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Home › Articles › Fiction/Opinion/Essay/Humor › Fighting the Good Fight

Fighting the Good Fight

A New Dad Faces the Dawn of a New Era

By Mark Stackpole

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A new age has dawned. A new era has begun. Your old life is now as extinct as a dinosaur or VHS. As a father, you must get used to a certain sense of obsolescence. Due to your biological inability to feed your baby, she barely notices that you are around. (As I have daughter, all baby pronouns will be in the feminine form.) You'll get a token look because of your deep voice, which also happens to cause a startle response and instant tears. Great. (My own beloved daughter actually bursts into tears whenever I start to sing to her, which proves that she has great taste in music, but still hurts my feelings.)

The baby's mom will be pretty caught up in the intense relationship between herself and the new baby – bonding, breastfeeding and no sex with you for six weeks. (When faced with the warning from the doctor that there should be no sex for a little while, my own beloved wife responded with, "Oh, you don't have to worry about that," which proves that she has a truly refined sense of how to spend her time – but still hurt my feelings.) As for the way that everyone else thinks about you, get used to the fact that you now fall somewhere between "piece of furniture" and "beast of burden."

There's little glory in being the father of a newborn. It's a good thing that you love her so much that you barely notice. Of course, due to the lack of sleep, there are a lot of other things that you barely notice – red lights, football games, the fact that it will be at least six weeks before – well, you get the point.

In the spirit of thinking so that you don't have to, I have put together a few things that I think new fathers need to learn. Bear in mind that since my own daughter is 5 weeks old, I am something of an expert. Surely I will be able to apply what I have already learned to the next 18 years or so of our respective lives.


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