Arrival

Do you remember falling in love for the first time? I remember that week. I remember listening to songs I already knew but understanding them for the first time. I remember walking down the street with this secret almost bursting out of me. I remember feeling a little more connected to the human experience and to everyone around me.

Fatherhood feels like this. In the weeks after Theo was born, I would walk to the store and barely be able to contain myself. 'I have witnessed a miracle! I saw my wife give birth to our son! She made a person and that person is in the world with us!' I looked the same as the week before, but was fundamentally changed. My parents, all parents, made more sense to me.

It's a surreal thing, to have a child. When I'm not in a room with him, I sometimes remember with a startle that there's a part of me somewhere else. In the first week home, Kate and I would sit in bed as we had a thousand times before and would look between us and be shocked that there was a whole new person in that space. Life, multiplied.

Watching the birth of a child is surreal too. Seeing the top of his head while it was still in the darkness inside Kate. Seeing his tiny head emerge, resting just outside her in between pushes. Watching the placenta be pulled out and cutting the rubbery cord that had fed him for the last 9 months, bringing him with finality into our waking world. We all came out like this. This is how it has always happened. Insane.

Survival

One day later, we returned home with this new life, and while I expected many things to change, I didn't expect time itself to feel different. The days doubled in length because we were awake every night; days blended into each other so the concept of a week disappeared; Theo changed so much from day to day and there was such a constant stream of questions that weeks felt like months, and these last two months have felt like a year.

Other parents had warned us that when we had questions, everyone would share their pet parenting advice and we'd have to get good at taking what we needed and discarding the rest. What they hadn't said was that most of the confusion would come from within. When everything seems so consequential, it's tempting to look it all up, and in the first days I did. But life with Theo became more bearable when I started to believe two things: that a few foundational practices would make a bigger difference for him than most of the details, and that we already knew a lot of what we needed, and should take a deep breath and follow our instincts.

My mother came in with a great tip: when in doubt, ask second time parents, not other first timers. Replace frazzled guesswork with earned perspective. When I stressed about the exact boiling and sterilization process for the first formula bottles, I asked a second time mom what she does and she...just uses tap water.

Feeding was the biggest hurdle in those early weeks. The official literature focuses entirely on breastfeeding (and would only provide a narrow set of 'correct' answers for most situations, e.g. co-sleeping). The likelihood of great health outcomes with formula - missing. How to choose a formula - irrelevant. The physical pain of pumping every 3 hours and the emotional toll of taking time away from bonding - not mentioned.

Feeding ourselves, thankfully, was taken care of by parents and friends. If someone you know just had a baby and you want to support them, send them fresh meals. If you're in the thick of it, ask. People want to help and leaning on relationships brings joy and gives life to all involved.

Transformations

Within a few weeks, we found our groove, and then the bigger changes started to emerge. The first one: he got cute. And hilarious. Indonesians get it: there's one word, lucu, that means both cute and funny. And the cuter Theo got the more I found myself laughing out loud at him. He squeaks, he squirms, and he farts when I pick him up after a nap. Finding babies funny is probably a useful survival mechanism for an overworked parent.

Cuteness aside, I've felt beautiful emotions I had not known before. Looking down at his sleeping face after he passes out in my arms produces the purest sensation of love that I have ever felt, and watching him follow my face and let out a smile is exhilarating every time. The world affects me differently too. I watched the Apple hearing aid ad twice and cried both times, imagining our life as a family unfolding.

A friend asked me what I want to teach Theo, and I told him about a letter I had started writing, to be delivered in 15 years, for which I compiled a long list of advice on how to live a rich and beautiful life. Somewhere along the way I stopped and asked myself, "wait, am I doing these things?" The main way Theo will learn how to be is by watching Kate and me, so whatever it is I want him to learn - I need to live it first.

