Game changer

This young man I know looks disheveled with unshaven face and bloodshot eyes. Sleepless nights? I inquire. He confesses to feeling the toll of nightly wakes these days. But no honeymoon here! Blessed with a beautiful baby, all is well, yet now he’s losing track of whether he’s on his head or his heels!

I’m a tad gleefully at the travails of brand new fatherhood. He now walks in the careworn shoes of generations past – parents, grandparents, and feels the lows they had with him that must never have occurred before. A rude shock, though, for him to realize he no longer is the centre of that universe.

Change in the new mother is dramatic. Overnight she transforms from wifey into somebody strange - the new mother transfixed with child. Awash with the maternity hormones, her system resets, restructuring her universe to be so. That then on, the needs of that wailing “bundle of joy” shall take precedence. Thus, Nature ensures infant survival.

Suddenly, from alpha to ordinary! The young man nods. That I experience every day, he rues. It is important for the young couple to rediscover romance in their partnership. But to put others first, is an invaluable lesson of maturity, many men need to learn. I’m sure that this new father secretly resents the carpet being yanked away from beneath his feet. Still he’s lucky to be human; male insects have it far worse. Were he a praying mantis, his head might have been yanked right off when usefulness was done!