What I've Learned From Becoming a Dad
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At the time of writing this, my daughter is a little over a year old. In that time, I've learned a lot about myself, and about life. I don't know if you're a parent too, or planning on becoming one, but maybe it'll give you something to think about regardless.
Its okay to not have love at first sight
When my daughter was born, I knew I loved her, but it wasn't in the way people describe it. I feel like people get the false expectation of what love looks like, for both their partners and their children. For me, I loved my daughter, but that love looked a lot different then as it does now. I think that's common for dads to not have that same level of attachment as moms do to their kids. I mean, we didn't grow them in our uterus for 9 months.
It took months for my daughter and I to have this bond that is unique to us. When it comes to sleep, I became my responsibility for putting her to sleep because she calms down for me easier than she does for my wife. In those moments, I get to have this beautiful moment with my baby girl, where she lays on me, sucks her thumb, and slowly dozes off.
When we began to sleep train her, she would blow kisses to me before going to bed. Warms my cold dead heart.
Love isn't something that just ignites like a flame, it IS the flame that must be tended to in order for it to thrive.
Patience is a skill
I'm generally an impatient person, that's no secret to anyone that knows me. I hate waiting. I've learned that patience isn't something people are just born with, with some people have a higher patience some lower. Patience is a skill that you must continuously work on.
I used to get frustrated really easy when my daughter was first born, over time I grew to be generally okay with things taking longer than expected. The more opportunities to exercise your patience, the more you will grow to adapt to it.
I imagine patience like a muscle, that you have to train or give it the necessary stimuli for growth.
You need support and its okay to have help
I think my wife and I were a little overzealous when it came to the initial expectation of parenting. We had the idea in our heads that we could raise this child on our own, with me working from home and her working in office. Boy were we in over our heads.
I thought that I could raise her all by myself for 8 hours and juggle work on top of it. After my daughter was born, I realized how foolish I was. It basically took 4 people to help raise this kid. She was and still is multiple handfuls.
I think this is a universal concept that we have a hard time accepting in our society. Asking for and allowing people to help. We can't do everything, and we are limited in our capacity to keep going.
Having the help of our extended family gave my wife and I breaks when we needed them and support when we were in dire need of it.
You'll make it work
There have been many scenarios where I wasn't sure what the hell we were going to do when issues arose. Financial strain, role strain, etc. I've learned that you'll figure out how to make it work.
It won't be easy, but you'll figure out how to make things work. Sometimes you just have to push through that added stress. Sometimes you'll have to figure out how to stretch a dollar until your next paycheck.
When my job started pushing "return to office", I was pissed. Here you have these corpo jackoffs who I know for a fact had failing marriages demanding people to upend the years of WFO and their home office. For what? So you can sit in a crappy office building and so your boss can walk around and see all the serfs? Taking me away from my family, putting further stress on my wife and giving me less time with my daughter? Fuck that.
In an economy that doesn't have a lot of options, so what is one to do? Not like I can just quit my job, that would take months (even a year) to get a new position that in all likelihood isn't too much different from my current job. So, what do I do? I make it work.
I reevaluate my priorities. Recognize that I have to make up for lost time. I have to prioritize quality time with my family over everything else. When a conflict arises, you'll figure out how to work through it.
Time is valuable
Time is the most valuable commodity we have, and the time we have with loved ones even more so. This lesson gets hammered into my being every few years it seems. It was there when my dad died, it was there when my daughter was born, it was there when I thought I would get shot dead during a protest.
In the grand scheme of time, human lives are a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment. Tomorrow isn't guaranteed, not to you not to anybody. You never know how good you have it until it's just a nostalgic memory.
I will say, the newborn stage fucking sucks, and I wouldn't go back. However, I'm glad I got to have that experience of laying on the couch, playing Tears of the Kingdom, while my infant daughter slept on my chest. That is something that I will appreciate forever.
A good partnership can make all the difference
I often think, "if I was in a marriage with ANYONE else, how much worse would it be?" I feel as though I caught lightning in a bottle when I met my wife. I finally met someone whom we could mutually lean on for support and grow together.
This became more apparent when my daughter was born. We needed each other to get through it. I remember spending hours researching proper breast feeding technique, because the pain from an improper latch was pushing my wife to the point of giving up.
When I get overstimulated from my daughter screaming and feel like I'm gonna put my skull through a wall, my wife is there to help take over so I can calm down.
A good partnership is irreplaceable, its probably the most fulfilling relationship one can have. Its worth every argument, laugh, and cry. To have someone that you can wake up every morning and know they are in this thing until the day one of you kicks the bucket is something I hope just about everyone can have.
Final thought
I've learned a lot about life and about myself since becoming a dad. It's been a worthwhile experience. While I don't think everyone needs/should have a kid, for those that want kids it will be the most challenging thing you experience, but also the most fulfilling. To see a mini version of yourself running around, happy as can be, its surreal sometimes.
There was a time I didn't think I was cut out to be a dad, but seeing my daughter run up to me, with a smile on her face to give me a big hug shows I did good. I love being a dad.