The final submission to FWW! This competition has profoundly inspired me to write more. I’ve never really written long form content without some mandatory reason. Would be great to keep myself on a one post per week schedule. I especially enjoyed writing my “BDs in (NFT) Paris” which was a POV of my experience in NFT Paris. That was also the biggest success of my three posts so far, scoring 661 time points in three weeks. That feels truly mindblowing as it translates to at least 661 reading minutes (the non-signed-in are not counted towards time points). I don’t think I have necessarily ever produced any content which would have been consumed more by my peers. Crazy. My other two more dry and structured professional posts have done 70 t.p in two weeks and 30t.p in one week. Still pretty good I think.
Well okay. To get to the point I was gonna write up a third article perhaps showcasing the people behind our company STRGL but my second daughter was born on monday and that put a wrench in my plans. A beautiful, lovely wrench, that is. I don’t wanna let my FWW team down so I got to come up with some more flow of thought type of post for this week. The deadline for this post is earily looming in the not so distant future. This might be a little rough around the edges but bare with me, or don’t bare with me if you don’t feel like. Yeah, maybe it’s actually a better idea for you to open the TV and go watch Sopranos or whatever. It’s a great series by the way. You can close the tab now. It’s okay…
Okay for those still interested, let's bring on the alpha.
Why did I want to become a father?
Hmm. I guess my wife has always been more into kids. She even made it her profession as she is a special child nurse (that translation sounds wrong but whatever). So she takes care of children in a day-care and especially kids with special needs. She has also taken care of a one particular special needs kid who has spent on average one weekend a month at our place for the past 5 years. That arrangement has been put in place for his parents to get some rest once in a while as special needs kids can be a handful. Although now the kid goes to a special school a bit further away so he doesn’t come anymore on a regular basis. It’s like a boarding school so he spends the weekdays there and weekends at home. I think his visits prepared me in a way for what was to come after children because when he is at our place we usually do stuff together and plan our days around different activities and naps and early bedtime etc.
I started to slowly warm up to the idea of kids as my cousins started to have kids on a regular basis six years ago. Most of them are a bit older than me and live in the countryside where people more regularly get children a bit younger. We started to seriously talk about children, with my wife, a few years back and at the beginning of 2021 we were feeling bullish (as did the markets) and so we decided to just go for it.
Birth of our first daughter
My wife was due 30.12.2021 so I was really crossing my fingers she would go to overtime and pass the New year’s eve. I was born on the 1st of Feb and I always liked the timing especially when I was younger so I wanted the same for my kid. Especially when kids are younger, almost a year's age difference can be a huge difference between kids born in the same year. I think most of the kids who get bullied are also born in the later half of the year (>65% if I recall correctly) and most junior athletes also benefit from being born early in the year. So there is that. An edge is an edge albeit sometimes non-significant.
It was early hours of the 29th of December and I had stayed up to cook a ham in the oven. I was just taking it out to cool as I heard my wife yell for me to come to the bedroom. Her water had broken. We called the hospital and they told us there was no rush but we should go there pretty soon. My wife took a shower and I packed our hospital bags in the car. We got to the hospital around 3 AM and they said we should stay there as the birth was advancing slowly but surely. The doctors checked my wife around 9am and we got admitted to the delivery ward. My wife had slept a couple hours before her water broke but I had pulled an all nighter. Our daughter was born healthy and without complications after 9pm that day. We were tired but happy.
Children
It feels mindblowing to hold your child in your arms and think that she is 50% of you and 50% of your partner. Truly a marvel of nature. It has really been a pleasure to see her grow and become a tiny person of her own. At first taking care of a child really disrupts your life as it’s not just you and your needs you need to take care of but you have to take care of this little person everyday without exception. Life starts to rotate around a family unit rather than your own belly button. You get used to it though, I promise. At best it is profound and touches every fiber of your being, getting a hug from your daughter as she tells you “I love you Daddy” when she goes to bed or watching her take her first steps as she excitedly laughs at you as you clap for her success. On the other hand it can be nerve racking to be super sleep deprived and to wake up to change a crying baby’s soiled diaper for the fourth time the same night or deal with toddler's tantrums when she has refused to take a nap. Still all in all in the long term the scale tips heavily to the positive side.
Birth of our second daughter
We had our wedding last summer (2023) and we wanted to get a second child. We ideally want at least one of each gender and I’ve been warming up for a bigger family in general. As we counted the pregnancy weeks it seems very likely our second child was conceived on our wedding night. Haha! The pregnancy went well and this time the birth process didn’t start with my wife’s water breaking in the middle of the night but by slowly strenghtening contractions last Sunday night. They told us from the hospital to stay home for as long as we could and to go there only when the contractions grew unbearable. I was selfishly glad to have slept 9 hours and I told my wife to just say the word when she could't take it any longer and then we'd head for the hospital. I dropped our toddler to daycare and did some work from home that morning. We left for the hospital at early noon. My wife’s sister picked up our daughter from the daycare and we Facetimed her to tell that her little sister was about to be born soon. When we told her we were at the hospital she knit her brows and asked “Is my little sister sick?” and we went on to explain to her that it was normal that the doctors and nurses help the baby out of the mother’s stomach when the baby wants to be born. All in all the birth process went on like clockwork and after her water broke at around 7.30 PM it took only 7 minutes for our second daughter to be out in the wild and crying. Smooth. we spend two nights at the hospital recovering and bonding with the baby and once we got home it was pretty special to see my two daughters be united for the first time. “That’s my little sister! My baby!” Yelled the excited toddler when she saw her. She would have wanted to hold the baby in her lap all day if we would have let her. Smirking constantly as she stroked her head.
Conclusion
Children bring a lot of profound joy into one’s life. Everything is not about one self. We are finite beings and the future lies in our offspring. Now there is something to look forward to in growing old as you see your children grow and become their own selves. Fascinating to see how they turn out and where they will find their passions. Maybe one day I’ll get to hold my granddaughters and grandsons in my lap and stroke their heads with a smirk on my face.