S01E06: One year a dada

Reflections on one WHOLE year of parenting...

My love affair with lights and shadows in photography continues.

Hi there,

Sorry for the long email/post. I’ve cut loads but it is still pretty long. Sorry for the late (in the day) email too. In the extremely unlikely event that the multiverse exists (of course not), there is a Koye out there that didn’t have to stop writing this several times to give cuddles, change diapers, or make faces, and therefore sent this email at a much more respectable 6:00 pm.

Here goes.

***

I was on my way to work in October when my watch flashed a strange alert from Oreofe’s nursery. It was barely twenty minutes since I had dropped her off at nursery and the subject of the notification simply read “accident report”.

ACCIDENT REPORT BAWO? I dug out my phone as fast as possible. It turned out another kid had bumped into her while playing and she had fallen and bumped her head. AH! WHAT DID THEY MEAN SHE BUMPED HER HEAD? What is a bump? Was that a soft knock? Or a big Sheldon-Cooper-type knock? Had she fallen from a sitting or standing position? Did she bump her head against a rug or other form of insulated material or against a hard floor? WHY WERE THEY APPLYING ICE?

This was just after 9 am, but it felt like my workday ended before it had even started. I called the nursery immediately and prised every detail out of them. (It turned out it was a small knock from a sitting position but they were obliged to tell us about everything). Not satisfied with their assurances, I wanted to see her for myself. I sat through a few F2F meetings and answered some emails. Then I hurried to the nursery as soon as I could. To hold my little Grace and inspect every inch of her head with my fingers. If someone else had told me that happened to their kid, I would have empathised with them and then told them there were more bumps in her future as she learned to sit and walk.

I knew that somewhere in my head, but it didn’t make a difference to how I felt and what I did on the day. Becoming a “dada” did that to me.

***

Mirror selfie on this day last year. The final selfie before I met Oreofe. I wore my dad’s wedding ring on my right hand for the occasion. I often wear it when I think of him.

Over the past year, many people have asked how becoming a parent has changed me. Younger men seem particularly interested in the subject, which I hope is a great sign. When I asked readers to tell me which topics they would like me to cover in this newsletter, just under half the responses had to do with parenting. What had changed in my approach to life? What had I learned so far? What was it like to be raising her away from the support system and paid help we would have had in Lagos? Was I following any guiding principles? Did I plan to do anything differently from my parents? And so on…

Let us start with a simple fact. My life changed forever, and for the better, on this day one year ago. Oreofe’s arrival filled me with an incredible amount of joy, gratitude, and happiness; so much that I still struggle to articulate the depth of those feelings. I cannot describe how it felt the first time her little fingers wrapped around mine, how it felt to see her first spontaneous smile and eventually to be able to elicit laughter from her, how it felt the first time she descended from the couch by herself - feet first like Busola taught her, or how it felt the first time she crawled up to me and said “dada” with her big grin. And asides these firsts, there are many such moments in each day.

It also hasn’t all been rosy. I stopped getting my eight hours of sleep for the first ten or so weeks of her life, and my energy levels and productivity took a big hit as a result. In one example that has now become part of our family lore, I woke up at 2:45am to feed her and began rooting around in the dresser for her. As I did that, a small corner of my brain wondered what I was doing while Busola looked on in a mix of surprise and amusement, wondering why I was looking for Oreofe in the drawers instead of in the cot. I was that tired.

There were other productivity-type hits to come. We spend several hours a day looking after Oreofe. All that time has to come from somewhere. There are things we want to do that we no longer have time to do. And there are things we have to do that now take twice as long because they’re constantly interrupted by diaper changes, cuddles, or just stopping her from finding out how hard she can fall. I can’t stay for as many afterwork drinks as I once did and I now return from business trips at the earliest opportunity rather than add on a night or two at personal expense. Conversely, whenever I have a moment to get things done, I find that I am much more focused and efficient with the time I have left. And I have moved upstream by becoming even more “ruthless” with the things I choose to do in the first place.

