A Piece of the Void

Fatherhood

I've recently noticed that a substantial quantity of my negative thought patterns have changed rather significantly. This is despite a drastic increase in my work stress. I don't believe any choice or life change is a silver bullet for "fixing" your internal world, but I do think that the self-discovery and self-improvement I did prior to having my daughter¹ has tangibly changed my perspective of the world since her birth, and I do not believe this side effect of fatherhood is unique to me. My primary goal around this post is to discuss how I've previously dealt with negative situations or thought patterns and how a lot of those have seriously minimized or outright vanished now that I'm a father. Again, I am not claiming that this is the only reason I've changed; however, this feels like one of the most significant inflection points in my life, and I wasn't expecting that to be the case. At least, not in this manner or to this degree.

As you grow up in a male body², you gain a certain understanding of how fatherhood specifically might affect a person. For me, this started off as a feeling that fatherhood is when your life ends. This is in part related to The Trauma™, but AMAB's³ are taught from a young age to feel contradictory things about marriage and fatherhood. On one hand, these are the ultimate goal for all men. On the other, they are chains that tie you down and are to be avoided. Yet, when there's an older man who hasn't "settled down," it's viewed as a moral failing. "His mother should have raised him differently," or "his father wasn't strict enough with him," for example. Culturally, American content made "for the guys" was⁴ a mixture of "women bad or annoying" comedy and "[don't get] chained down by a family" stories focused on young boys/men in some sort of action world or a man "in a rut" because of his "stupid family." Around middle school, I started being interested in girls⁵, but still had an aversion to the concept of marriage or fatherhood because of the media I was exposed to. In high school, this hadn't really changed, but I began having an awareness of The Trauma™ in that I understood the extent to which a bad marriage could compromise the quality of a person’s life. This compounded the aversion I had to these major commitments. Between societal norms and the innate fear I have from The Trauma™, locking myself into lifelong contracts did not sound appealing. This made the decision for both marriage, and eventually fatherhood, very difficult to work through. Here's a few of the thoughts I had during both decisions:

Do I even want this?
Do I want this because I want this or because I was raised to want this by society?
If I’m just going to replicate the Trauma™, why bother?
I won't be a good father/spouse because my role models are terrible.
This is a huge change, and big life changes are scary.
What if it gets taken away? (e.g., divorce, death)
If it might end, why bother?

These specifically made it very hard to come to a decision. Luckily, I had a patient, loving, and understanding girlfriend (now wife) when going through these throes. Inevitably, I had to take the plunge despite these uncertainties. I can't say it's been a walk in the park with either, because nothing important is ever truly easy, but I can't imagine my life having gone any other way. I don't believe I'd have been able to work through The Trauma™ without my wife, and both my daughter and wife have made my life so impossibly full of joy.

The Trauma

CW: hoarding, medical neglect, emotional neglect, negative self-talk, complex PTSD, non-specific domestic violence, self-harm

I regularly struggle to reckon with how bad my childhood truly was. Very often, I find myself hedging when describing it, using phrases like:

I don't want to make it seem like my childhood was the worst ever.
I know plenty of other people have gone through worse.
It might have been bad, but it wasn't all bad.

In fact, I wanted to start this section off with one of these, and I had to actively stop myself from doing that. There is nothing wrong with discussing how terrible my childhood was. I believe it's important to enable visibility around the kind of emotional and physical neglect I was subjected to. Do I feel bad about putting my parents on blast like this? Absolutely. However, I feel as though if I had some other experiences like mine to compare to, it would have been much easier for me to come to grips with the trauma I experienced. I have no way of knowing how "common" trauma like this is, but it's always been hard for me to "feel better" about my childhood, in large part, because of the lack of people who really get it. It is my sincere hope that by being authentic with my readers regarding my experiences, those who also feel alone in their struggles will be comforted.