That was the second thing Theo taught me. The first thing he taught me, at 430am in his first week, when he wouldn't stop crying, as a rage started bubbling up in me, was that no amount of urging, forcing, or frustration will get this tiny baby to do what I want him to do. All I can do is surrender and listen; find peace and meet him from a place of equanimity. Then maybe I'll have the presence of mind to change the wet diaper that was making him cry.

"Surrender" is, I've been told, quite a powerful idea for parenting. So much is out of our hands: the timing of the birth, their health at birth, their temperament, whether or not they will latch. Needing to control these uncontrollable things can drive you and the child mad. Surrender to the situation. Save your energy for after it happens so you can deal with it.

He taught me another thing in the quiet of the night as I fed him in silence. He was barely awake. I was in the dark. Naturally I reached for my phone. But the glare of the screen, his confused little face, and the thought of Kate's disapproval - all made me put it down. And after a few minutes passed I started to...think. I thought about what meals we should cook that week. I thought about how AI makes wearables more interesting. I wrote paragraphs of this piece in my head. That time remained quiet on the outside but became rich and dynamic inside.

The constant changes in Theo - new expressions and sounds and ways he can use his body - bring awe but also a strange sadness. We love to see him do new things but are always aware that the way he is today is fleeting and he'll be a new boy next week, and again the week after that, and we can't hold on to any version of him for too long. We've got to love it when we have it, with no expectation of constancy.

There's a lot to look forward to in his changes though. I've heard parents talk about re-living their own childhoods by watching their kids go through all the firsts - foods and music and places and feelings. My last sleepover with my middle school friends was a long time ago but Theo has hundreds of late-night messy-room take-over-the-living-room nights with his friends ahead of him, and I can't wait to see that happen.

Early parenting is all-consuming, so it's easy to forget yourself in it, and it's even easier to forget your partner. Divorces turn out to be very common right after a baby is born. Your time disappears, boundaries get drawn too tightly or not at all, and things snap. Kate and I took it on as a challenge to become the best versions of ourselves through this, to expand not contract, to enrich our lives with each other and welcome Theo into that, as opposed to making him the center of our world.

Some of this is a matter of perspective. I thought I knew my wife, but I now see that she's more than I knew. The way she sweetly talks to him while changing him, the songs she makes up and sings while feeding him, her confidence when holding or soothing him, and her wisdom around what matters and what doesn't - they're revealing parts of her soul and character that I hadn't seen before, and I'm glad my eyes are open to them.

Thanks to Theo I've also gotten to know my parents better. Two months of working on a shared project has shown me more about them than any 2 week vacation in the last 20 years. We've discussed life philosophies and laughed about me becoming like them, I've seen them socialize as peers with my friends, and I've loved seeing how much they love and care for Theo. They gave me the life, I gave them Theo, and Theo gave us time together.

Babies are a gift to the world. They're a love letter to our families and to the future. They're an expression of hope and determined optimism. If one can look through the haze, they can provide purpose and clarity. They force you to ask and answer some big questions. None of this comes easily.

For me, Theo has been a force for strength, discipline, and bigger, bolder dreams. Having a baby at 41 makes me think a lot about the strength of my body, which has to be fortified before it's too late. When he's 20 I'll be 61, and I'd like to still win a game or two of tennis against him.

More than that it makes me think about time. Because we've decided that we want life to expand, not contract, the only way to reconcile that with the time cost of childcare is to be very thoughtful about how every bit of time gets spent. There's small wins like not taking the phone to the bathroom or finally using the dishwasher, bigger ones like only taking on truly important tasks at work or at home, or the biggest one: realizing that if there's something we eventually want to do, we should find a way to do it now. Discipline feels like a muscle to exercise, and when practices layer on top of each other it eventually starts to feel true that sometimes "it's easier to do more than less."

This moment is both the beginning of a grand new adventure, and a continuation of one (or two). The dreams Kate and I have had haven't diminished, they've sharpened and evolved and somehow, with a little nudge from his tiny hands, they've started to matter more.

Thanks Theo.

First published December 6, 2024 at https://shreyans.org/fatherhood
Lively discussion on HackerNews