On Fatherhood

As I approach a full year of fatherhood, some thoughts have crossed my mind regarding a task (and I use that term intentionally) which has been the most rewarding, difficult, and important work I’ve done so far in my life.  I wanted to share them here, in random order:

• One of the more interesting articles I’ve read over the past year was written by a pediatrician and relates to the “fit” between parents and their babies.  Sometimes, parents get decidedly unlucky with the children they have (e.g., there are very active babies born to older, more sedentary parents who would be much easier to deal with if their parents were 27-year-old endurance athletes).  In this sense, we got really lucky with our little Samantha.  She’s active, curious, and can be a handful, but at least we’re almost always well-rested (unless sick, from the age of four months she’s been out like a light from 7:30 pm until at least 6 am each night – my wife and I have averaged at least eight hours sleep each night for the past year).  I don’t know how parents manage when their babies don’t sleep through the night, and one of the reasons we’re almost certain we’re never having another child is we don’t want to roll the genetic dice a second time.

• I observe other moms and dads from afar and I wonder how it’s possible to be such an all-encompassing “total parent”.  I’m not wired that way; I’m too much of a generalist.  I need to have my work, my interests, and my activities outside the realm of parenthood.  I’m a little envious of those who can throw themselves so fully into the life of a parent (but I’m also glad I’m approaching it this way, as I elaborate upon later). 

• That said, no matter how hard I try not to let parenthood change me, it changed me.  I’ve become more emotional, and more in tune with my emotions than I’ve ever been since my teenage years.  It’s impossible to ignore tragedies surrounding other people’s kids (even if you don’t like other people’s kids theoretically) when you can imagine something like it happening to your own child.  You read about an old person dying of cancer and – especially if they’ve led a long, happy, and productive life – it’s not necessarily sad.  But think of a child dying of the same disease, and it’s awful.  My sense of humor has changed, as well.  I used to love dead baby jokes, but they become less funny when you have a child of your own.

• The worst part of the last year were the (very few) moments where I didn’t know I was hurting my child.  Like for instance, Samantha was losing weight right after she was born, so we had to supplement her diet with some formula so she could gain it back.  I remember feeding her from her bottle in the middle of the night, when she couldn’t have been more than a week old.  Being a first-time parent without any knowledge of how bottles actually work, I was unintentionally choking the poor little newborn – she was getting milk faster than she could swallow.  Now, my daughter is totally fine and healthy today, so I clearly didn’t mess her up too bad that night.  Still, it hurts so much to think about that moment.  Over the last few weeks I’ve shared this story with other dad friends, and it turns out they all have similar moments of guilt (e.g., feeling like they let their child fall, etc.).  I think it’s just a part of the awesomeness of the commitment; it’s impossible to get it right 100% of the time, but it doesn’t mean it can’t make you feel awful when you get it wrong.

• I’ve talked about travel before.  There was a roughly four-month span in the middle of this past year where I was miserable about the idea that I’d never be able to travel internationally again.  I’m better about this now – a big help was when I decided to set my DVR to record all episodes of “Rick Steves’ Europe”, so whenever I feel that sense of wanderlust, I just pop an episode in and travel vicariously for 30 minutes.  So that’s great, but it’s not what I want to talk about here.  I didn’t realize this until I became a parent, but travel’s a loaded topic of conversation among parents.  On one hand, you have parents who never liked to travel in the first place, and couldn’t imagine going on a couple’s vacation without their kid (or sometimes even with them!).  On the other, you have people who love to travel and don’t plan to stop traveling – either with or without their kid.  There’s nothing wrong with either approach, but it’s interesting the extent to which parents judge other parents for having different attitudes toward travel.  As someone who definitely wants to travel the world, and realizes it doesn’t make sense to do so with a small child (though I can’t wait to take a teenaged Samantha around Europe), other parents do tend to judge us.  I think it is part of the “total parent” attitude I mentioned earlier.  Whether I’m actively parenting Samantha 90% or 99.9% of the time, it doesn’t make a difference; she’s already one of the top 0.1% children in the world in terms of how lucky she is.  She’ll be fine.

• Children’s books, for the most part, are awesome.  One of the unexpected pleasures of being a parent has been the experience of reading to Sam.  By now, she has clearly defined favorites, and interacts with them to an extent where you know she knows what’s coming next.  But this post is about me, damnit, and I enjoy them, too.  The best ones are lighthearted, quirky, and/or sarcastic to the point where they’re pretty much designed for parents (see: “Go the F**k to Sleep,” “All My Friends Are Dead,” etc.).  This isn’t to say there aren’t bad ones – some of the older ones in particular tend to be overly sad, which is not cool.  I remember reading one in particular about how the mother and her child were off to some kind of museum but they had no money for the bus?  It was weird.  What do kids (or parents) get from this?  I took the existential bullet of growing up broke so my child didn’t have to.  I’m not reading that shit to her.

Though parenthood changes things, it’s not been the case that parenthood has tilted my world completely off its axis.  We’re lucky to have willing grandparents around, so date night still happens.  Hanging out with friends still happens.  Travel, eventually, soon, will happen again.  Parenthood makes things more complicated, but it also puts life in the proper perspective.  Bad days at work don’t bother me as much as they used to, and nothing beats coming home to a smile and laughter from my child.  I would totally recommend parenthood to a friend.