u/Spiritual_River00

I'm a simple man, I like plain looking women, coffee with skim milk- no sugar, and Springfield Armory handguns.

My first gun was an XD OG in .40 cal, and I still own it. People say it's "mall cop", and yes it's true I've seen an XD on security guard's hips plenty of times in the last 20 years, but all in all they're great guns.

During covid I picked up a g19 gen 3 with the intention of carrying it every day in a side car. This was just way too much gun for me. Living in CA the smallest 9mm I could get was a Kahr CW9, and they suck. Finally in 2024 the hellcat got added to the roster and I was very stoked.

I debated the shield vs hellcat like many do, but you know what? Smith and Wesson's shield is great, I know, but it's weird looking. Too bubbly, no rail, and it's top heavy. If you've held one and felt it in your hands it feels unbalanced.

I shot the hellcat side by side and knew this was the one for me. I thought I'd never be able to appendix comfortably after trying the Kahr and G19, but the hellcat in a Harry's holster is like getting into a warm bath. I put that thing on and the small but loud part of my brain that tells me something is missing, quiets right down. I can't even feel the gun on me after 3 days it literally is an extension of my body and virtually disappears. I am loving the ergos on this gun, with the little pinky extender I can get 4 fingers on it. Snappy? Be a man. Build bigger forearms and embrace the recoil. The trigger is heavy? it's pointing at my balls. I want it heavy! The trigger on mine is crisp, virtually no mush, and when it breaks it sounds like a rat trap going off.

I tried posting this in a local gun sub and got downvoted immediately by the Springfield haters. I was reminded that to truly be a Springfield enjoyer you have to be cut a little different, walk to the beat of your own drum, so I came here to post among my kind.

tldr: Learning I have a daughter on the way is prompting personal growth I never expected

Just want I (40s M) say I lurked this sub for a while when I realized I was switching from a never to a maybe. I read a book in 2019 or 2020 called "Empty Planet", about how birth rates are falling, and that economists had prepared governments for overpopulation, but depopulation was the trojan that nobody saw coming. A lot of countries are now facing staggering deflation, like Japan and Italy because their population is aging and they can't finance social programs they've always had on the backs of new workers, and can't even find people to take care of the aging population, like doctors and nurses. That book hit me pretty hard and I realized it wasn't as selfish as I thought to have a kid.

My dad was not super involved as a kid, he was always around, but I didn't get a strong father-son experience until I was older. I never wanted to be a dad. I wasn't bitter about anything but I just had no concept, my mom was my primary attachment figure.

My wife had conflicts with her mom, and she too, didn't want to be a mom. We also had some concerns about a genetic disease, found out she's not a carrier.

I was pretty much in. I told my wife years before she was ready that even though we had agreed, and it has been settled for us, that I am open to it if she ever changed her mind. It was covid that changed her mind. it was just such a stupid and senseless time and we were with our family a lot, we both realized how important family was to us and we wanted to build one.

We tried for three years and couldn't get pregnant, but I cracked it using a fertility monitor and AI. The AI told me my wife needed more protein and b6. Within 90 days she was pregnant. We have a healthy baby girl on the way this fall.

The first thing I noticed was the impact our baby had on our parents. Her dad literally cried. He was so emotional about it, he took off the next day from work, I didn't even do this. My mom and dad were ecstatic. Even my brother and sister in law had emotional reactions. They all are having an emotional experience through our pregnancy.

It's such a head trip to find out you're having a kid. I realized every woman I ever fell in love with took a long time and lots of battles but this little baby isn't even here yet and I'm already thinking about her constantly.

I think about how waiting so long to have her may have robbed her of 20 years of having me around. I also think that I'm more stable now than I was at 20, and have figured out a lot of mental health (I have OCD) stuff, and physical health stuff, so in a way I have a head start, and am glad she won't have to survive my instability while I was figuring all that out.

Other changes I've noticed - suddenly I'm interested in babies. Like thinking about how to raise them, what kind of values I want to instill, what outfits we will dress her in, even little things, like the fact that we will need to start buying cute band-aids instead of plain ones when she is here.

A lot of my spare brain power used to go towards an unresolved romantic situation I have had for a long time, a friend really, that I always hoped things could be different with (in a non-romantic way - we still keep in touch but it can be awkward, childhood trauma bond stuff) but now almost all of my spare brain power goes to my daughter. I think about her before I fall asleep, I think about my wife as a mom, and what our family will be like together.

The biggest difference I'd say is women in general seem more three dimensional. All my thoughts about women in the past were mostly romance coded, and focused just on the fact that there is sexual tension between men and women once they get to know each other. My goal was to avoid women because I'm married and don't want to deal with any weirdness.

I think about what my daughter will need me to be as a dad. I've been reading and watching videos about raising daughters so that they're independent, mentally tough, but also feel safe and loved. I'm learning about concepts I'd never considered, for example, even healthy father-daughter relationships can turn toxic when the dad starts dumping his emotional problems onto his daughter and makes her his primary emotional support.

I don't think I've got it all figured out, not by a long shot, but just knowing my child is a girl, is prompting me to try to grow in ways I never thought about. My wife and I have been having deeper conversations about our own relationship, our relationship with our same sex parent, and what we have learned about those and what we'll do differently with our daughter.

My wife has always been close to her dad, and I have been asking her about it, and learning what he did right and what it meant for her to have him in her life when other parts of her life were going off the rails.

So that's my story. Having a kid, especially a daughter (as a man), on the way, has opened up a whole new world of things to experience and think about... I have noticed changes in my personality already, more patience, more empathy, and changes to my priorities. I have this motivation to do things I've never been motivated to do before (business goals), and more determination to achieve these goals.

I don't think having kids is for everyone, but I know that it was the right choice for us. Hope you all can figure it out one way or another because fence sitting is indecision and indecision is a terrible place to get stuck.