My parents are⁶ hoarders. I don't use that label lightly, in the casual way many Americans do, especially those who originated in the Midwest, where maximalism is a staple. Multiple generations of my family on both sides were affected by this pernicious psychological disorder. My biological aunt, Laura, was even featured on an episode of the A&E show Hoarders (Season 3, Episode 5). Consequently, I have a host of horror stories I could tell, although I will refrain. For now, anyway. I remember my father⁷ as very absent, although she was physically present throughout the entirety of my childhood. My father received disability benefits very early into my childhood⁸, and basically became a stay-at-home dad from then on. Sadly, that was the worst thing that could have happened to her, in my opinion. Outside of a few exceptions, I remember my father spending her days in front of the computer getting angry at people online. She did very little around the house, and even less to contribute to her fulfillment with life. I recognize now how truly unhappy she was, but she still spends her time that way, so I'm unsure what's actually going on in her mind. My parents' relationship was fraught, to say the least. I remember my parents fighting constantly as a child. I can't recall exactly what they fought about generally, but I distinctly remember fights that were, on the surface, about household chores my father failed to do. My mother was a teacher the entirety of my memory, but she previously worked as a consultant doing programming with things like COBOL. My relationship with my parents is, needless to say, quite complicated. There's an amount of empathy I have for my parents and I am aware that they too experienced traumatic childhoods. I have pride in my mother’s achievements and tenacity. Regardless, they failed me as parents.

The Failure

Both of my parents lacked the emotional capacity to connect with me. After quite a bit of therapy, I finally have a good understanding of why they failed to develop that skill. My current therapist⁹ recommended I read through "Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents," by Lindsay C. Gibson¹⁰. In this book, I found an immense amount of understanding and reasoning for why I've felt how I do about my parents since I left my childhood home for college. Without attempting to synthesize the entire book into a quick blurb, the gist of it is that parents like mine are more common than you'd realize, and there are varying degrees of emotional immaturity among them. These kinds of parents all contribute to some amount of emotional neglect for their children. In my case, a large part of my trauma could have been managed through emotional connection early on in my childhood, but I didn't get that, so it sat dormant until I was far enough removed from the damaging family dynamic I grew up in to rear its ugly head.

Let me level with you: I remember very little of my early childhood. I have a few neutral/happy memories that I can actively recall when I was young. Outside of that, it's more or less blank. My memory during my school years is better but still isn’t great overall. I believe I was dealing with depression for a large portion of at least middle school and high school. This could be, in part, due to my undiagnosed ADHD, which I will elaborate on later. Without a crystal ball, or some amount of biased retelling from my parents (one of whom is dead), I can't ever truly determine why there are so many gaps in my recollections. At this point, I'm pretty confident my lack of memory is a result of my parents' near-constant fighting and some unpleasant events that occurred relatively early in my childhood.

I have an innocuous¹¹ memory of playing outside behind my childhood home with one of the ladies who ran the private daycare I went to as a small child. As I grew up, that memory stuck with me and I’ve never been sure why. Of course, sometimes there's nothing specific about a memory that makes it stick with you. This one just confused me, though. Why would I remember this specifically instead of something with my parents or something more momentous? I don't remember how I felt at the time, but that's part of why it's so confusing to remember that specific snippet. While this memory may truly be as innocent as it seems, after much reflection, I can only theorize there may have been something upsetting happening at home that day, so I clung to this simple moment of joy with a trusted adult because it was the only comfort available to me at the time.

My father's been through the gamut regarding psychiatric treatment. She's been on, probably, every potential treatment possible for her mental illnesses¹². Unfortunately, the wrong psychiatric treatment is worse than no treatment at all, and when I was around five, a medication complication led to a serious incident in my home. Based on things I've been told by other family members who heard about the episode, my dad reacted really poorly to one of her many prescribed drugs. During this time, she was irate, throwing things around the house and behaving erratically. My mom was scared my father would injure her, although my dad had no history of domestic violence, and stood behind me for protection¹³. After my father stormed out of the room, my mom called 911 to report what was happening. Concurrently, my father ingested a massive quantity of pills in an attempt to end her life. I don't personally remember any of this, but I do remember being outside, watching ambulances through our chain link fence while I bounced a ball on our small patio. I was confused, and I probably didn't even really understand how scared I should have been.

