Revisiting Arguably the Most Important Thing I Ever Wrote

I’ve felt such a rush of love for Sienna the last few days that I felt it was important to revisit a blog I’d written for the NYC Dads Group about falling in love with your child. The blog was about how much trouble I had loving Sienna during her first 6 months and how I set myself up for failure. I still face that problem in therapy…setting myself up for failure. So this blog re-post is also a reminder that I need to patient when it comes to  therapy. This is a blog for myself, mainly, but also for all those new parents out there who are inundated with insane expectations forced upon them by society. You can find the original post here and I thank the NYC Dads Group for allowing me to share content I’d written for them on my own blog:

Here is what I wrote:

One of the most ubiquitous and most dangerous clichés around is “love at first sight.” In respect to having a child, it’s supposedly that moment when you hold your son or daughter for the first time, when you feel your heart “melt” and you know, truly know, that you’re in love. I use the word “dangerous” for a reason; for someone, such as myself, who suffers from depression and anxiety, the cliché can act as a catalyst for the mind to create an unrealistic anticipation, an engraved in stone expectation. But what happens if that moment doesn’t occur? What happens if you hold your child for the first time and love is the furthest thing from your mind? For me, my anxiety and depression ratcheted up about a zillion percent, and my mind became even more of a brutal enemy than usual. While depression and anxiety can exacerbate just about every aspect of having a baby, perhaps the worst thing it intensified in me was that concept of love or more specifically, the question: When will I fall in love with my child?

Further, I finally realized I had set myself up by believing in the clichéd “moment,” the Good Will Hunting breakthrough. As with therapy, there is no sudden burst of lucidity when it comes to falling in love with your child, and by expecting it, you’re only setting yourself up for disaster, guilt, and agony. It’s a different experience for each dad, for each parent, and comparing yourself to others will only end in mental anguish. This is true with most people, but for those with depression and anxiety, it is especially pertinent, for we always go to the extreme and then blame ourselves when it doesn’t come to fruition. So while the clichéd moment might be false, the clichéd “falling” in love just might be true as it implies something continuous and gradual, something that happens without you even realizing it. I carry the picture (see below) my wife captured of Sienna and I with me at all times…not as a reminder that I love my nearly one-year-old daughter (for that I feel it in my gut), but I will always need to remember not to succumb to the minefield inside my mind. Things will happen when they happen, so long as I let them.