Half-time report

Ted is six months old today. In the lifespan of a human (indeed a 33-year old human) this is a tiny, insignificant amount of time. But in terms of us being responsible for a tiny child, it’s 180+ days of feeds, nappy changes, sleeps and all the rest of it. It’s a big milestone and perhaps marks the formal end of the “newborn” stage and the transition to “infant” (though in truth it feels like this happened months ago).

I could dwell on “what I’ve learned so far” but what I think is more interesting are the ways in which the last six months have changed me. My second-hand experience of Maddy’s pregnancy already introduced some changes, but those days feel like another life ago, and I suppose they were. The changes and developments happening now – these are more permanent.

Fixing broken masculinity

The changes that surprised me most mostly concern my emotional state. I’m not really one for big, public shows of emotion – being the introvert of the family I’d often be found lurking in a corner somewhere at big family events, and responding to difficult or challenging circumstances by sloping off somewhere alone to process things and regroup.

From the moment, though, that Ted popped into our lives, I found myself summoning up tears of distress or beams of joy almost at random. Clearly his birth was a powerfully emotional experience – the most incredible day of my life. But in the weeks and months that followed I’d find myself breaking into tears when discussing it all with Maddy, or even just blinking back a few solitary drops in a reverie when overwhelmed by the unbridled joy of just holding my son and recognising that he was my child; that we made him, from nothing. I cried more (both in happiness and sadness) in the first four weeks of Ted’s life than I had in the previous four years.

I’d find myself noticing other people and their joy, too: another couple with a newborn baby making those tentative early steps into the real world again would cause me to break into a huge grin, making eye contact and smiling in recognition at their nervous delight. I’ve been there, I’d think. Or seeing the guy on his bike with his son, bringing him home from nursery each evening. That’ll be us one day, I’d smile.

At work after returning from maternity leave, I wanted to stop random colleagues I barely knew and show them photos of my baby. “This is my son!” I wanted to say. I changed the wallpaper on my phone to a picture of him. I stuck a photo of him up on my desk. I wanted people to ask about him so I could talk about him, tell them how much he weighed and what he’d learned to do that week.

These were things I could literally never conceive of doing – if you’d told me last year that I would become that person, I’d have laughed at you. These things may sound like trivialities, but for me they were huge. It’s another legacy of toxic masculinity, with men repressing their emotions and feeling unable to express them. I always thought I was above all that and able to express whatever I wanted, but it took the birth of my child for me to realise how wrong I was.

The network effect

I also discovered my family. Again, I thought I’d already done this. I’m very close to my two sisters and I have a great relationship with my parents, their partners, and our extended family. But having a child made me reassess the entire structure all over again. Suddenly my aunts—stalwart women who helped care for me as a child; fought cancer and won; raised children and then grandchildren—were transformed: these weren’t just my mother’s siblings, they were my son’s future defenders, matriarchs, teachers and supporters. They’d have a presence in his life, too, and he’d learn about their strength, wisdom and love, just like I did. I was realising that all my relationships were about to be redefined, that this baby wasn’t just my child, but all of theirs too.

And my own parents: again, I naïvely thought I already valued them and showed them gratitude. It’s only now I’ve taken these first steps into parenthood that I can claim to have any understanding of what they really did for me: what they sacrificed and scraped for (and I’m doing this on “easy mode” compared to them). Six months ago I was an unknowingly ungrateful son – now I think I’m starting to understand my parents properly.

A brief history of [having no] time

Time is the other thing that’s changed. Clearly more of it has elapsed, but its value has completely shifted. A two hour window in the evening to do something for myself (read a book, cook a meal, have a bath, write this blogpost) becomes both precious and pressure: if I don’t get this done tonight I’ll have to wait till Sunday before I’ll next have time.

When you have less of something, you tend to squander it less. I see friends less often now, but when I’m with them it feels fresh and exciting and energised. I don’t go to the pub that often, but when I’m there these days it feels like a treat just to sit and nurse a pint for an hour. It might sound mundane or laughable (particularly if you’re not on this particular journey yourself) but there’s actually something quite amazing about re-learning to value all the things you enjoy in life. The quiet beauty of the first time you watch a movie uninterrupted again, or read a book in peace for an hour, or look up and realise it’s only 8pm and you’ve got the whole evening stretching out ahead of you – it’s ace.

Work is similar. The context switching can be harder, stepping over the threshold and immediately becoming “dad” rather than “Matt” can sometimes be a challenge after a long day. But things in the office hold less power over me now. I was never one for staying late at work to begin with, but now there’s no question about it. I don’t have time or mental bandwidth to fret about work situations when I’m at home and it all feels trivial in comparison anyway. It also gives a new perspective to what I’m doing: plenty of people I work with have kids and have done all of this before. We could all do with a bit more empathy for each other generally (parents or not) and it’s given me a bit of insight into how to consider others, though I’m still working at this.

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I knew becoming a parent would be life-changing, but to be honest I only really understood this to mean that I’d be seeing my mates less in the evenings and changing more nappies. While these practical day-to-day changes are all true, too, it’s the more profound and emotional changes I didn’t really see coming, in my naïvety. I wouldn’t change a thing, though.