered that Mandy was pregnant, but before we'd started telling anyone, I got an email from an old schoolfriend. He told me that he and his wife were expecting their first child in July. He wasn't the first of my friends from my school and college days to have a child, but I had been closer to him than the others. The idea of him becoming a dad came as something of a shock.
A couple of months later, a day or two before Mandy and I were planning to announce our news, I was IMing an old friend from college. As I was considering whether to tell him about Mandy's pregnancy, he told me that another friend from our college days had recently discovered he was going to be a dad. By chance, our friend's wife was due just a couple of weeks after Mandy, at the beginning of October.
Then my friend told me that he was going to be a dad too, also at the beginning of October.
I almost choked. "Well, I guess I'd better tell you my news then," I said. That two of my college friends would become dads almost simultaneously was coincidence enough, but for all three of our wives to be due within weeks of each other seemed downright freaky.
Then this week I emailed another old friend from my school days to tell her that we were expecting. Congratulations, she said, adding that she was currently on maternity leave following the birth of her son in February. I hadn't even known she was pregnant. But by this point, the news didn't come as much of a surprise.
Babies, it seems, are like buses. None for years, then five come along at once.
It must be a result of all the gambling we were doing in Vegas the other week. Mandy has suggested I should start a sweepstake on what’s going to happen to the small tattoo of a sun that she has on her stomach over the course of her pregnancy.