My journey towards becoming a father

Nine months ago, give or take, my partner sat across from me a few days before my thirty-second birthday.

Our birthdays are two days apart, separated only by the day we met years ago. A three-day celebration at the end of May is pretty typical for us to use as an excuse to break away from work and just celebrate us together and apart.

“I’m giving you your gift early this year,” Mikki told me randomly one morning.

“And, by the way, I think I won the competition this year.”

We usually have some level of “who gave the best gift” competition going each year, which both of us tend to forget about until a few days before.

And she did. She won.

She handed over a freshly-peed-on stick of paper and plastic with that blatantly obvious plus sign, telling me she was pregnant.

I cried.

Take the story back a year and a half to November of 2022.

It was a really, really tough time for me that fall. I lost my brother in a motorcycle accident and was struggling with what life was supposed to mean.

We had been talking for a while about having a kid, but kept pushing it off because “we have so much time.”

Then all of a sudden, it was pretty clear that we weren’t actually promised any more time at all. So we started trying.

Immediately, we conceived. It was a shock to us both because we had expected it to take at least a couple of months of trying, but nope. The world had different plans for us.

Then we had four days of “what in the actual fuck are we going to do now?” mixed with sheer joy and the high of finding out you’re going to become a parent.

And then, we had a miscarriage at 8 weeks.

On top of losing my brother, it was another brick to an already crumbling tower. I lost hope in that moment. Both of us did.

We mourned and talked about what our next steps were. Both of us agreed that taking the time to wait until we felt ready again was the best move.

So a few months passed. We both traveled for work a bit, made the decision to move back to Europe after spending a few years in Alaska, and eventually landed back in Greece.

One day we kind of just agreed that we were ready again. I’m not sure what actually changed (other than our home, my job, the country we lived in, our friends, and everything, everywhere), but we both got there.

We expected it to be another quick process. Maybe we were both super fertile and made the perfect combination. It worked the first time, so why not again?

It wasn’t that easy. The first few months came with a bit of disappointment because our expectations were high.

Slowly, slowly, we learned to trust the process and believe that the time will come when it’s meant to.

In the midst of what felt like a pretty exciting, albeit drawn out, time of our lives, Mikki’s dad passed.

In the same year of trying to conceive, we witnessed the loss of both a father and a son.

It wasn’t the easiest time of our lives. We were pretty disappointed by the negative pregnancy tests, grieving the loss of family, and feeling totally uprooted and unsure of where to live.

Eventually, we found ourselves living for a month on the Greek island, Kefalonia.

Whatever it was, the combination of crystal-clear waters, white sand beaches, and some of the best cuisine this world has to offer, we conceived.

Excitement, celebration, secrecy, and a little bit of nervous jitters began to rule our lives.

We didn’t want to share the news because of our experience with the miscarriage but also felt that we would want the support in place in case it happened again.

We don’t talk about miscarriage enough. It happens. It fucking sucks. And it happens more than we think.

So we shared the news with some of our close friends. We held back with family members that we worried would be more devastated by the potential of another miscarriage than we would be. And we waited.

During that time, our lives were pretty unclear. What became clear pretty quickly was that we needed to start making some real decisions that were going to have real impact on our baby.

In the following months, we left Kefalonia and flew to Alaska with the intention of moving back to the US. In about three days’ time, we remembered why we left the States in the first place and started making plans to go back to Europe.

We bought a van in the UK and drove it to Greece. There, we built it out (kind of) and lived in it for a bit while we planned our next steps.

I got a job offer in Spain and we started packing. Mid-route to southern Spain, we flew back to the US for a quick wedding and came right back to continue the drive.

All in all, we moved two cars (one Greek, one British), and 75% of our belongings to southern Spain.

That lasted a month.

We made plans to give birth in the UK. It was easy, it was in English, we knew the system, and probably had at least one friend in the country (somewhere).

The Greek car had to go back to its motherland, so we made the journey back that way. From Rome, I broke off and traveled to Senegal for a brief work trip while the car finished its journey home.

As soon as I landed in Senegal and Mikki landed in Greece, she said pretty clearly that she didn’t want to leave Greece.

It had gotten to be too much.

Our own indecisiveness was taking a toll on 6-month-pregnant Mikki, and to be honest, on never-will-be-pregnant me.

Turns out, the expat travel life sometimes can be overdone and become more of a shitshow than one you watch for pure joy.

Long story long, we live in Greece now (again). We’ve settled into a magical house that will surely give our son a childhood worth reminiscing on and hopefully writing his own blog posts about.

This entire time, I haven’t felt like a dad and I wouldn’t label myself one yet.

But part of me thinks that’s ridiculous.

From day one, you’re making decisions that impact the life of your child, whether they’ve popped their head out yet or not.

That’s what being a father is—making conscious and intentional decisions to best care for your kid and give them a life worth living.

It’s that lesson and so many more that have come my way over the past few months that are moving me toward writing more about this.

It’s worth being said: dads of 10, or expectant dads in the first days of finding out, you’re going to struggle.

You’re going to make decisions that you second-guess.

You’re going to be unsure of what to do next.

You’re going to be hesitant.

You’re going to see all of your insecurities float to the surface.

We all do.

It’s what you do next that counts.

It’s how you choose to show up for your kid.

Nothing more.