A Millennial’s Honest Thoughts on Fatherhood After Two Sleepless Weeks In

Parenting is a new type of love I’ve never experienced before.

Background: I wrote a story two weeks before our baby was born: “I Ditched Digital Nomad Life, Bought a House, and Next Month, Will Have a Baby.” We successfully had our baby. Here’s where I’m at, two weeks later.

All the other loves — marriage, friendship, community, spiritual, professional — all have some sort of kickback.

But very early stage parenting, especially for mothers, is one hundred percent pure sacrifice.

“So it’s the most genuine then,” a friend said when I told him this.

“I suppose,” I said.

The night our beautiful daughter was born is one I will never forget. After our family members had left and it was my exhausted wife and me in the hospital room alone with our newborn for the first time, she (the baby) wouldn’t stop crying.

As much as I paced the room at two o’clock in the morning holding her in my arms, her apache war cry wouldn’t seem to lessen. Her little chin trembled and her entire red-flushed body shook in torment as she shrieked.

“This is our life now,” I remember saying bitterly as the weight of responsibility and sacrifice became more and more real with each passing high-pitched sob coming from the little person in my arms who was only a dozen hours old.