Brilliant dad feature week 50
This week our brilliant dad feature is an anonymous dad from the uk. He is a father of two stillborn twin boys and three rainbow children under 4 years old. He started blogging as a way to process long delayed feelings of grief and to encourage others (particularly fathers) to share their experience, tackle the taboos around grieving.
By sharing his story, he hopes to help improve maternity care by preparing expectant fathers to better support their partners before, during and after pregnancy. This dad blogs at Shoe Box Full of Memories. Thank you very much for taking part.
1. Have you always wanted to be a dad?
For years, no. I was terrified by the prospect of making the same mistakes and inflicting my variable mental health on a new generation.
With careful encouragement from my wife I came to realise that fears of the past shouldn’t prevent a future. When I learned I was to be a dad I threw myself into it, reading books, blogs and anything I could to get ready.
It became clear that the offerings for a knowledge hungry dad-to-be were a little…thin. The books aimed at dads tended to be too ‘blokey’ and almost take a perverse pride in ineptitude and avoiding the hard work of parenting by hiding in the pub. I settled for absorbing the few paragraphs and brief chapters dedicated to dads in the mother-to-be books and How Not to F_ Them Up (sequel to They F_ You Up byOliver James).
2. How did you feel when your children were born?
The first time? Feelings of naked horror mixed with a deep, deep rage. I flipped between emotional states like a magician riffling through a deck of cards. My wife was heavily sedated and I was terrified that she would die too.
I was angry that she had to go through the agony and trauma of a grotesque parody of birth, but without the promise of happy, healthy children at the end of it. I was also angry that the doctors in the delivery room spent most of the time chatting about the latest iPhone.
When our boys were finally (still) born there was just a terrible, lonely silence where a twin chorus of cries should have been.
The subsequent pregnancies were always shadowed by that experience. With our eldest daughter we had the sweetest, most supernaturally calm midwife who took us through it all with an almost eerie tranquillity. When our daughter eventually emerged she was a glorious tumble of limbs. There was a heart stopping pause before her first breath and then a brief ‘meep’. The relief and reality of having first cuddles was overwhelming.
When my son was born it was very different. I made the mistake of reading the posters around the nurses station. The material not intended for patient eyes like the different alarm codes or routes for treatment for emergencies. We had struggled to convince the midwives to get an epidural for my wife and by the time they got there it was too late for it. On the way out my son got stuck, a call of “code blue!” went out and within seconds the room was full of doctors. There was a mounting sense of dread until *PLOP* he was pulled free and started to cry. He was swollen, puffy and looked like he’d been in a boxing match, but he was safe in my arms (and trying to breastfeed!).
Our youngest trolled us for the weeks leading up to the due date with plenty of false alarms. There was all manner of unnecessary anxiety due to a catalogue of errors in recording measurements and our oh-so casually dismissed fears of it all happening again.
Of all the births my wife said that this was the most painful. Back to back labour (whilst short) was gruelling. Again there is that scary moment when the baby’s head emerges and there is no sound and a mad rush of panic swiftly fills the void between that silence and the first breath. There was a wonderful sense of relief at that first cry followed by the more practical need to soothe and comfort her.
3. What have been your most rewarding experiences as a dad so far?
I’m pleased to say there have been plenty. There’s a wonderful blog by Malcontented Mother called ‘I can’t cope’ she said, whilst coping, about how parents pile on pressure on themselves to be Pinterest worthy examples of zen-like calm that when it goes wrong we punish ourselves when actually the kids are warm, safe and fed.
It was at a moment like this that my son stepped in and made me proud. After witnessing me on the verge of a daughter induced nuclear meltdown he toddled over, put his arm around shoulders shaking with barely contained fury and solemnly asked “you ok, Papa? Papa? Are you ok?”. He snapped me out of my loop and calmed me down. We’ve clearly done something right.
It’s little gestures like when they play ‘bear hunt’ together or reading stories to each other once Paw Patrol (mercifully) loses its appeal. When our youngest were born we were concerned that our daughter would be jealous of her but she took to her immediately (“I cuddle baby sister”).
4. What are some of funniest moments to have happened to you as a dad?
My son is very much into trains. He plays on the Cbeebies app not to play any of the games but to say hello to the train that does loops of the game select screen:
“Hello train! Train! Train?! Where’d you go? Come back train! Oh! Hello train!”
He did the same with a picture of a train in the local paper when I turned the page. For about 10 minutes.
My eldest daughter is cheerfully open and by turns delighted and horrified supermarket shoppers as she merrily trotted down the fresh meats aisle waving to the meats as she went:
“Bye chicken! Bye pigs! Bye bye cow!”
When meeting people for the first time or after a long gap she is often shy until she’s had a while to warm up. Not so with our midwife. Whilst my wife was being checked our daughter stomped over to see what was happening trailing a mouse toy behind her. After carefully studying what was going on and lifting up her top so she could get scanned too she held the mouse with its tail between its legs and announced:
“Penis.”
“No, darling that’s not a penis, that’s its tail”
*Frowning* “No. Penis.”
“It’s roughly in the r…”
*Roaring* PENIS!
Like I said, she’s really very shy.
5. Have there been any situations with your children that you have found difficult to cope with?
Aside from when all three kick off at the same time (roughly around 4pm ;when the tiredness kicks in and the peskiness reaches pandemic levels) there was a really nasty time when our usually placid and smiley son was (unknown to us) fighting a viral infection. For three days he turned into something from The Exorcist. When I say The Exorcist I don’t mean in a pea-soup projectile vomiting way. I mean the director’s cut deleted scene where Regan spider walks down stairs. It was beyond a tantrum as he had no regard for his safety and there was nothing, nothing we could do to calm him. We had heard scare stories of dramatic personality changes in toddlers and the risk that they may be permanent (thanks Dr Google!). We were lucky that it passed on its own and we got our smiley son back without the need for a bell, book and candle or a young priest and an old priest.
6. What are your dreams and hopes for your children?
That they don’t make the same mistakes I did. That they never settle for a stepping stone job. That they find their calling in life and pursue it. That they have the resilience to cope with the world but also the optimism that it can be changed. What we think of as having always been the case can only be a few hundred years old and is not set in stone. That they are equipped to challenge lazy stereotypes and attempts to demonise others. That they have the confidence to be honest and can feel able to share their lives with us as they grow older without the need to edit or hide aspects of their life that they fear may upset us.
6 Comments
Michelle Kellogg
February 18, 2016 at 4:33 pm
This is a great interview from shoeboxfullofmemories. I follow his blog and love that he is able to write about things that are painful but also talk about things that make him happy:)
Louisa
February 19, 2016 at 12:51 pm
Lovely interview. I am unfamiliar with this blog but will now check it out. Thanks for sharing his story
NewMummy Blogger
February 19, 2016 at 2:22 pm
A great post and questions, so many emotions in one post. #thelist
Random Musings
February 19, 2016 at 5:38 pm
This is a brilliant interview. I love posts like this where you get to know a bit more about bloggers. I love his blog, it's always so moving. Thanks for hosting the #binkylinky
Debbie
JJcoolest1
February 21, 2016 at 3:08 am
Thanks for sharing. You seem particularly well grounded and that is certainly a gift you can pass on.
Something Crunchy Mummy
February 23, 2016 at 11:32 am
These interviews are great as we see a different perspective from people. #binkylinky x