In his seminal essay on having children, Paul Graham wrote:

Some of my worries about having kids were right, though. They definitely make you less productive. I know having kids makes some people get their act together, but if your act was already together, you're going to have less time to do it in. In particular, you're going to have to work to a schedule. Kids have schedules. I'm not sure if it's because that's how kids are, or because it's the only way to integrate their lives with adults', but once you have kids, you tend to have to work on their schedule.

You will have chunks of time to work. But you can't let work spill promiscuously through your whole life, like I used to before I had kids. You're going to have to work at the same time every day, whether inspiration is flowing or not, and there are going to be times when you have to stop, even if it is.

I've been able to adapt to working this way. Work, like love, finds a way. If there are only certain times it can happen, it happens at those times. So while I don't get as much done as before I had kids, I get enough done.

***

Some of our support system in our current home. Dami Adedibu is to the left of Bunmi in this picture and you can just see Ope’s beard above Bunmi’s head.

I had a really good dad and have a really good mum. I took their parenting for granted when I was younger but realised I was pretty lucky as I grew older. Much of my approach to parenting is based on trying to adapt the things they did well for my own times and my personality, and trying to do a few things differently too. However, one of my most important principles comes from my dad, who (using other words) often described parenting as an inputs calling.

You control what you teach the child and the environment you provide. Recognise they are their own person, not a mini-you, and adapt the inputs accordingly as their personality reveals itself. Nurture and care for them. Be present. Pray for them. Explain things to them. Role-model Godly behaviour. Tell them you love them. They watch what you do and not what you say. “Train up a child in the way they should go…” (Proverbs 22: 6). And so on. Do all of that, and the outputs should follow. (Should, because they’re their own person after all).

None of us was born with a parenting manual and I believe people can learn to be great parents. I am fortunate to have great role models in my own parents, many older friends who have been parents for much longer and who I can ask questions, and access to good books and the Bible. After Oreofe was born, I realised I had a new big ambition – one bigger than the ones I had before it and one that would require going on a lifelong learning journey. I realised that I wanted her to one day describe me as a good father, as I describe my dad, and as he described his dad before him.

***

I won’t lie. It’s not easy. My parents set a high bar for quality time and presence, but they were full-time pastors who lived right above the church they pastored when I was a child. Therefore, my father could involve me in his pastoral ministry and my mum was always home to read with me and just spend time together when I returned from school. I grew up in Ibadan, so uncles and aunties came and went frequently and my parents often had help.

We don’t have that with Grace. Busola and I have full time jobs outside the home and don’t have the same degree of help our parents did. That means we do most of the work by ourselves. We sometimes have to rely on a negotiated roster stuck to the fridge to help us get through the week. And somebody sometimes has to give 150% because the other person needs to get something over the line. It would be so much easier if we had a driver and a nanny, like we would if we lived in Lagos. But we don’t. So we just try (and sometimes fail) to stay optimistic and leverage on our longstanding friendship. When all else fails, we daydream about a future where we can ask Oreofe to come halfway across the house to hand us the TV remote.

We have also tried to keep doing the things we enjoy. For example, we have always loved travelling together and live pretty close to an airport. So, when I had to travel for work last September, we took her with us even though she was barely eight months old. It required a fair bit of planning and we could not be as spontaneous as we used to be, but we made it happen and had a pretty good trip. It was a welcome reminder that we could still have a fair bit of fun, even if strollers and diapers were now part of the package. We have since taken her back home to Nigeria and plan to take her on other trips with us. Perhaps she’ll have Busola’s love for travel; perhaps not.

Prioritising shuteye because tiredness had just become the norm.

***

My dad had a habit of writing to us on milestone birthdays. I have adopted that tradition, and I’d like to close with an excerpt from Grace’s first letter.

“365 days. That’s how long it has been since I became your “dada”. Sometimes it feels like a decade has passed. Sometimes it feels like it has only been a few months. Sometimes it feels like a ton of work. Sometimes it doesn’t. But one thing is constant through it all: I’m incredibly grateful for the gift that you are, little Grace, and it is my greatest responsibility in life to be your “dada”.

Happy first Birthday, my Oreofe Grace. I’ll love you until the end of time.”

***

Thank you for reading, and have a nice week!