Falling Into Routine

We’re slowly getting the hang of the new paradigm at home. Truth be told, it’s hard to imagine a time when we WEREN’T parents, even though it was only a few weeks ago. Amazing how quickly you can adapt and accept.

I should warn you that I might keep using the word ‘amazing’ in this particular posting because everything at the moment feels, well, amazing. Mathew is an absolute wonder and the effect he has had on Philippa is a joy to observe. I’ve never seen someone so happy, content and so certain that what they are doing right now is EXACTLY what they want to be doing, and what they are supposed to be doing. She is floating in a bubble of maternal perfection. She has found her place, and her calling. She has a glow, and an aura, and a calmness that I have never seen in her before, and never expected to happen.

As for The Little Fella, I just keep finding myself staring at him in amazement and finding it hard to believe that something so perfect could have come from such a messed-up, weirdly-shaped person as me. He doesn’t do a lot, but I’m still captivated by him. Even when he’s screaming the place down at 3am he is filling me with something I didn’t know I needed or had space for. All those doubts and fears and uncertainties I had during the pregnancy seem like distant memories now – silly thoughts that popped into the head of someone ill-prepared, immature and unsure, none of which I feel now. That person existed in a former lifetime. He was a non-parent.

If you are currently a man on his own journey towards Fatherhood, and you are finding it difficult to cope with and wondering whether you’re ready, or if you’ll be a suitable dad, or if you’ll even like your offspring, or any of those other awful thoughts that plagued me at times in the third trimester, I assure you you’ll be ok. You WILL be a good dad and you WILL start dealing with it when you have to. It’s a natural thing. It happens. Procreating, after all, is the only thing that everyone who has ever existed on this planet is designed to do. I truly believe that. The natural world wants us to go on existing, so every instinct inside us is geared towards producing and raising the next generation. It will be the same for you. And it will happen instantly. You will fall in love with your child the second you see it, and it will be a kind of love that annihilates anything you’ve experienced before. Remember a time when you fell in love with someone, and it was so deep that it actually hurt to look at them? Times that by about a hundred thousand and you’ll still be nowhere close to experiencing the sensations that will overcome you in Parenthood.

Amazing.

RC 5-1-19