Given this story was told to me, it's very possible I'm selectively remembering things that didn't occur in order to make sense of the narrative. This was only explained to me in my early adulthood when I brought up my memory of the ambulances to my mother and asked her if she could recall why they were there. Later, the story was expanded upon by my dad and uncle. I don't really know if retroactive trauma is possible, but it does make me immensely sad to imagine myself as a little boy, present for such frightening and overwhelming circumstances. This was, I think, among the most dramatic of the various incidents that occurred in my childhood home. There are plenty of other examples of abuse and neglect, however. In no particular order:

being asked, as a three-year-old child, if mommy and daddy should get a divorce
growing up in a house that continued to decay and worsen in its sanitation until it was sold in 2023
having such severe eczema that my arms and legs were constantly covered in bright red scabs, which would develop into scars, due to a dog allergy that my parents refused to address, instead choosing to continue to bring new dogs into the home frequently
having allergic asthma so bad that I routinely used a rescue inhaler along with Allegra-D daily because my parents, due to their hoarding, were incapable of keeping the house clean
being parentified by my mother to care for the family and her emotional well-being, as my father did not provide the partnership she needed, acting more as her dependant than her spouse

These experiences, in large part, culminated in my profound fear of fatherhood. I was terrified that I would replicate the circumstances of my own childhood and would terribly damage my children in the process. Furthermore, considering the way I was taught to deprioritize my own needs and the inappropriate emotional labor I performed as a child, I was very uncertain as to whether I wanted kids for their own sake, or if I only wanted them to fulfill my wife's desires. At this point, I can tell you very confidently that I wanted kids.

The ADHD

My experience growing up with undiagnosed ADHD wasn't terrible relative to what I've read from others, but it definitely affected, and was also affected by, my Trauma™. The negative feedback that I received as a child was persistent, and I was prone to interpreting that feedback in harsher ways than it was likely intended. Generally, people with ADHD are inherently more prone to avoiding negative feedback or failure. According to an article on additudemag.com, "Some experts, like William Dodson, M.D., estimate that children with ADHD receive a full 20,000 more negative messages by age 10, on average¹⁵." This disparity in negative reinforcement was tangible for me as a child. I was taught to sit on my hands to avoid outbursts in class. I was never a "problem" like many children who grow up with ADHD in that my behavior was generally not "unproductive" because I was very interested in participating and learning in class. As an aside, this is part of the reason why I went undiagnosed until college. These negative reinforcements also influenced how I process rejection. Rejection can mean many different things to many different people. In this case, I'm referring to an occurrence when someone or something provides feedback to me that does not (or is perceived to not) affirm myself or my understanding of reality. As of writing, Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria (RSD) is relatively new, not currently denoted in the DSM, but it affects people with ADHD and other neurodivergence disorders¹⁶. It denotes a condition whereby the person is sensitive enough to rejection that they perceive rejection where it might not exist or their reaction (internal or external) to rejection is outside the bounds of “normal” for the type of rejection received. Respective examples are, a meeting getting rescheduled at work because the other person’s schedule is full or being told that you can't go out for ice cream because you have other, less fun plans.

Without going into too much detail, as this blog post is already starting to creep outside of my initial goal, I want to briefly explain why my ADHD experience affected my decision-making process around having a child. The mass of negative reinforcement I received as a child caused me to develop a fear of failure, sure, but I don't believe that's the whole of the story.

My understanding of failure is much more rigid when applied to myself than others, which is a large part of why I was so afraid to "fail" as a father. My father failed me as a father and parent. Full stop, no further discussion needed there. However, because I held that opinion from a young age and "knew" it as truth, I didn't actually interrogate how many times and in how many ways my father failed me, treating parenting quality as a binary characteristic, rather than observing it with necessary nuance. There are so many clear instances where my needs weren’t met that the intrinsic understanding of failure is self-evident.

