Oi! Nae fookin PIPES?!?!?
I love this. I’ve got several pages already, in fact. Real writing. With a crayon with a sharp point and everything. You’re maybe not quite such a complete tool after all, old chief. But I’m sure I’ll rip them up long before he’s old enough to read 'em – silly sentimental twaddle mostly. Except the bit about the ponytail – that was your MOTHER’S idea! I wanted the full-back Scotland flag tattoo but they said it was a bit too much for a 2-year-old. Sorry, mate. I tried. I really did.
I was always dead set against becoming a dad. The mere thought was horrendous to me. My life was exceedingly pleasant, purposeful and well balanced, and there was absolutely no way that it could accommodate fatherhood without my losing a very large part of what made me happy.
About a decade ago, I had a Taiwanese girlfriend who was everything I could possibly have wanted - extremely attractive and orgasmic, unbelievably sweet-natured, a doting partner who enthusiastically shared all of my enjoyments, and who also happened to be the only child of a very rich family. But she had one major flaw in my eyes - she loved kids, and was longing to become a mother. The day she started talking about the kids she hoped we could have together was the day that I started to back away from her, and within a few weeks I’d engineered an end to our relationship.
I always assumed I’d remain happily childless for my whole life, and when I eventually got married nearly five years ago, I assumed that my wife understood my aversion to parenthood (which I’d always expressed in the clearest possible terms) and was willing enough to go along with it. During the first year or two of marriage, she occasionally hinted at how nice it would be if we had a baby, which I always instantly countered with a long account of the ways in which having a kid would be a terrible thing that would totally mess up our lives. But a couple of years ago, one of her elder sisters had a second baby (each of her four sisters already had one kid, all born before we were married), and this baby, which happened to be exceedingly cute, triggered a powerful yearning for motherhood in the wife.
Seeing how much she looked forward to the weekly family gatherings when she could see and hold this baby, how happy she was with the baby in her arms, and how deeply she longed to have a baby of her own, I felt I couldn’t be so selfish as to put my wish for childlessness above her wish for motherhood, so reluctantly agreed that we’d try to make a baby, while secretly hoping that one or both of us would be infertile and that it wouldn’t happen. So I went along with it for a couple of months, pretending to be as eager as her to make it happen, and consoling with her disappointment when she felt her period coming and another precious opportunity lost. And then it did happen. The glimmer of hope, her ecstatic joy when the pregnancy test was positive, and the confirmation at the hospital - how could I not go along with it and not feel happy too?
Anyway, I threw myself into impending fatherhood with the utmost enthusiasm, forcing myself to abandon all of my negative feelings and look only on the positive side of things. I accompanied her on all her visits to the hospital, cooed over the scans of the developing foetus, talked and sang to her swelling belly, went shopping for baby things with the wife, the whole works. I developed a powerful bond with that little life growing inside her, praying that my not-so-young wife could carry her safely to term and deliver her in good health. Of course I was there at the birth, and felt a tremendous surge of love for the helpless little creature that was pulled bloodily from my poor pain-stricken wife’s body and placed in my arms.
These last four months since the birth have been a nightmare, truly a nightmare. Without any doubt, they’ve been the hardest, most exhausting, most stressful and most deprived months of my life. Being a father, it turns out, is even harder and more demanding than I’d ever imagined. I have had to give up nearly all of the things I love doing the most and that have filled my life with such great pleasure over the past twenty years. I work from home, and am with the wife and baby all the time, except for an occasional couple of hours when I go out to do shopping and pop into the gym.
I always thought that babies slept a lot, but have found that this isn’t the case at all. Ours hardly sleeps at all in the daytime. It’s very hard to lull her to sleep, and when, after enormous effort, we do finally get her to sleep, we walk around on eggshells, hardly daring to make a sound, but still she never sleeps for more than half an hour, often much less, before suddenly waking up and bursting into tears, and the whole thing has to start again. And at night, though she does sleep for longer each time, she still wakes up repeatedly, or tosses and turns restlessly, so that we never have any hope of getting a good night’s sleep. The tiredness piles on the tiredness, and when I look in the mirror I see a haggard face that appears ten years older than it did just half a year ago.
