Them's Fightin' Words

So I want all of you guys, all of you crazy beautiful people who read this site to join me in wishing my little girl a happy half-year birthday! Can you believe how quickly it’s going by?! Yeah, me neither…

People ask me all the time how The Cub is, how J-Rab is and how we’re all doing as a family and I find myself at a complete loss for words. Mostly I just smile from ear to ear and tell them it’s been amazing in every way.

J-Rab and I still have moments where we stare in total wonder at this tiny human and can’t believe we actually made her.

Someone told me once that having children is the last true miracle there is.

I can’t put into words what it feels like to share the moments I do with my little girl. She has become so inexplicably intertwined in me that her joys have become my joys, as have her sorrows and I know it will be this way for the rest of my life.

So, to celebrate this little milestone, I thought I’d share some insights I’ve gained from the past six months of fatherhood (in no particular order).

1. People who don’t have babies live in mild terror that yours is going to shit while they’re holding it

I’ve lost count of the number of times friends of ours have been holding The Cub and she’s made a funny face that they immediately interpret as her pooping.

“Um, I think she’s making a poo…” they’ll say, trying to sound nonchalant when actually they’re deeply uncomfortable at the thought of holding your baby while it shits.

I know this because I used to be one of these people. I just smile and reassure them that if she was shitting, they’d know all about it because it would be pouring out of her nappy into their laps.

This is a lie, but man it gets an awesome reaction.

2. Other parents can be fucking weird

We don’t hang out with a lot of other parents because we’re almost the first in our circle of close friends to have a kid and though we’ve met other new parents in the interim, we see them very seldom.

Also, other parents can be fucking weird. This bizarre competitive streak comes out in them that blindsides you every time.

If your baby is sleeping through the night at 3 months, they’ll tell you theirs was at 1. If your baby started rolling over at 5 months, theirs started doing it at 3.

Conversely, if your baby cried solidly for the first 10 weeks, theirs cried solidly for the first 20.

You can’t win because they think their little bundle of joy is the centre of the entire goddamn universe, which is clearly a load of bullshit because ours is!

3. The internet is not your friend

I can’t stress this enough – DO NOT GOOGLE WEIRD THINGS THAT YOUR BABY IS DOING! Call the midwife instead and if that doesn’t alleviate your fears, have your baby checked by a legitimate doctor who will probably tell you that everything is (hopefully) fine.

For example, the Cub has a slight white discolouration in her right eye that we noticed a few weeks back. The Google prognosis? Cancer. The eye would have to be removed immediately.

J-Rab and I freaked the fuck out. Luckily we called the midwife who calmed us down and gave us the number of an ophthalmologist to call so we could have her eye properly examined.

Turns out it’s nothing to worry about at all. The pigment in babies’ eyes changes so drastically when they are small, sometimes a discolouration will occur because obviously your baby is magical and will most likely grow up with superpowers and become the most incredible human to ever exist.

Obviously!

4. Kiss afternoon naps goodbye

Yeah. This was a tough one for J-Rab and me, not because we are lazy bums who’d rather lie comatose from 2pm until it’s dark than do anything productive, but because from time to time, a cheeky little 2 hour afternoon nap on a lazy Sunday is just what the doctor ordered.

If you’re planning on having kids one day, please, PLEASE have lots of afternoon naps while you still can because holy shit, when you have a baby, they are just plain and simply NOT POSSIBLE.

When you’re trying to nap, baby is wide awake and chatting away. When the baby decides to go down, you hastily try to force a nap and just as you’re going down, the baby wakes up and is like “HEY-O! Play time bitches!”

We have had exactly 1 decent afternoon nap since becoming parents. That’s 1 nap in 6 months.

The horror… the horror…

5. The day your baby first smiles, you know. You just know.

That you’ll never be the same again. That the life you knew before you became a parent is over and that despite the fact that this little angel is now controlling every aspect of your new life, it’s fine.

It’s better than fine. It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to you.

I don’t pretend to know what life is about and I’m often overwhelmed by bigger-picture conversations and have spent more hours than I think I could ever count trying to make sense of why we’re all here.

I always thought that my purpose was to create something incredible – to write something and get it published, whether it be a novel or a screenplay or a graphic novel or a TV show. To make something that would last forever.

I always thought this was my higher calling and valued it above even having a child because really, what was so special about having a kid? Anyone can do that, what’s the big deal?

It’s almost tragic how misguided I was. What’s the big deal?

You have a shitty day at work. Despite your best efforts, everything goes wrong. You get an earful from your boss, from your clients, you wonder what you’re doing here, what the point of it all is.

Your friends bail out on the plans you were trying to make on the weekend. You drive to the lunch place around the corner for a fat baguette sammie to sink your teeth into and find they’re all out. Your car’s clutch starts slipping on the way back and the service centre tells you you’re in for at least R3k to fix it.

You drive back home feeling despondent, defeated, like what’s the fucking point? Like nothing, nothing, is going your way.

And then you walk in through the front door and you see her and she breaks out in this huge, bashful gummy grin from ear to ear and everything in your life, every single goddamn thing is suddenly better.

It’s the last true miracle there is. Swear to God.

It’s the best thing we ever did

-ST