My wife gave birth on June 24, 2026. Before she gave birth, I would describe myself as helplessly ambitious, obsessed with abstract, inconsequential cognitive games (debating ideas with friends and reading/writing nonfiction and autobiographical poetry), and calmly hedonistic.
I’m using hedonism here literally, to mean ‘avoiding suffering and optimizing pleasure’. I wasn’t partying or having crazy carnal experiences or anything. But I was spending a lot of time on my phone looking at stupid things for no reason, playing videogames half-assedly while half-watching something on TV, checking my blog analytics constantly for validation, etc. These were all attempts to avoid boredom, thinking about my life, or being truly present in a world I found both intolerably uneventful and out of control.
After the birth of my son Frank (not his real name - rather, what I wanted to name him; I was overruled by my wife who I strongly believe deserved final say), I’m feeling/behaving quite differently. I have a feeling the psychedelic effects of this experience will fade over time, but thousands of tiny particles of it will be forever diffused within my experience of life, like a drop of red food coloring in a bottle of water.
To explain what has changed and why it’s changed, I have to tell you what happened. Telling you won’t come close to accurately conveying the potency of the experience, but words are what I have. It’ll be a bit like trying to build the concept of time out of Legos. But here goes.
Apart from the nurses and doctors and midwives, who were variously in and out based on what needed to be done at a particular time, there were three people in the delivery room: me, my wife, and my wife’s best friend Tessa.
Tessa had recently given birth to a little boy about 6 months earlier. She’s known my wife since early in college, where they met in French class. Neither Tessa nor my wife has a sister, and they’ve functionally taken on that role for each other.
Tessa showed up with the gear she needed to pump (her son is still breastfeeding), a Coke for me, and a stuffed animal for my wife. The stuffed animal was a Squishmallow you can turn inside out to reveal a second, thematically related character. The one Tessa got was anthropormorphic popcorn, which you could flip inside out to reveal a can of soda.
My wife Peyton was lying on the hospital bed, eyes closed, breathing slowly and with great intention. She was trying to separate herself from an intolerable pain.
“Are you popcorn,” said Tessa, holding the stuffed animal up, “Explosive? Excited? Bursting forth? Or are you soda.” She flipped it. “Internal? Contained? Showing restraint, but with a clear potential for intensity?”
“Soda,” my wife said, eyes still closed.
“Popcorn,” I said. “Popcorn,” Tessa said.
Tessa put music on the JBL speaker my wife had packed in our hospital bag. She was charged with curating the emotional environment of the experience. She put on “Night Moves” by Bob Seger.
Over hours, my wife suffered through contractions with no pain medication. The nurse told us the anesthesiologist was in surgery each time we’d ask about the epidural. Finally, he came to our room. He looked like Peter Parker. He started unfurling and sterilizing various pieces of equipment on a metal tray.
My wife sat at the edge of the bed, hands on her knees, concentrated on not moving.
“I am the stillest woman in the universe,” she said.
After the epidural, she became considerably more animated and interactive. While pushing, she sang along to whatever played on the speaker, grinning. The three of us would make jokes, delirious with exhaustion and optimism.
Around 2 am, sitting on a stool with a cup of black coffee, I looked around the room and tried to ‘catalogue’ the moment in a permanent way. I wanted to remember everything: The wide arc of yellow lamplight thrown across the wall opposite me, the tinny smell of coffee in a paper cup late late at night, the midwife’s relaxed, reassuring competence, Tessa slouched in the recliner with her arms crossed staring straight into the brutality of my son fighting his way into the world.
Benny and the Jets was on. The nurse was typing things on the monitor and swiveling it towards the midwife. The midwife was instructing Peyton to push, then suggesting she change position. The midwife affixed a tall, horizontal bar to the sides of the bed. Peyton pulled herself into an upright, seated position, now presiding high above the busy courtroom of us onlookers.
“The King’s throne,” Tessa said.
Fifteen minutes later, the doctor came into the room.
“He’s stressed out,” she said. The baby’s heart rate often plunged after a contraction. “We gotta get him out. If you’re comfortable, we’ll use the vacuum and do a couple more pushes. If it doesn’t work, we’ll have to do a C section.”
The doctor called in several other nurses. They handed her a small plastic device, which was essentially a handle with a sponge at the end of it. This was the vacuum, which would suction to our son’s head, and contribute additional force to my wife’s attempts to push him out.
Peyton pushed hard. I looked at her and I felt a new profound loyalty. I felt like a soldier of the Trojan War or something. I looked at her and I knew I would do anything for her, no matter what it meant for me. I would kill or die. It was crazy. It felt old and evolutionary. I wondered why no one had prepared me for this feeling. I’d never heard any other Dads talk about it before. I’d only heard vague platitudes about the ‘strength’ of mothers (ex: ‘she’s the toughest woman I know,’ etc.). But this seemed absurdly trite and lazy compared to what I was feeling now. I felt a knowing that I was now in a war of love for the rest of my life. I would protect her like a country. I made a mental note to talk to Tessa’s husband about this after. I wondered if it was possible I was the only one who felt this way, but I doubted it, because the feeling was so final and involuntary.
At 2:39 am my son was thrust out into the noise and light of the living. Me and Peyton burst into tears. I felt an uncontrollable vulnerability I hadn’t felt since I was a little kid, before I started working hard to be in control of myself and the facts of my reality. The doctor put him on Peyton’s chest. He was a little freaky looking, writhing around and crying like a pterodactyl. But I loved him, and I knew my wife had fused to him like two atoms fusing together to form a single, heavier atom.
Now, a week out from this experience, I feel emotionally and mentally transmogrified. I enjoy things I used to find boring. I like mowing the lawn without headphones. I like getting frozen burritos out of the freezer, preheating the oven while looking out the window above our sink, then holding my little boy and talking in a stream-of-conscious blur about the world he now finds himself in. I don’t really look at my phone. Instagram seems obviously immaterial to reality now, like watching someone else play The Sims. I look at it and think, ‘why would I care?’ I suspect this is temporary and that overtime the draw of having somewhere to point my attention will return, but I hope this clarity sticks.
I also have a renewed interest in getting as physically strong as possible and ‘feeding’ my mind with books, music, art, and quiet, solitary thought. I want to be someone my son wants to be like. This probably seems obvious, but the force of my conviction to make intentional choices about how I spend my time feels profound and surprising right now.
I would describe myself now as patient, contemplative, measured, anxious, hardworking, tireless, devoted, protective, and primarily motivated by love. Before, I would’ve characterized myself as driven, intellectually ravenous, jealous, suspicious, competitive, pessimistic, and impulsive. I only did things I wanted to do. Before having my son, the ‘best’ thing about me was probably that I am a high performer at my job and do well financially, and that’s only because I enjoy working/am probably ‘addicted’ to working. Now, I anticipate I’ll be just as effective at work, but this effectiveness will no longer be inspiration-dependent. Whether I’m feeling motivated or not, I suspect I’ll have the capacity and patience to put in my full effort most of the time.
Obviously me and Peyton are totally exhausted and dizzy with worry. But I prefer my new, more consequential reality to my old one. My friend Amy put it well - she said ‘everything about my life is objectively worse, but I’m happier.’