Will I be okay?
On being a new dad, and people being pleasantly surprised when they hear I do the bare minimum.
I’m home alone tonight. Sort of.
There’s a three-year old girl upstairs occasionally calling out my name (somehow breaking the plain New Testament forename “Mark” into three syllables), pleading with me to procure her some more bedtime milk. And there’s an infant (four weeks this week) in a highchair next to me, deciding whether she wants to sit here pliably enjoying some generic YouTube jazz and the evocative sound of my typing, or whether she’s going to scream blue murder at my daring to ignore her.
Their mummy (my wife, Rebecca, 33, writer, Substacker) is in hospital. She’s going to be fine (fevery symptoms that are following a less than perfect C-section recovery), and is staying in tonight just to make sure she gets back to normal. Her absence aggrieves me for a significant number of reasons. Firstly I like her, and I’m happiest when I’m with her, talking to her, eating with her, enjoying ordinary unexceptional things with her. And of course, she’s the mother of two whole creatures who live under the same roof as me. We all really do need her for our existence—the other two arguably more so than me.
I was in another relationship when Child #1 was born. I am what the law would call her “stepfather”, but she refers to me more commonly as “my Mark”. She also regularly calls me a “stinky man” and this morning told Rebecca when discussing Christmas presents for the family that my gift this year should be “poo poo and wee wee”, so discern from that what you will about our relationship.
Child #2 is a very recent innovation, and one landed with 50% my DNA (sorry in advance, babe). I’ve been off work with her and Rebecca in her first month fresh out the womb. I’ve learned a lot about how to pick up a baby without its head flailing from side to side, how to efficiently wipe up an avalanche of korma-coloured shit, and how to feed an infant one-handed so I can take a cute selfie with my baby for WhatsApp.
When I took her from Rebecca’s bedside this evening, there was an implied question from the midwife staff whether #2 would be okay at home with her father. They could provide the necessary support (cot, formula, manpower) to help inside the hospital. It’s not the first time that people have asked within my earshot whether I’ll be okay in sole charge of my daughter. It’s the counterweight to the surprised praise I receive when they find out I cover #1’s wake-ups every other night, or just how quickly I can change a nappy in a cafe loo.
If I were in hospital tonight, would anyone ask whether my baby should spend the night there with her daddy? Of course not—and before you click away, this is not some freak meninist blog. Nor is it an ode to what a brilliant father I am. In the last month I have spilt formula all over #2’s face on more than one occasion; I have been grizzly at Rebecca when she got pissed off at me for leaving #1 basically unattended in the bath; I have put #2 in some godawful outfits.
Right now I really want to understand what’s so unexpected about a grown man taking control (competently, comprehensively, without breaking glass in case of emergency) of his offspring. Many of us might not be natural caregivers, may not be instinctive conversationalists, nor typically the best at making funny voices at nonplussed dough-faced newborns. But the experience of my first month in the job has led me to believe that many of the characteristics required to keep a tiny baby fed, sated, alive are profoundly masculine ones—namely:
We are do-ers. Parenting is about momentum. You keep on going. You drive to that soft-play. You go to that class. You turn up at that kid’s party then carry on to the playground if they’re not sufficiently tired out. Men like to get stuck in and do things, and this child-rearing business is no different.
We want to fix things. One of the most marked Mars-Venus divides is in the way the sexes communicate. When a woman, so it’s said, talks about a problem, she wants to let it out, be heard and listened to and understood. When a man hears that, he just wants to fix it. That in itself is not a problem, and I would say an instinct to be commended. Fortunately, when babies present problems (I’m hungry, I’m tired, I want to look at the sky, I need a fart) they don’t want a deep and meaningful about their lived experience. They just want it fixed.
We put others first. All the best men I know do this, sometimes to their detriment, and often just because they want a quiet life. We’re not great at self-care, so surely logically we should have more mental space to care for others.
We learn by trial and error. I’d hazard a guess that most men aren’t reading parenting books about how to raise their little bundle of joy (and if they are, it’s probably because their partner has bought it and made them). We don’t read flat-pack instructions either, apparently. We just get stuck in and see what happens. That I think is the only reliable way to go about having a child.
Finally, we can have a laugh. We get things wrong and then can joke about it. We did it when we were with our mates in the pub, and we do it when our babies decide to throw up on daddy’s suit just as he’s about to head into the office.
So all that being said, I think I’ll be okay tonight. I’ll let you know how I get on.
Without wanting to seem like I've missed the entire point of this post, well done!! It must mean a lot to Rebecca knowing that she can trust you to run things at home (maybe not exactly as she would but that's trust!) and focus on healing. Get well soon, Rebecca!