Living in Public

My wife gave birth to our son, Theodore, in 2023. He was delivered a few days after his due date, and in the week leading to his birth much of my time was spent on my phone. I Googled constantly: how to measure contractions, when to go to the hospital, induce pregnancy methods reddit, things of that sort. But I also spent a lot of time taking phone calls and answering text messages from family, all of whom were eager to meet the baby. I say “meet” here in a sense that would have been unintelligible to us ten or twenty years ago. I live in Texas, my mother lives in Ohio, and my father lives in Florida. Neither of them would be present at the birth, and neither would they be at our home in the first few weeks. They would “meet” my son, first and foremost, through their phones.