honest reflections
PARENT OPINION #1 / GOING FATHER
We grasped onto any scrap of uncertainty we could find. We were trusting a simple blood test, after all. Perhaps this had all been a hilarious mistake? But when we had our first appointment with the obstetrician, there it was: a heartbeat.
by luke ryan
A week after I found out my wife was pregnant, I realised I was going through a hyper-accelerated version of the seven stages of grief. Shock? Check. Depression? Check. Miscellaneous crying jags? Very much check. At one point, my wife asked me whether I cried this much when I found out I had cancer again. “No,” I replied, perhaps too honestly. Day to day and hour to hour, I’d oscillate between good-natured acceptance and abyss-welcoming collapse. I’d be halfway through a slice of toast when I’d be struck by a limb-sapping darkness that would leave me weeping on the couch. It didn’t take much to set it off. At one point, while I was brushing my teeth, an idle thought about having to teach my own child to brush their teeth, and how children don’t know how to do anything and that you have to teach them literally everything, set me spiralling into a multi-hour depressive funk.
I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t acquit myself well in