The high-volume crying of a child is unbelievably nerve-shattering, especially when one is groggy and on edge from lack of sleep. And when nothing one tries can stop the crying, it’s as stressful as anything I’ve ever experienced.
However, the good news is that there has been a significant improvement in the last week or two. She cries much less, smiles more, is responding more and more to the world around her, and is becoming easier to settle to sleep. I’m still a slave to her demands, and the poor wife even more so than me, but there’s light at the end of the tunnel, and we can hope for a return to some small degree of normality in our lives after perhaps another couple of months.
I often pine for my pre-fatherhood life, and feel quite bitter about the tremendous price I’m having to pay for being a good father, but I do love my little daughter with all my heart, and I’m willing to make whatever sacrifice I need to in order to give her the best start in life I possibly can. I still wish I weren’t a father, but since a father I now am, I’m determined to be an exemplary one and bear all of the massive burdens that involves.
The best of luck to you Sandy, and I hope you’ll bear up well under the terrible strains that will test your metal to the limit after the wee bairn pops out.
Feck me! 
I’m not even going to tell you what happens when they reach teenage years and the hormones start kicking in…nae even going to mention it.
I’m a gurl, so different hormones are at play, but I know about bonding and not bonding through different pregnancies. Detachment can be a way of insulating yourself from anxiety.
Don’t fight feeling bad/weird/not how you think you should, it is what it is. Feelings come and go and they aren’t realities. Behave how you ‘should’ and the rest will show up later. Feelings a great big scam.
I’m going to write the following with the full knowledge that you may barf on your shoes, but love is what you do, not what you feel.
Sir, it seems that your best recourse it to increase your office hours, develop a weekend hobby that takes you away from wherever you live, and hope that the next five years pass quickly.
In this modern society children it appears are to be seen, heard and pandered to. Vietnam may not be far enough away.
Employment opportunites abound…
Baffin island. https://secure.worldexpeditions.com/uk/index.php?section=about_us&id=24052
Machu Picchu. http://www.archaeologyfieldwork.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4112&sid=7020522f126e6115705434aa006dd967
Orkney. http://www.orkney.gov.uk/nqcontent.cfm?a_id=106
That you have written letters to something the size of a peanut should tell you already that your mental health is in question and that you therefore have the skills to make an excellent father. I imagine you will adapt to fatherhood nicely. Groove your own path. Comparisons with other fathers will lead to feelings of inadequacy. You can make your own people now. Fuck what everyone else thinks.
Now THAT sounds like a plan. It’s always best to stick with what you know, after all.
As for Orkney? In a fucking heartbeat, mate. I lived and worked there for several years and loved it dearly. All the jobs in your link, however, are for looking after loonies. Are you trying to tell me something?
You funny! And tangenting, but…
That’s the disparity in society. ‘My child is the most important thing in my life’/‘My child is a source of irritation and a cautionary tale to eveyone else he or she comes into contact with’.
Teaching sure put me off motherhood. Great if you get one of the good ones, what if you get one of the vile ones? I lack the vanity to believe mine would turn out human, just because I’m so bitchin’ amazing…
[quote=“Buttercup”]You funny! And tangenting, but…
That’s the disparity in society. ‘My child is the most important thing in my life’/‘My child is a source of irritation and a cautionary tale to eveyone else he or she comes into contact with’.
Teaching sure put me off motherhood. Great if you get one of the good ones, what if you get one of the vile ones? I lack the vanity to believe mine would turn out human, just because I’m so bitchin’ amazing…[/quote]
That must be because you lack the good fortune to have heard the redoubtable Eugene Reynolds of the Rezillos declaiming in “I Love my Baby ('Cos She Does Good Sculptures)” – it’s an art school kind of thing – that to paraphrase:
I’m a-be shapin’ his bo-dee (and hopefully his mind),
Like a lump of mud!
