Guest Post: Mr Sunshine on Becoming a First Time Dad

Hi, Rich (a.k.a. Mr Sunshine) here. I asked Polly if I could write a guest post as a follow up to her excellent pregnancy posts and her response was surprisingly an emphatic “YES!”, followed by a rather suspicious “….what are you going to write about??”. My answer was brief and went thus: “Basically, I’m shitting myself at the prospect of being a new father. Maybe if I write down my thoughts, I can make sense of it all” (spoiler for those who can’t be bothered to read to the end...I can’t).

               Mr S getting some practice in with our friends Sarah and Sam's baby Sophie over Christmas

It’s been an incredible 6 months, from our wedding to the honeymoon and finally the news that Polly was pregnant. These 6 months have been the happiest of my life and up to now I have kind of lived in a state of ignorant bliss. However, in the last few weeks the prospect that I will be a new father has come into sharp focus. I’ve read that this stage slowly creeps up on all expectant fathers, perfectly articulated in one book as “a stage when the future comes too quickly and the present always feels like the past” (granted, that phrase does sound sensationally dramatic!)

Like many soon-to-be-dads, I have been asking myself the following questions: Will I be a good dad? Am I mentally ready for this? Will I be able to change a nappy on my own? How long will it take before I stop holding the baby like a bomb? And most importantly, will I still have the time to stick to my strict hair-coiffeuring regimen???

Pertinent questions I’m sure you’ll agree readers.

It’s comforting to know I’m not alone though in this sudden rush of self-doubt. If you type in “scared of being a father” into Google, you will get nearly 52,000,000 results. In one article I found, one father’s biggest worry is that he might “bring home the wrong baby from daycare”. I mean, wow. Even I can’t be that bad (please no one bookmark this though!).



What I’ve learnt so far about being a new father is that the only way to deal with all this upcoming uncertainty is to simply embrace it, even if I do not fully understand it. I’m finally coming round to accepting the chaos…I’m just not sure whether it will accept me!