My First Lesson in Fatherhood

by Jim Herbert

Fatherhood has taught me many lessons in life, none of them bigger than the one I learned on my very first day of being a dad. I spent the first 53 years of my life celebrating my own amazing dad, my grandpas and all the other menin my life that helped me become the man that I have become. Then on February 4, 2018 my daughter Emma was born and everything I thought I understood about fatherhood was forever changed. I had waited over five decades to become a first time dad and what I learned on day one was that being a dad is much more about being a student than being a teacher.

Emma was born during a blizzard on a Super Bowl Sunday. Super Bowl Sunday has always been a favorite of mine despite the fact that I’m a lifelong Detroit Lions fan who has never even seen my team play in the championship. I actually forgot that it was Super Bowl Sunday on the day Emma was born. What can I say? I was a little busy! At one point I flipped on the TV in our recovery room to check the weather and instead saw the Philadelphia Eaglescelebrating on the field after just defeating Tom Brady and his New England Patriots. I quickly flipped the TV off and went back to the quiet as my wife Christiana rested after 30 hours of unmedicated labor.

Christiana had just settled into a nice deep rest. Between post delivery repair, breastfeeding consultations, eating acold Five Guys burger, doctor’s check ups and visits from family, it wasn’t until about 9:00 p.m. that total quiet fell across our room and Christiana dozed off into a restful sleep. Shortly thereafter, I noticed Emma starting to stir and eventually start to cry. I wanted nothing more than for Christiana to be able to continue to rest, so I did what I learned in our birthing classes and picked up Emma, unzipped my hoodie and placed her on my chest skin to skin.

I’ve never been one who was comfortable around babies. I was the guy that always found a way to disappear from the room whenever people would pass around the newborn at family gatherings. Before Emma was born I think I had only held a newborn child a handful of times.

Nothing about handling a baby was in any way intuitive or felt natural to me prior to Emma’s arrival. It’s amazing how quickly that energy can shift when it’s your own child though.

So there I was in our perfectly serene recovery room, for the first time in my life holding a newborn baby without an overwhelming sense of dread. Chill music was playing in the background on our favorite Pandora radio station. Thehimalayan salt lamps we brought from home cast a soft pale glow of light. An aromatherapy diffuser filled the air with scents of lavender and chamomile. My wife was at peace for the first time in almost two days and I was about to embark on a journey with my newborn daughter, to places that can not be seen with our human eyes or known by our human minds.

As I sat down on the pullout sofa along the wall, I repositioned Emma under my hoodie and zipped it back up. Ipropped up my feet on an end table and slowly drifted into a dreamlike state of my own. After decades of energy work, yoga, meditation, prayer, breathwork, reiki and countless other practices, I boastfully thought to myself that this was going to be the most amazing experience for Emma, as I introduced her to the world of mysticism and spirituality.

I’m not sure if what happened next lasted a few minutes or a couple of hours, but it was one the most powerful and connected experiences of my life. As I sat with Emma resting on my chest, I intuitively started to use Ujjayi breathing, a yogic breathing technique where you slightly restrict the inner walls of the throat to create an audible whisperingsound. It sounds a little bit like Darth Vader breathing, but quieter and with a more peaceful energy.

I then began to visualize Emma and I moving through the night sky amongst the stars looking at all the beautiful constellations. All the while I could feel Emma’s little heart touching mine through our skin and we started our first ever daddy and daughter conversation without even speaking any words. The whole thing was truly magical.

I thought about how amazing it was that I was already teaching Emma about meditation even in her first few hours in her body. I celebrated the fact that I was having an opportunity to share everything I knew about the magnitude of this Universe with my newborn daughter. I marveled at the fact that even on day one, I was showing Emma about the infinite possibilities that we have as humans and that we are in a constant state of proximity to God/Source/The Universe no matter where we travel or what external circumstances exist.

Then all of a sudden it hit me.

I quite organically became aware of something that I had never considered in all my years of watching other people asthey parented their children. I became aware of the fact that I wasn’t teaching Emma anything at all and that she was teaching me EVERYTHING!

How could I be so bold as to think I could teach my infant daughter anything about being closer to God when I had spent the last five decades searching for and longing to feel that sense of closeness, whereas she quite literally had just come from God’s presence just hours ago?

That was the first of many lessons I’ve learned at the hands of my daughter Emma over our first seven years together and I suspect the lessons will continue to come fast and furiously in the years ahead. Being a father is equal parts the greatest blessing and the greatest challenge I have ever faced in this lifetime. One of the other things I have learnedabout fatherhood is that it is essential to have a community of support.

I am honored to be part of the team of men at MenLiving who are launching our first fatherhood specific full house weekly meeting beginning on Thursday March 6th at 12:00 noon central. I invite you to come out and join us as we allcontinue to learn from each other and the numerous children we are blessed to have in our lives. With all the resourceswe have at our disposal, how could we possibly feel alone? Hope to see you this Thursday or on a Thursday down the road. Peace and blessings, Jim.

Meet Jim Herbert