I, realistically, don't have to feel afraid of that kind of failure. And yet I do, and I am constantly afraid of my failings negatively affecting my child. That's something I will need to work through, but that fear can be a productive part of avoiding moment-to-moment failures. Everyone fails every day of their life in one way or another. Some people fail more, some less, but there isn't a person in the world who doesn't fail at something every day. Shifting the perspective this way can help me feel more in control of my failures and view them as a part of life, but not as a fatalistic inevitability like my parents did. My mother was constantly talking about becoming her mother¹⁷, like replicating your parents’ character flaws was some inevitable prophecy that could not be avoided. This was profoundly damaging because she talked about it with such certainty that it felt as though I had no choice but to become my parents. I have tendencies towards reproducing the errors of my parents, as all people do, but my understanding of my Trauma™ and my desire to make a better life for me, my wife, and my daughter means that this outcome is not inescapable. Is it hard to consciously monitor my behavior and reflect often on my shortcomings? Absolutely, but if I want to live a life worth living, it’s my only recourse. Living a life of quality is hard, but it's worth the effort you put into it if it ensures you live your life with passion, love, and empathy.

The Birth

The week my daughter was born was perhaps the most stressful time in my life. My daughter was born on a Saturday, and we left the hospital that Sunday, having been assured our baby passed every health check. That night, we were unable to get her to sleep in her crib. She was, for lack of a better word, inconsolable. No matter how long my wife nursed her, she behaved as though she wanted to nurse more until she finally stopped latching and just wailed continuously. We called an on-call nurse, and she recommended we either bring her into the ER or get a PCP visit scheduled immediately. We decided to take her to the hospital. There, we discovered that her body temperature was 34.5 degrees Celsius. The children's ER admits under 36 degrees Celsius. This was shocking to us given that she was dressed appropriately and it was the middle of summer. We had felt her skin for signs of fever, which we were warned about ad nauseum, but no one had explained to us what the indicators of coldness in a baby look like.

My wife and I were absolutely terrified. We were sleep-deprived and feared the worst. My daughter might be taken away from me, so soon after I met her. They were having trouble getting an IV for her, because of how young she was and how small her veins were. They tried to insert the needle again and again, so many times I lost count. The ER doctor told us they were concerned about infection, so they wanted to do a lumbar puncture along with several other tests. That sent both of us over the edge. A lumbar puncture and she's not even 3 days old? How could she already be this sick? Did we do something wrong? The ER nurses called in the NICU nurses because they're more experienced with small veins in newborns. I was so upset and delirious that I couldn't bear to watch it any longer. I was shown a room where I could drink a Gatorade and attempt to close my eyes for a bit. I just couldn't hear her in pain any longer at that moment. I felt so guilty, so tired, so much a failure as a father that I couldn't remember why I'd bothered having a kid in the first place.

My wife woke me up in the empty room. The first words out of my mouth were, “How could I have fallen asleep at a time like this? What kind of a father am I?” I'm not sure how long I was asleep, but I felt rested enough to go back to the room. They were about to admit her to the NICU because of "logistics." We were told that they only put her there and not the ER because they wanted to avoid filling the ER beds if possible. I don't really believe that. I suspect they just wanted us to feel better about her being in the NICU. Regardless, we became even more distraught as we walked to the NICU. There, I felt this strange mix of relief and terror that I hope I never have to feel again. Relief because she was in the best care possible. Terror that the best care possible wouldn’t be good enough.

As soon as my daughter was in the room, three or four nurses swarmed over her to get things done. The warmth that I could sense from them was overwhelming and even recalling it is making me tear up. They made an effort to reassure us and encourage us to care for ourselves. It was incredibly hard to do that, but we managed.

Stepping back a bit, my daughter was born incredibly quickly, in around 7 hours. First-time mothers typically labor for about 24 hours, so this was quite remarkable. The actual pushing lasted only about 30 minutes, and because of that, my wife's body was not prepared adequately. She suffered level 4 tearing. There is no more severe birth injury, and our OB made a point of saying he only sees it happen every two to three years. My wife was still healing from a grievous wound when our baby was admitted to the NICU, and she hadn’t taken her antibiotics with her to the hospital. She was feeling weak and shaky, and for that reason, the main nurse and I more or less forced her to go to the ER to check for infection¹⁸. Looking back, it was clear my wife was just suffering from sleep deprivation and severe anxiety. At the time, however, I couldn't fathom losing my wife to a completely preventable infection and having to go through the rest of this unknown quantity of an ER visit for my daughter on my own.

