Daddy’s Girl - Afropolitain Magazine

A few days ago, my daughter was born. It is a strange and unexplainable feeling to finally get to see her little face. As a dad, we feel like a co-pilot during the pregnancy : We try to make ourselves useful and it is a strange feeling that haunts us during these 9 months that seem to go by, more or less quickly, according to the mood of our partner.

As men, we are always, I think, more optimistic than women, at least in the beginning… This characteristic can be seen very clearly over the course of a pregnancy when my wife has the tendency to imagine the worst of the apocalyptic scenarios. On the other hand, I was rather optimistic, pretty confident in the future maybe because in my heart, I was wondering how I was going to manage this new “data” coming into my life and how to integrate it into my system. Since it is well-known that us, men, have an operating system difficult to update and it can easily crash when facing a massive entry of new programs.

So it is with a deep apprehension that we are heading towards the maternity ward to see this new face. And it is with a feeling of relief that we see our baby and find that she is rather pretty with all the important parts present. Because we should not lie to ourselves, unlike the mothers, we have the ability to notice whether or not our baby is ugly, and in the worst case scenario, we won’t say it and will love the baby regardless. But we would prefer for our babies to be healthy overall, and then good looking.

After this relief, one might think that comes a certain sense of relief and a lightened load of preoccupation, but on the contrary this relief now gives place to a persistent anxiety. This worry is even greater, I think, when you are a little girl’s dad. Because we know all of our shortcomings, vices and tendencies. We find ourselves suddenly not wanting, not one bit, to see our daughter get into all this drama of boys and girls. But we know deep down that we will have no choice in the matter and therefore we worry and hope that our daughter will remain all her life, daddy’s girl.