It was 2018, and I was prepared to become a father. I’d read the books. I’d asked questions of all the other parents in my life. I’d even attended a four-week course at the hospital covering everything from changing diapers to booking pediatric appointments. I was ready.
I was not ready.
After complications appeared during my wife’s 30 plus hours of labor, my son was delivered via C-section. The doctors informed us that my wife would need at least six weeks to recover from the surgery—the operation caused her to lose the ability to walk, and she would need to rebuild her strength gradually.
My two weeks of planned parental leave came and went all too quickly. And when it was over, I was attempting to balance fulltime work, helping my wife recover, and keeping my newborn son alive. Stress was at an all-time high.
And I found myself asking: at what point of this journey am I supposed to start loving it?
There was an evening when I escaped for a few hours to go have dinner with a friend. Her parents were in town, and they were asking about the new baby. I shared some of my struggles, then asked the question: “When your first kid was born, at what point did you realize you loved them?”
“Oh, right away,” my friend’s father said. “It was a love I had never known until I saw her.”
This was not my experience. At just a few weeks old, my son seemed to have two states of being: “I am crying” or “I am asleep.” And sure, he was a cute kid, but was that enough for me to love him?
Speaking with other parents was hardly helpful. All of them professed an instantaneous love for their kid. And of course, I felt affection for him, I wanted to keep him safe, and I wanted to help raise him into a good person. But I wasn’t “overwhelmed with love” the way other parents seemed to feel. I started to worry something was very wrong with me. Maybe I wasn’t ready to be a father. Maybe I never would be.
It wasn’t until my son was 6 weeks old that my feelings started to develop. And it wasn’t another parent who helped me develop those feelings. It was my dog.
My dog Shadow was about 2 years old when my son was born, and up until then, he and his sister Lily got a lot of my attention. But with the new baby, they were no longer the focus. For several weeks, Shadow and Lily sulked around the house like teenagers. Until one day.
One morning, I was sitting on the couch rocking my son to sleep for his morning nap. As he fell asleep, I transferred him onto a pillow next to me, tucking him in with his favorite blanket.
This was Shadow’s opportunity for attention. But instead of begging me to go play fetch outside, he carefully climbed onto the couch next to me and put his head down on the pillow next to my son. They quietly cuddled together for a few precious minutes as I used the time to catch up on some work emails.
And the thought occurred to me: for Shadow, maybe this is what love is.
Shadow learned that as his pack expanded, so did his ability to express love. He wasn’t showing it by dragging us outside to chase squirrels; just being present with us was enough. He was providing support the way he knew how.
I realized that my capacity for love was changing, too. This wasn’t a love that smacked you over the head and put blinders over your eyes. It was a love that started deep and grew both slowly and suddenly. It was like magma pushing a mountain up one inch at a time only to drastically change the landscape with a volcanic eruption.
At some point, I realized that my son was becoming my friend. Going on walks together, I would tell him whatever I was thinking. When he was big enough to eat solid foods, we would walk to the grocery store and try strange new foods off the salad bar. His emotional palate was expanding beyond crying and sleeping: he was happy or cranky or silly or surprised.
While he was learning how to be a human, I was learning how to be a dad. Despite reading books, asking questions, and taking workshops, I wasn’t ready when he was born. But for me, that’s what love is: a relationship where you both learn and grow. It’s easy to look back at my son’s baby photos and see how he’s grown physically. It’s a lot harder for me to see my growth. But I know I’ve done just as much growing as he has.
And thanks to my son and my dog, I’m able to see that my capacity for love has also grown.
