I read a post today about what it feels like to be a father. It was spot on. The day after you were born Mommy was sleeping in her bed in the birthing center and I was holding you, sitting in a chair next to Mommy’s bed.
I couldn’t get over how little you were and the rush of feelings and emotions about how ‘every thing was different now’. There was fear that I wouldn’t feel the love that everyone says you’re suppose to feel when you first see your child. I was still in shock over the events of the last 48 hours and hadn’t had time to think about it much. It was still all too surreal.
As I sat there holding you, looking at your small features, wondering exactly how you’d turn into a ‘person’ and wondering why I just didn’t feel this overwhelming love that I was suppose to, second guessing everything about what I was told about fatherhood, and wondering what kind of horrible person I must be that I didn’t feel what I was suppose to, you ‘smiled’ at me. My heart instantly melted and I started to cry. It was the overwhelming love that I assume only a parent, and maybe only a father, can feel when he looks at his 2 day old baby girl. And that’s when I knew that the descriptions I had heard about the love you feel as a father could never adequately describe what you actually feel.