After a second follow-up with the neonatologist¹⁹, she made it clear there would be no lumbar puncture, and my daughter most likely did not have an infection. The cultures hadn't been completed yet, but they were clean so far, and she was relatively certain there was nothing seriously wrong with our baby. “Sometimes, they just aren’t ready to transition from womb to world,” she said. All our daughter needed was some time under a heat lamp and plenty of milk in her belly. Regardless of the clean cultures, hospital policy is that NICU babies must stay for at least three days to monitor their health. I was actually relieved hearing that. The lack of sleep continued to be alarmingly hard for me to work through, and my wife, from what she's told me, was concerned about how I was coping. She knew, and accepted, that I would find it harder to function on limited sleep than she would, but I was functioning far worse than anything she could have anticipated. Something seemed to be deeply wrong with me, but I didn’t know what. I assumed this was some sort of character defect, an inner weakness, and felt fathomless shame.

As we were leaving that first night to return home, catching up on sleep so that we could return to our daughter in the hospital in at least a semi-serviceable condition in the morning, I felt a familiar twinge in my side. It almost felt like a pinch inside my intestines, kind of like bad gas. I thought it was either that or constipation. My stomach always gets knotted up when I'm anxious, and I wasn't all that surprised to be feeling unwell given our circumstances. I had just gone through the worst experience in my life, after all. The twinge, stitch, pinch didn't resolve while my daughter was in the NICU over the next few days. She continued to improve, and it became clear that she was one of the nurses' favorites to see because of how vigorous and lively she was²⁰. We were discharged on Thursday and my mother-in-law was there to help us get everything out of the room and into our car. She stayed with us as we acclimated to baby life, which was tremendously helpful.

That night, I worked harder than I think I ever have in my life. My daughter was, like any newborn, awake very often. Each time she needed something, my wife and I would alternate, and we were sleeping on a shikibuton²¹. Getting up from the floor with the pain in my side coupled with sleep inertia felt nearly impossible to me at the time. And yet, to help my wife and my daughter, I managed, rising each time it was my turn.

The Procedure

Friday night, after a visit from my brother-in-law and his wife, I expressed concern, as I often do, about the pain in my stomach. My wife, at this point, was quite worried and was growing exasperated with my anxiety. She had initially dismissed my pain, as she did not want to play into my tendency to hyperfixate on health issues, but I had never complained of a stomach ache for several consecutive days before. The pain hadn't improved since Monday night, and I had been able to rule out constipation and gas. Both my mother-in-law and my wife suggested I go to the ER to check it out. I have pretty severe medical anxiety, and hearing that was worrying to me. My wife grew up in a household where the culture was "you're fine, it's fine" when it came to medical things. They would take issues seriously, but they were always cautious about getting medical intervention. My family, on the extreme opposite, constantly went to PCPs and urgent care to get issues evaluated. My instinct is to go to the ER at the slightest issue, and my wife finds it relatively frustrating²².

I headed out to the ER on my own, quite worried about what the cause of my mysterious pain could have been. Logically, I understood it was probably something minor that a PCP could have found, but my anxiety around health issues tends to cloud my judgment. I explained what I was feeling to the intake nurse, adding that it was quite confusing because I'd been able to pass gas and stool with no more issues than usual. I was brought into triage to talk to another nurse and I told him the same thing. He poked and prodded, as nurses do, and asked me if it hurt more or less or the same. I provided answers as best I could. It didn’t seem to follow a specific pattern, but sometimes pressure provided some relief. I was told they were going to order an abdominal ultrasound, a test which I had had before, and he exited the room.

A couple of minutes later, I was brought into a CT room, which was confusing and frightening. They must have changed the order for whatever reason. I took a moment to confirm that I had been brought to the correct place, and the nurse assured me I was, stating that I would be receiving a CT scan right after the contrast was administered. As the contrast was injected into my IV, I felt like I was peeing my pants²³. It was an extremely weird sensation.

