The Truth About Becoming A Father For The First Time!

I felt the panic rising inside of me when my wife slowly walked out of our bedroom, looking quite pale and in a great deal of discomfort. She asked me to run her a bath, and barely managed to get into the bathtub with my help.

My wife had given birth to my son via c-section a couple weeks before this incident, and by this point I highly suspected she was suffering from some postpartum complications.

Her pain had been growing increasingly worrisome as the day grew on, but my wife was tough as nails.

I had seen this incredible woman go through several ordeals that would have me begging for mercy, including how she handled both of her pregnancies like a champ.

My wife always countered pain with grace, and despite playing hockey all my life, she was still the biggest bad ass I knew, which was part of the problem!

I begged her to let me call an ambulance, but my wife told me she would be fine, and just needed to soak in the tub.

Twenty minutes later, she weakly called me into the bathroom and whispered that she needed to get to the hospital but was afraid the paramedics would take too long.

That’s when my heart blew out of my chest and went sprinting down the hallway!

It was now 2 A.M. and I had a full-fledged emergency on my hands. To further compound this crisis, my father had left the day before to make his five-hour trek back home.

I no longer had him around to help with my two-year-old daughter, my wife needed to be taken to the emergency room, and I had a screaming newborn that wanted to be fed.

Perfect!

Somehow, I was able to get my wife and kids into the car one by one and find my way to the emergency room. As we soon discovered, this was a life-or-death situation, and my wife went into septic shock soon after arriving at the hospital!

Thankfully she was able to be quickly stabilized, and the doctor assured me she would make a full recovery. By this point my nerves were shot to hell, but I no longer had the luxury of worrying, as I was now in charge of both of our kids. 

Sure, I was a semi-experienced dad with a two-year-old, but I had no clue how to take care of my daughter AND a newborn by myself.

“Love is the engine that drives me each day with my children, and I wouldn’t hesitate to give my life for them.“

What was I, superhuman? Cmon!

How was I going to feed and care for both kids without any help? 

What about things I took for granted, like going food shopping?

Which kid did I take out of the car first? I had no clue which order to put them in the shopping cart. Two-year-old… newborn… no wait, it had to be newborn then two-year-old… but what if I picked the wrong order and the cart started to roll with one of them in it and got hit by a school bus full of kids?

Surely all of us were going to die! I couldn’t be the one in charge, it couldn’t even be legal!

I needed my wife!

That first week without my wife was a dizzying array of self-doubt, baby puke and crying; a hell of a lot of crying. My kids even cried some to!

When my wife returned home, I had to care for her as well, and reach deep down inside to find my inner mutant that didn’t need things like sleep and meals. 

My wife was out of commission for over a month, and I always like to call this chapter of my life, “Daddy’s baptism by fire!”

You may not believe this, but I pulled through with flying colors and didn’t have my wife or kids fall off the daddy train.

I went full steam ahead and leaned heavily on my inner resilience to keep fighting day by day. Sometimes I just barely held onto my sanity, but the desire to be a good father helped awaken the best side of me.

However, this kind of pressure is what also helps to create crap fathers who want to run away from it all. Sadly, they get overwhelmed with so much responsibility and their flight response gets triggered.

Being A Dad For The First Time Is Frightening!

Fatherhood has its own unique ways of both terrifying and humbling even the baddest dudes around.

Being a good dad means that you will have to step up countless times, in both small and immense ways. You may think you know what kind of man you are, but fatherhood will test that assumption and force you to confront things about yourself that you likely never had to face before. 

No matter your personality, every new father must take a hard look at himself in the mirror. 

If you have a timid personality, fatherhood will most definitely push you way out of your comfort zone. If you are a self-assured guy, you will find that becoming a dad can quickly test your confidence.

I suspect most guys start out with the best intentions of being good fathers, but when the live bullets start to fly, many freeze up and can’t overcome their fears and selfish behavior.

I’ll make no bones about reality here; letting go of your anxiety and putting away your ego are essential if you want to become a good father. 

We all have our flaws we must hurdle when starting our journeys into fatherhood. In fact, listing what I had to overcome would eat up half of this article. To this day, my struggles continue, but no dad is ever done growing and learning about himself!

How do we, as men, overcome all this baggage that we bring into fatherhood? 

I truly believe the power of love is what will help you bust through any of the barriers holding you back from becoming the father you dream of. Love is the engine that drives me each day with my children, and I wouldn’t hesitate to give my life for them.

The bond I share with both my son and daughter supersedes my ego, my fears and my temper. 

That doesn’t mean it’s easy for me to reach deep into a well of patience when they are aggravating me, or when I must overcome my fears and step up for one of them in times of need. However, I undoubtedly believe that my love for my children is the secret sauce that gives me daddy superpowers right when I need them.

You will hopefully discover this same secret as well with your own child, but the path forward is to ask yourself one essential question:

Do I see my child as a gift or a burden?

A man who wants to be a great dad will already know the right answer!