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This October 13, 13 years after a daughter… my son!
Some say that the number 13 brings bad luck. For Jean-François, it is synonymous with happiness. Thirteen years after the birth of his daughter Chloé, on October 13, he welcomed a little Sorel. The young dad comes back to this incredible coincidence …
If Alexandre Dumas wrote a “Twenty years after”, here I am launched in the drafting of a thirteen years later just a few days ago. This October 13, 13 years after a little girl born on … October 13, my son was born.
Our son, because these things, let us hear babies, are seldom done by himself, contrary to what someone could sing when he was still singing. A funny but ultimately very nice coincidence which everyone will instantly see the practical side: there is necessarily less risk of forgetting the dates of in this case. This is obviously valid for parents, even if we suspect that, despite the weather, they will manage to remember it, but it is also very true for the family, in-laws, friends and acquaintances, gravitating around of this new family microcosm in general and of this new arrival on planet earth in particular.
Good reflexes cannot be forgotten
The question that everyone asks themselves on reading these first lines is inevitably the following. No not “did he take something before writing?” », But much more« taking care of a baby is like knowing how to ride a bike? Can’t be forgotten? “. It must be admitted that for 13 years, I have not had the opportunity to change many diapers and that it will inevitably have to put my hands in the grease and probably a little in something else …
JF, young dad in 2010
No matter what, each birth is a unique event. Unique in relation to a context, a personal story, feelings… Today’s dad is not necessarily the one of 13 years ago who hardly dared to handle the baby for fear of breaking him. One can imagine to visualize the scene a Gaston Lagaff perplexed in front of his cup-and-ball.
From now on, there is more confidence in the actions, less anxiety in the face of cries, crying, less panicked gestures and even some mixed opinions on the instructions for use of Baby with the mother who lives for his part his first experience. No question of giving advice or, worse, lessons. Above all, you have to do as you feel, it is a certainty, experience only optimizing certain situations. It is not a question of reproducing a past situation but of living the new one to the full.
Yes, I can !
So yes, experience is useful, but since everyone is doing well, seasoned or not, we also see that it is superfluous. It is a paradox. Will this new confidence gained over time make it possible to live even more intensely in the early stages? This even if the diaper changes or the first baths spent in full panic are also not lacking in intensity in the register of emotion.
Jean-François’ view of his fatherhood
After 13 years of reflection on the subject, on fatherhood, to watch with real pride my daughter grow and thus acquire, thanks to her, to what she becomes, this new confidence, the gaze changes. The passing of time shapes a new prism through which to look at fatherhood.
This paternity will therefore most certainly, 13 years later, be appreciated in a different way. But the child to which it relates is also. No better, no worse, just different, forever so fantastic, day in and day out until you count from year to year. Because in the end we realize that we only remember the good times from our paternity. If we had to remember as we then experienced the first sleepless nights, the vomit in bed at 2am that must be cleaned, the state of the diapers at the time when the teeth are growing … be damn motivated to the masochist to “put the cover back”.
Memories memories…
However, when you look behind you, you realize that the bad times of these new moments of fatherhood are ultimately good memories. And yet: no it was not fun to walk for hours with the baby so that he finally fell asleep, no, it was not fun to drive around Paris so that he would like to be. shut up, no it didn’t especially make me scream with laughter (though) when my daughter repainted the bedroom walls with felt-tip pens… and yet.
Despite everything, we start again. With the certainty in the end that it will be just as good. 13 years later, these memories remain intact and we are even damn impatient to build the new ones, to create the situations that will allow these images to be preserved for a long time, which for a brief moment take us away from the triviality of the world and of others.
Obviously, if we can this time not take the option “I re-decorate Papa-Mum’s room with large strokes of markers”, that can also and still be very nice!