Write it All Down

Document How You Feel Before And After Your Baby’s Arrival

By Carter Gaddis as part of To All Dads, a compilation of open letters from real men spotlighting #RealStrength stories and advice for modern fatherhood

Dear Expecting Dad,

How are you feeling? No, don’t tell us. Tell future you. Write it down. You’ll thank yourself later.

Seriously. Go now. Do it. Write it. Do it before the moment has passed. Write it down. Grab a notebook and a pen that feels comfortable in your hand, or crank up your computer and type until your fingers are numb. Find a quiet moment in a quiet place, clear your mind and…Write. It. Down.

Trust me on this: later, you will not remember how you feel, or even what happened, during this exciting time of upheaval. The mental acuity you take for granted, your power of recall, will fall away, a bit at a time, until all that’s left is the next diaper, the next feeding, the next pediatrician appointment.

After all of that comes the hard part. Exhilarating, yes. Incredibly rewarding, absolutely. But make no mistake: being a parent is hard. It takes a toll on your emotions and your cognitive ability. Be ready for that. Remember, you were warned.

All the things that you’re feeling now, the anticipation, the anxiety, the uncertainty, the thrill — you will want to be able to remember all of it later. You will be glad you’re able to retreat into the words you use now to examine your state of mind in the dwindling days of pre-fatherhood. It will matter to you.

It matters to me. Only through the verbal time capsule of my pre-birth journal am I able to truly recall how I felt, what I did, what it really meant, when my wife’s prenatal bloodwork showed an irregularity that could have been a fatal genetic disorder. I wrote about the amniocentesis, about the anxiety we felt, about the fear we both lived with until the test result revealed all was well.

I carried the practice into fatherhood, recording the raw emotions and disjointed activity during our times of crisis over the years. I take comfort in those words now. We got through it all.

There’s another reason you’ll want to write it all down now. Once you’re a dad, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to remember who you were before you met your kid(s). Your identity won’t merely change; the “you” you know now will cease to be. And this is a good thing.

Life is change, and change is (or should be) growth.

You changed when you discovered fatherhood was imminent. Even if you didn’t notice, something in you shifted. Many of the things you always have considered important began to lose their power to shape your worldview. As time passes, you might even forget why you thought those things were important in the first place.

One day, though, you will want to remember. You will feel adrift, as if you have receded into the background of your own life and are no longer the primary mover. By then, you will have forgotten what you intended all those years ago, before there were kids, before you were a father.

Don’t worry. New priorities will rush in to fill the void left by the changes wrought by becoming a dad. Yet, in rare, quiet moments, you will wonder about the “old” you. You might mourn the dreams and feel as if you have let that younger you down somehow, because nothing happened the way he (you) thought it would.

Or maybe you’ll just want to remember how impending fatherhood made you feel. You’ll want to relive the sense of newness, the fun of planning, even the fear. You might especially need to relive the fear.

Regarding fear: Here’s something you might have been told, but I guarantee it hasn’t sunk in — things will go wrong. At some point, every parent knows fear. Every parent. Just know that you will not be alone in that, even though you likely will feel as isolated as you have ever felt.

During those dark moments, it helped to read the things I wrote when I was afraid during the crisis of our first pregnancy. The words help me remember how I felt, what I thought, why I was afraid. And it helped me to re-trace the experience with the perspective granted by time.

I look back at the things I wrote, and I can answer questions that my insufficient memory would find impossible to answer. How did we get through it? What was I thinking as it happened? How did those thoughts help me or hinder me? I don’t have to guess. I wrote it down.

Even though I didn’t necessarily intend it, I authored an instruction manual to help the future me navigate the occasional emotional valleys of parenthood.

It will make you smile, too. Write the joy. Remind yourself about happiness. One day, you’ll read it and recall that there might never be a more momentous time of growth in your life than the days, weeks and months before you become a dad.

You will want to relive that. So, go…find the words. Think about who you are, what you’ve thought, what you’ve dreamed, who you’ve been, and acknowledge those things and that person in writing.

Don’t rely on fleeting memory. Do it today. How are you feeling? Write it down. You’ll thank yourself later.

Sincerely,

Carter

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