Eventually, one of the ER physicians came in to discuss the CT results. It was clear to him that there was some sort of inflammation based on the minimal data he viewed through the portal, but he couldn’t say with certainty what I had. We would have to wait for the radiologist to take a look at the scan. This did not assuage my anxiety.

Before leaving, he stated plainly that it didn’t look like appendicitis, which I had expressed concern about having, but that he didn’t have any other theories based on the areas that "lit up." He exited the room and, not even 10 minutes later, walked back in, plopping down with the air of a camp counselor about to reprimand a misbehaving student, like he was about to turn the chair around and say "what's goin' on, bud? Why aren’t we getting along with the other campers today?"

He informed me it absolutely was appendicitis, despite the anomalous location of the inflammation, and it was advanced. I needed surgery promptly, but the medical center couldn’t provide it, so I had to be sent to the same hospital where my wife had given birth less than a week before. As the nurse who had initially admitted me administered antibiotics, he remarked on my pain tolerance, stating that he was impressed with my stoicism.

This caught me off guard, as my “high pain tolerance” was news to me. He recounted how well I walked and how easily I could talk and shift my body. "I've seen people who can't even speak it hurts so bad." I was almost proud, but it just didn’t feel right, because pain tolerance isn't really a thing you cultivate or develop. You either have it or you don't, and it felt like stolen valor to me because I had already felt that kind of pain before. I sent my wife a nearly incoherent video message about the situation and she called immediately to discuss it. She reassured me that things would be okay.

I felt upset and guilty for needing help. I shouldn't be dealing with this right now. This isn't fair to my wife, her mother, or my daughter. My daughter needs me. My wife needs me. I attempted to steel myself and talked with my nurse about what the next steps would be. I asked to be discharged so that I could drive the car back to my house to pick up my wife. I didn’t want to leave my wife without a car, as we only have one, and taking an ambulance seemed unnecessary given that the pain was manageable., As they discharged me, it felt like my body was vibrating.

The drive home felt very mechanical, a series of automatic actions. My wife had put together a "go bag" for me, and I couldn’t stop apologizing to her. My tears were blocked up. I wanted to cry, but for some reason, I couldn’t. This isn't fair to her. Why does this have to happen now? I said goodbye to my mother-in-law and my daughter and reluctantly headed outside, a sense of dread twisting my insides. Even though I knew I would likely be fine, there was a deep-seated fear within me that I would never see my daughter again.

I tried to distract myself by making a joke out of how funny it would be to tell people I drove myself to the ER, back home, and to another hospital while having appendicitis. When I'm scared or worried, that's all I feel capable of doing. It's not even something I process, it's just instinctual.

The surgery ward was eerie because it was late at night and the desk was unattended. A lone woman was in the waiting room, sitting silently, no doubt waiting for news about a loved one. “If the desk is unattended,” a small white sign read, “use the desk phone to call an employee.” A woman in scrubs opened the door behind the desk and brought me to a curtained section of a donut-shaped room. I struggled to put on the surgery gown the woman gave me – it was a little small for my broad frame – so my wife had to assist me. I continued to be chipper and silly, and I sent a couple of goofy selfies to people with my surgery gown clearly visible, informing them of my impending surgery.

A nurse checked me in, confirming the details of my procedure, as I waited underneath some sort of heating blanket that looked vaguely like the material used to make space suits²⁴. After what felt like ages, I finally met the surgeon. He informed me that, due to the odd presentation on the CT, he could not determine if my appendix had already ruptured, and if it had, laparoscopy would be impossible. I mentioned to the surgeon that I'd felt this before and that I must have had appendicitis that resolved itself. My wife and the surgeon exchanged a look and explained that appendicitis is really more of an acute condition than a chronic one, so the likelihood of having had it before is slim to none.

The anesthesiologist, noting my medical anxiety, gave me a hefty dose of anesthesia that had me out in an instant. In the recovery room, I regained consciousness. I was uncomfortable and tired, but alive, so I tried to stay positive. I cried to my wife about how guilty I felt about not being able to help her with the baby, especially when the doctor had instructed her to rest as much as she could. All the tears I couldn’t cry before came spilling out since I was so uninhibited by the pain medication. My wife mentioned to me that the surgery was more complicated than expected because of the size of my appendix and the fact that it was adhered with scar tissue behind my colon. "The surgeon told me we owe you an apology. You most definitely had appendicitis previously, and he wouldn't be surprised if you had been dealing with this for years based on how scarred it was. I guess this time was just worse. No wonder you've been so tired lately." It took a while for me to process that. I had spent my entire adult life believing I just “had a bad stomach.” Was this the root of the problem all along?

