I’ve been a dad for four months. That’s all. A third of a year. By the time Christmas comes around George will be almost twice as old as he is today.
And it’s a paradox really. Sometimes it feels as though he has always been here, and it’s hard to remember a time when he wasn’t. At the same time I often still feel woefully unprepared; for both the here and now –the nappies, the crying, the sleepless nights, the all round relentlessness of having a new baby– and the many, many years still to come.
I guess that feeling of being totally ill-equipped and unqualified for the job at hand isn’t unusual for new dads. And, to be honest, I thought I was prepared. I mean, how difficult can it possibly be, I asked myself? I’m alive and relatively normal, and so is my brother, so my parents must have managed it (and without the guidance of helpful blogs such as this). Many of my friends have had kids –kids who are alive, healthy and not completely feral– and they seem to have coped perfectly well. I’d read the advice books and trawled through endless websites. I’d read blogs just like this, written by men just like me. I’d seen the harrowing and thought-provoking documentary Three Men and a Baby. I mean, if Tom Selleck, Ted Danson and Steve Guttenberg can get from baby to little lady with only a few hilarious mishaps, how hard can it really be?
The answer, I’ve discovered, is hard. Really. Fucking. Hard.
If there was a scale of difficulty, with one being, say, making a cup of tea, and ten being something like climbing Everest in just your underpants, then I would have guessed that being a new parent would rate about a four. Not easy, sure, but practically everyone does it at some point in their life, right? It can’t be that difficult.
I actually laugh at my own naivety whenever I think back to the days when I believed that. And I’ve tried to put my finger on exactly why I’ve found it so tough, but haven’t yet come up with a decent answer. I mean, maybe I should have been better prepared (I should). Maybe I’m just a wimp (I am). Maybe I’m fundamentally lazy and just the sheer hard work of it has been a massive shock to the system (I am and it has). Maybe my life until now has been an easy ride, I know nothing of real hardship and I shouldn’t really find as tough as I do (it has (relatively speaking), I don’t and I probably shouldn’t). But honestly, there have been times over the last few months where, while maybe not at the summit, it’s certainly felt like I was at base camp, wandering around in my boxer shorts, terrified and confused and lost and wondering how –how in the name of all that is holy– I got myself into this mess.
But, do you know what? I’ve made it through the hardest part (that was the hardest part wasn’t it?). We’ve made it. Together. Me and Hannah and George. A team. A family. We’re getting there. Day by day, week by week.
And it’s getting easier all the time, you know. We’ve found our groove. We’re not making our descent down the mountain just yet, but I’ve at least found my trousers. And, although I’ve never climbed Everest, I imagine the feeling is the same in many ways. Yes it’s hard. Yes it’s terrifying. Yes you have moments of blind panic where you think ‘this is going to kill me.’ But it’s worth it in the end. It’s worth it for the sense of achievement and to say ‘I did it.’ And, most of all, it’s worth it for the view. Because whenever I stare down at George’s face while he’s sleeping, or smiling, or laughing, or even while he’s screaming the house down, although not literally on top of the world like some famous mountaineer, it’s easily the greatest feeling I’ve ever experienced. And I’m much less likely to get frostbite.
Now, obviously, this is all hyperbole really. And I’m worried it might come across as a bit “first world problems”; another middle-class white male complaining about something as trivial as having kids when there are real problems in the world. And, to be honest, I do rather feel that way. Like I have no right to find this as difficult as I do when there are people who can’t have kids, or have disabled kids, or are too poor to feed their kids. But, the thing is, I’m not trying to compare myself to anyone else really, there’s no point. All I can ever know is what it’s like for me.
Of course, just because worse things happen to other people doesn’t mean your own problems aren’t real (otherwise the starving millions in Africa would mean no more complaints in restaurants), and I’m entitled to find it hard going at times, but it’s certainly worth keeping my own problems in perspective. And that’s something I try to do whenever I’m struggling to cope; not by comparing myself to people who are worse off, you understand, but just by being thankful that we have George, because we could have quite easily lost him. And by not taking him for granted, because there are thousands of people desperate to have what we have but, for whatever reason, aren’t able to. And also by being thankful that he’s healthy, because thousands of babies are born each year that aren’t (and for a few terrifying days at the start he was one of them). And even –although it sounds horrible to say– by being thankful we don’t live in Syria, or sub-Saharan Africa, or any place where we would have to fight every day just to keep him fed and alive. Nonetheless, despite having this perspective and being thankful for all these things, despite knowing how lucky we are to have him and to live where we live and have the help we do, and despite knowing there are people out there living and coping with circumstances far more difficult than our own, it’s still been the most demanding thing I’ve ever done (and I’ve sat through Three Men and a Little Lady).
It’s ironic really (don’t ya think?). Having a child has been, by far and away, the most challenging thing I’ve ever done, but there is no greater incentive for me to rise to the challenge than having a child who is completely reliant on my ability to do so. This tiny, innocent person is utterly dependent on us and we cannot, we must not, let him down. And we’re not going to. We’re going to be there for him. We’re going to do the best possible job we can. Just like our parents did. And their parents did. And their parents’ parents did. And just like a million parents in a million different situations with a million different challenges to overcome are doing every day.
Having said all that though, writing this has reminded me of the opening lines of a poem by Philip Larkin:
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra just for you.
It’s hard to admit, but I think he’s probably right. It was certainly one of my biggest fears, before George was born; that I’d fuck him up somehow. And I’ve come to realize, in the few months he’s been alive, that that fear will become reality, together we will fuck him up; we won’t mean to, but it’s inevitable. I’ve also come to realize, however, that nobody really knows what they’re doing when it comes to parenting; nobody has a fool-proof guide to making sure your kids don’t get fucked up. We’re all just winging it, making it up as we go along, and the only thing we can be certain of is our own actions. Larkin’s advice for avoiding it is “don’t have kids yourself”, but it’s too late for that. So instead, like I said before, we’ll do our best. We’ll be there for George whenever he needs us and we’ll just try our hardest not to fuck him up too much. We probably won’t completely succeed, it might be a futile task, but if I can say, with all my heart, that I’ve done everything I can to be as good a Dad as possible, then when I’m an old man, looking back at my life, I will do it with pride. And if Hannah can do the same (although as an old woman, obviously), then –with a little luck, and lots of help from family and friends and probably the odd teacher– hopefully George will become a slightly fucked-up but good, happy, healthy person, who we can all be proud of; despite the faults we’re sure to fill him with. And that’s all I want in the world.
And, do you know what else? While the man he will become is in the future, while the faults we will fill him with are still waiting in the barrel, the here and now is worth it too. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, and I certainly didn’t appreciate it until I had one, but kids are worth it. George is worth it. He’s worth the risk. He’s worth all the hard work. The potential that lies within him is worth every sleepless night. The love he gives back to us is worth every shitty nappy, every piss-soaked t-shirt, every missed night-out, every hour of relentless, meaningless, unstoppable screaming. When he looks me in the eye. When he grabs my finger. When he laughs or burps or farts. The joy that spreads through me is worth any amount of work or risk or sacrifice… and the really good bits of these early stages–when he calls me Dad, or takes a step, or kicks a ball– haven’t even started yet.