My spouse and I recently welcomed our first baby. He is now six weeks old.
When we ask other parents what the first six weeks were like, all respond with a version of, “It was a complete blur and I do not remember any specifics. But they grow up so fast. Enjoy every minute.”
This is, of course, both the least and the most helpful thing you could hear.
While we are in this blurriest of parenthood moments, I’m writing down what I want to remember.
- You will immediately run the risk of becoming insufferable around those who do not want to hear about the consistency of your baby’s last diaper. Try not to be insufferable. (Sorry to our friend Phil.)
- People need hope. People find hope in babies. This is a valuable service babies offer. If you have the capacity to leave the house in the first six weeks, I recommend bringing this hope places.
- Some of the developmental milestones your baby is supposed to achieve are comical. One checkbox on the form for the one month appointment reads, “Does your baby chuckle quietly to himself?” Maybe. In any case, “Chuckling quietly to himself” has become a household phrase for Katie and me.
- My prayers have gotten far more ordinary and likely far more tolerable to God: I say thank you for each toe and each limb and each little balled up fist.
- Over the last five years of study and reflection, I have become convinced that God will save all people. There are scriptural contradictions, but for me, there are too many verses where it would be improbable for “all” to not mean all. When I place our baby in his Swedish hand-me-down lounger and he toothless-grins at me for one full minute—this baby who did not exist in the outside world six weeks ago, who came into being because we decided on this ambitious group project, and who has provoked a new kind of love we did not know we had—I am even more convinced that neither death nor life nor angels nor demons nor heights nor depths could separate any child from the love of God.
- Being a dad is almost all upside. (I know great dads for whom this is not true, but it has been my experience, so far) It is important to remember this, because being a mom is not all upside. People are thrilled to see me out carrying our baby, even if he is wailing, thunderstorms were definitely predicted, the carrier straps are risking his suffocation, and I’ve just left him in his stroller right within a parked car’s blind spot. The bar is still very low for dads. We should raise the bar. Paternity leave is a great way to start raising the bar.
- We have tried to stay alive to the reality that everyone’s parenting story is different, and a great deal of it is beyond our control. To that end, here is Katie’s text with a friend this morning: “Nothing that’s going well in parenthood can be reasonably attributed to our competence, certainly not exclusively.” Nor, thankfully, are we solely at fault for anything that’s hard.
- In the words of our wise friends Austin and Catherine—we do not own this child. Ultimately, he is not ours to keep or control—which in theory could calm the anxieties surrounding AI overlords, the collapse of democracies, and the things we will do which may unwittingly require a therapist’s intervention when he turns 26.
- I’ve become more aware of holy moments. And conversely, the awful moments. I bounced our baby to sleep last night, watching his eyelids slowly flutter closed. Then I read that a $2.8 billion package of 40,000 one-ton bombs is about to be sent to the Israeli government. They will be used to blow off many more tiny limbs and arms and toes in Gaza and Lebanon. My fists ball up in rage.
- We worried that having a child would make our world smaller. That the energy we needed to love our neighbor and enemy would be used up within our own walls. We can see this possibility, but we hope that instead, our experience with this gift can widen our aperture to a world that holds much joy and much sadness.
And so here I am at 7 AM. I open the shades so our baby can establish a clear circadian rhythm. I pray for toes and for limbs and for the world in which they will grow. And, I say thank you.
All photos by the author