When I next woke, my wife was gone. I had been in and out of consciousness for a while, being woken up by nurses checking in on me. I won't narrate the whole recovery process. It was boring and long. I was in the hospital for four days, about three days longer than the average appendicitis patient. Although they were able to perform the surgery laparoscopically, my incisions were large, as my appendix was massively swollen. The gas pain²⁵ following surgery is some of the worst pain I've ever felt. I was told it happens because surgeons have to blow gas into the abdomen to access the organs. The pain started in my lower back and wormed its way into my shoulders. It was unbearable, much worse than the pain from the incisions. Finally, I was discharged, sans gas pain²⁶, and returned home feeling anxious about the remaining recovery to come, but excited to return to my newborn daughter.

The Aftermath

I was still exhausted, of course, and a couple of times tried pushing myself to support or contribute where I thought I should. These attempts went poorly and proceeded to make me feel worse about my worth as a dad and husband. I felt uncomfortable and guilty asking for what I needed. I’ve always struggled to understand what I need vs. what I want. Anxiety makes that all the harder to understand.

I attempted to care for my daughter alone one day and, in hindsight, that was an awful idea. I was tired, and I wasn't able to rationally deduce what might be wrong with my daughter when she started crying. Many times since becoming parents, we have been warned about shaken baby syndrome. We've seen some egregious "re-enactments" that are meant to illustrate how horrifying it is. At this point in my day, trying and failing to understand and respond to my daughter's needs while still fatigued and in pain, I became frustrated and overwhelmed. While holding her, I saw a flash of one of those "re-enactments" and I froze, petrified. I put my daughter down in the crib and, trembling from fear, disgust, confusion, and surprise, I called my wife. I went upstairs for some space, my daughter still crying, audible in the background of the call. I tried, and failed, to explain what happened appropriately.

Later that night, my wife and mother-in-law shared their concerns. I, still feeling anxious and upset, could not properly explain what I experienced. When I mentioned seeing upsetting images in my mind, they interpreted that as what I was thinking of doing. I tried to metacognate as best I could. I sat in silence for a long time, attempting to explain more clearly. To me, it felt like the whole explanation was more damning, but as I recounted what I experienced, I realized that my mind was trying to warn me about where that frustration might lead, not what I wanted to do. I concluded that I should get back on an SSRI because my anxiety was unmanageable, and was not likely to improve any time soon.

After a quick Google search, my wife said that I was likely suffering from paternal postpartum depression²⁷. Apparently, it’s a physical problem, and not purely psychological. Emerging evidence suggests that exposure to a newborn can cause a man's testosterone to plummet, which can induce the anxiety and depression that I had been experiencing since the birth of my daughter. This phenomenon, although rarely discussed, is more common than you might think, occurring in around 10% of new fathers.

I had already struggled with depression and anxiety in the past – one of many risk factors for PPPD – but had been on and off of SSRIs because of my inability to accept that medication like that aids in managing symptoms. It isn't a cure. Prior to starting a new course of medication, everything about my child was terrifying. What if I forget something, and she's taken away from us? What if I set her down too quickly? What if I pick her up too quickly? What if I'm not careful enough? I can't have her back in the ER again. I'm so scared she'll have to go back. When these thoughts overwhelmed me, I was inconsolable. It felt so wrong that I was making my wife take care of me emotionally again. Stop it, you need to be better. Get a grip, do you want to end up like your father? While waiting for the prescription and the subsequent "ramp up" for the medication, things gradually started getting better. The anxiety around frustration and mistakes slowly became quieter and easier to deal with. At some point, without my noticing, I was back to being myself again, and today, fatherhood feels as natural as breathing. Caring for my daughter feels like an instinct and it surprises me. Compared to the unfathomably large, Eldritch behemoth I envisioned fatherhood to be, this was more like a stuffed koala from Vermont Teddy Bears (his name is Koola), and I feel silly for having been so afraid.

