A friend of mine recently had his first child. In many ways talking to him before his son was born reminded me of my own blissful ignorance before the Boy was born. He was biblically unprepared for the tornado of shit that was about to enter his life. Seriously the man was an omni-shambles.
But the birth of a child changes a man. After a pre-eclampsia scare his wife was whipped into hospital and after a relatively torrid time their son was born.Two weeks later he returned from paternity leave, bleary eyed and shattered and a completely different man.Later on that day he sent out an email detailing in polite understatement the hell he and his wife had been through, and attached a picture of his son. Now remember, before his son was born he didn't have a clue. In the two weeks that intervened he'd dealt with a traumatic birth, the fact that his son was born with a cleft palate and had to be fed through a tube, being shown by the nurses how to perform CPR on a baby - this on top of the shock of dealing with a new born infant - clothing, feeding, nursing, soothing and everything else.
The most amazing thing was not the transformation though. The most amazing thing was that he had two pictures of his son. One in which he was asleep, and where the cleft palate didn't show. The other where the boy was looking straight into the camera, and the cleft palate was very clear. My friend decided to send out the second one. Because, he said, he has beautiful eyes.
Isn't that just the best thing ever?
No comments:
Post a Comment
Hello, feel free to comment - whether its praise or criticism.
I will ignore the criticism though.