Being Dad: Day -279
Santa didn't get our letters
Before I was a dad, I was merely a dude wondering if it would ever happen for me.
If you asked me at 16, I’d have told you me and my high school sweetheart would procreate by 22. To be fair to that affable teen, the adults around him were panic-stricken by the threat of Y2K, so we were all a bit scattered back then.
When I was 30 I knew I wasn’t ready, and not just emotionally. I’d just returned to university and was fully focussed on getting my own life in order, not introduce a new one to the world.
Then, at 35, when I began to feel equipped, even eager, I faced the fact it might not be in my future. I was single, but had fallen in love with my life again. That was OK.
It was around this time I realised offspring aren’t a given for every loving couple that covets the parent life. A family member was in the middle of an expensive years-long battle to conceive that bore no fruit, let alone a baby.
We shared genes, after all. My mum had wished for more children and had no luck via IVF either. So, when my partner and I started having the conversation, we both entered it with trepidation. She had her own baggage as well.
We tried a few times without fully committing. It was self-preservation. Still, when her period came on Christmas Eve our hearts sank. Santa didn’t get our letters.
By this time we were just a few months in, but when you’re trying, even half-heartedly, to start a family, that can feel like forever.
That proved to be day -279. From there my parenting journey began.
Thankfully we had resolved to make the most of that festive season and ate, drank and were merry, because a year later, I was a dad.