Dear Little Man, 

It’s been a week since you were born and more than 10 months since I discovered I was going to be a father. I’ve wanted to write you this letter every day since, but acclimating to life with a newborn has been quite the scheduling challenge for your Mother and I. Between keeping you and her fed, washing the clothes, doing the dishes and trying to squeeze in some rest here and there, the hours and days have literally melted off the calendar. It’s clear that within a blink of an eye you’ll be a man and will be doing this with a family of your own. 

We didn’t expect this to be easy and to be honest, even with a fussy baby & back-to-back feedings, every moment is one that I will cherish for the rest of my life. You’re incredibly beautiful and even at this young age, it’s alarmingly clear that you possess a spark of intelligence and personality that will serve you well as you continue to grow and learn to explore the world around you. I wish I could spend every moment of the day staring into your shining, crystal blue eyes and watching your little expressions as your negotiate the many obstacles mother nature presents you with.

You’re one of the lucky ones, little man. Your mother and I had spent almost 7 years together by the time we decided to get pregnant. We have strived to make responsible decisions all along the way to ensure that you have every benefit and opportunity for success. 

From the very moment we discovered that you were on the way, we have been both consumed with love and the deepest level of devotion one could ever fathom. You are now an equal partner in our lives, our love and our home and we couldn’t be happier about it. While you won’t get immediate gratification for your every whimsical desire, you will get everything you need and all the nourishment and affection you require. We’ll both strive to help you become a responsible, contributing member of society who can think for himself, act on his own behalf and develop solid relationships based on trust and love. 

For most of the past year, we’ve been focused on a perfect vision of what your birth would look like. We planned every minute detail right down to the lighting and mood of the delivery room. We scoured books and websites and sat through hours and hours of classes to help craft the ideal image of how this would all pan out. Our goal was to provide you with the most serene, peaceful and natural entrance to the world we could muster and not surprisingly, almost nothing went to plan. 

We intended to have a natural, vaginal birth and went to extraordinary lengths to make that possible. Neither of us could have ever imagined that you’d come to us via cesarean delivery. Our midwives, whom we selected with both careful detail and thoughtful concern abandoned us, literally– on your due date. Constant reassurances that you were positioned properly for a natural birth likewise turned out to be incorrect. Countless appointments with prenatal masseuses and chiropractors also deemed futile in the end. Our best laid plans of preparing overnight bags and a menu for Mommy’s delivery were all completely worthless once we were sent to the hospital suddenly. Its turns out you were running out of amniotic fluid– you were parched. The time had come for Mommy and Daddy to accept the inevitable and let go of our vision for your worldly entrance.

While it might take Mommy some weeks to heal, and it might take Daddy years to negotiate the complex psychological implications its had on our family– getting you both home safe was the goal and in the end, we achieved that. 

In retrospect, there may come a day when we can’t even remember what happened last week. We might even forget that we had a notion about how it would work out or that we thought we would somehow be capable of forcing our will upon your arrival. Even at this early age, its clear that your personality is one to be reckoned with and that its going to be a challenge to keep up with you every step of the way. That being said, I know I speak for both of us when I say we’ve never felt so fortunate and blessed as we do today.

Welcome to the world, my little man.