The Conclusion

Since then, I've felt more confident around childcare, and my outlook on personal failings and mistakes has become less of a direct problem. Anxiety leads to more mistakes, which in turn leads to more anxiety. If there's one thing I want other fathers, husbands, and men to learn from this, it's this:

There is nothing wrong with needing help and asking for it. It isn't a personal failing when you are emotionally honest with your loved ones. They don't think you're dead weight; they won't leave you over it, unless they are people who didn’t deserve your presence in the first place. It's your duty as a partner, child, parent, sibling, or friend to be as healthy as you can in both body and mind so that you can reciprocate the support and care when your loved ones need you most.

Surprisingly, having my daughter has changed my perspective on how I deal with personal conflict. Previously, I was entirely avoidant. I still recoil instinctively when an interpersonal problem arises. However, when I am mistreated at work or in another area of my life, I want my daughter to see me standing up for what I deserve: respect and empathy. I don't want her to just see me being courageous in my actions without observing all the work that led to that moment. I want her to see the worry, anxiety, and fear that precipitates the confrontation so that she knows those feelings are normal and that they can be overcome.

During my childhood, I never saw my father advocate for herself. In contrast, my mother did so constantly, perhaps even to excess, seemingly without any thought, like it was coded in her DNA. In reflecting as an adult, I don't believe that was the case, and if I had seen the consternation she went through internally before doing something like putting her job on the line for a raise or better working conditions, I would have probably found her self-advocacy easier to emulate. So, I want to be what my parents weren't. I want to be an authentic human model, able to vulnerably present my flaws to my daughter. Not a "good role model,” or a "bad role model,” but a model that my daughter can understand and critically examine. She doesn't need a model for her "role" in life, but she does need a model for how people are and will always be: perfectly imperfect and always striving to do better for themselves and others.

my first child↩︎
verbiage modified for inclusivity↩︎
assigned male at birth↩︎
I would have no way of knowing if this is still the case generally, I'm too good at curating my own content on the internet nowadays, and I would have no way of knowing what content a young AMAB would experience either↩︎
I'm using this verbiage to fit my thoughts at the time, which meant I didn't have an understanding of gender in the way I do now↩︎
were? My mom passed in 2022, so I guess you could say she finally kicked it :rofl:↩︎
My father is trans, so I am using her preferred pronouns here (she/her/hers)↩︎
I was 10 or 11, I think↩︎
as of 11/20/2024↩︎
I absolutely recommend this book! Please check it out of your local library, or buy it from your local bookstore. If you want an audiobook, I'd recommend Libro.fm(referral link)↩︎
foreshadowing: a literary device in which a writer gives an advance hint of what is to come later in the story↩︎
really, it's probably more likely that she was a closeted trans woman for most of her life, which caused her deep emotional distress↩︎
my father claims it was because my mom knew that my father wouldn't hurt me, but I don't really think it excuses it↩︎
and a bunch of other things, if they cleaned the house like they ought to, it likely wouldn't have mattered as much↩︎
Children with ADHD Avoid Failure and Punishment More Than Others, Study Says, hey look! I'm actually using footnotes correctly!↩︎
New Insights Into Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria ↩︎
my grandmother, to ensure clarity↩︎
the pediatric hospital and the main hospital are separate entities but were attached, so it was not much of a walk to get there↩︎
and some sleep on the "bed" they have in all the NICU rooms↩︎
that hasn't changed in the nearly 5 months she's been around!↩︎
a Japanese floor mattress↩︎
I've gotten better at it! But the instinct is still there. ↩︎
I didn't believe her when she said it would. Quite a wild feeling.↩︎
it's a thermal reflective blanket that they're filling with hot air↩︎
not *that* gas pain↩︎
the cure is literally just walking; real easy to do that when you're post-surgery! :unamused:↩︎
1 in 10 dads experience postpartum depression, anxiety: How to spot the signs ↩︎