If you ever want to freak yourself all the way out, try driving a newborn baby -- your newborn baby -- home from the hospital. All of a sudden, everything is new. There is a car seat installed in your car, and there is a tiny and fragile human, a human whose health and wellbeing are your responsibility, trussed up in it. All of a sudden, it feels like every other car on the road is out to get you. They're aimed at you, and they're trying to kill your kid with every too-fast left turn, every lane change. You feel all sorts of feelings when you become a parent. You feel joy and pride and tenderness. You feel nostalgia, a certain ache for the younger version of yourself that you know is now gone forever. And you feel an overwhelming anxiety, one that borders on terror. (Or at least I did.) People don't really talk about that anxiety, but it's there. It's part of the package. All of it, together, is overwhelming.