[quote=“mike_rophonechecker”]
You can make your own people now. Fuck what everyone else thinks.[/quote]
:roflmao:
I want to adopt you.
I love this. I’ve got several pages already, in fact. Real writing.[/quote]
I write to my daughter, too, starting from before she was born. Some day she might take pleasure in reading what I’ve written. It doesn’t matter. I take pleasure in writing to her.
With regards to your ambivalence, get ready for a hell of a ride. I knew I’d like being a dad, but I had no idea to what degree my capacity to love would be increased. It’s like discovering a whole new sense. My life is busy, and I’m often tired and cranky, but I’ll come home and see my daughter running to me with complete happiness, and the minute those tiny arms are wrapped around my neck my soul is restored. There is nothing better.
Nah. I read ‘The Midwich Cuckoos’, though.
(to sandman; ain’t usin’ no quote funkshun)
Count me as another who thinks what you’re going through is very normal, Sandman.
I was pretty sure that I would bond with the kid once he started getting old enough to move around and play with things and talk, but unlike Igorveni, Chief, and some of the others here – I didn’t feel much of a “bond with the bump”.
I talked to the little guy while he was still in the womb, but the real reason I did that was because I knew it made my wife feel happy. She’d tell me to talk to him and there would be this awkward pause while I tried to think of something to say, and I always felt a little silly doing it.
The birth was an amazing experience, and the first few days when I’d hold him it was incredible, but then for next few months I don’t think there was a whole lot of “bonding” going on between him and me either. It was mostly just repetitive work.
But then at around 6-9 months things started getting really good. And for me, things have just kept getting better since then. First he starts moving around and doing funny things. Then he starts walking, and talking. He starts showing a distinct personality. We started getting set routines and games that only the two of us would play. Bond City, baby. And even though I was pretty sure that I would enjoy being a dad, I hadn’t predicted the how incredibly powerful the emotions are for me. And on top of that, it just makes life so much more full and interesting, in my opinion.
From this thread it is pretty obvious that we fathers can have very different experiences. (My reaction to reading your first post was so completely the opposite of that of Igorveni’s, that I actually thought he was just taking the piss with his initial response to you.) So obviously there’s no way to know whether you will follow a similar path to the one I did. But to the extent that it started out without much of a “bond to the bump”, you appear to be in the same place I was at that time.
H
P.S. The due date for our second boy is 3 weeks from now too – maybe the lads will share the same birthday 
Aye indeed.
And heartiest congratulations to the pair of you!
I saw you. You were friggin’ GLOWING, man. 
And a big congrats on that, too! :bravo:
You’ll bond when you realise the baby is practically your twin … for his/her first few months, anyway.
Not saying you look like a baby or anything …
[quote=“Stray Dog”]You’ll bond when you realise the baby is practically your twin … for his/her first few months, anyway.
Not saying you look like a baby or anything …[/quote]
Oi, mate. Got a match?
Aye. Ma erse an’ your face. Noo fuck aff!
Hey old man -
My baby daddy says you’re being too selfish. You’ve had 50 good years to yourself already. Time to share the next 50. And just think how much fun you’ll have teaching sandboy to play the saxophone (my spouse said the ukulele, but I corrected him).
Speaking of sax, three years and two days ago was when the Mrs (or Mr? I can’t keep up with my little charade anymore – screw it) and I met at your little gig for the first time. The day when an angel landed on earth and changed his life forever, as he likes to say. (Ok fine, EYE like to say that.)
My family is very happy for your family! Can’t wait to meet your little one!
Congratumalations! 
Sandy, you’re normal. Smelly perhaps, but normal. It’s only bad when you pretend that you don’t have feelings you might not like or understand and then start to really feel resentment when the new man in your Mrs.'s life completely takes over and makes you his chief diaper changer and bottle washer. Talking about things is good and there just is no right way, after all, to wait for your wife to have the next love of her life!
But it’s just like everyone says, even if you didn’t really want to be a parent in the first place, once the little one is out, things change! You find that it’s harder than you thought, but also much more rewarding. You’ll never regret becomming a papa.