When do you exactly become a dad?

Was it when the kid is born? It’s not wrong. Yes, I am a father in biological and legal sense from this May. But it didn’t hit me then that I “became” a father. (If the special bunny quotes helped in any way to make it clear :P)

The moment my kid was born, it seemed like everyone wanted to make sure I became one. The doctor said, “congratulations, you became a father”. All I could see was my uncertain wife on one side of the curtain and a wailing red tomato being passed from one nurse to another on the other side. It hardly seemed like a place to celebrate, let alone become a father.

Was it when you pick up the baby? My friend, who became a father recently, said so. But that didn’t work for me.

Maybe firsts are overrated. Was it when you spend your first day with the baby? All I remember was asking the nurses to take the baby back to the nursery, where the baby experts could do their thing. I am probably, barely, at best an okay adult. Taking care of a very cranky baby a few hours out in the world seemed like the last place to become a father.

By the third day in the hospital, it seemed everyone desperately wanted me to become one. Nurses would refer to me as “papa”, “father”, or “daddy”. Probably they were running a poll or experiment on what word Indians react well to. When I heard them refer me as “dad”, I used to look over my shoulder to check if my dad had made a surprise visit. Because that’s the primary person my mind had mapped that word to for 33 years.

Maybe I came too far forward in my story. Maybe one becomes a father during the nine months. You, after all, get almost three quarters of a year to fully register that a change is coming your way. During the pregnancy, I remember looking at family-lunch-at-a-table scenes and tearing up. When I was a kid, I made fun of my mom for getting sentimental watching movies. That’s karma, I guess. Anyway, getting sentimental about a still-almost-probablistic baby didn’t feel like an enough reason to become a father.

Would it be when we brought the baby home? That day arrived. We had everything: a diaper-changing station so that the baby would be comfortable during her intimate pees and poops, A breast pump so that precious reserves are mined in advance, a bassinet for a comfortable royal sleep. I felt very proud of the prep. All the baby-home-checklists had been put to good use. (I didn’t need to become a father for me to be proud that I was able to tick all the boxes.)

But when the baby did come home, one hour into it, she judged her palace, was moderately comfortable with it, and started crying. Of all the things the house had ready, one thing was missing. Somehow, all the checklists I had missed that one crucial thing: formula milk.

When the baby wasn’t content with breast milk and continued crying, that’s when it hit me. We didn’t have formula. Conveniently, like an old Hindi movie at a crucial moment, it started raining. Every grocery delivery app estimated a delivery time of an hour or more. The baby’s cries were boring holes in my head. My vision couldn’t see anything else except now-slightly-less-red tomato.

I rushed from the house to a nearby supermarket, bought the closest formula that I thought was sensible, and rushed back. I figured out how to mix it, heat it to the right temperature, feed a very hungry baby, clean some very smelly poops, and tidy the house.

By that time, I was a house helper, a grocery delivery boy, a poop cleaner, and a semi-confinement nanny. All of that ended with a 3-day-old baby resting against my chest and finally sleeping contentedly.

It felt like a short break in the middle of a war. Hardly seemed like a coronation time. But that was the first time I had an inkling that I became a father.

It’s been three months from that moment. I don’t know particularly when I became a father. If I even had that “one” or “the” moment. But I do have memories like post-war artifacts proving that I became one. For example:

Two years ago, I lost my hair to alopecia totalis and I accepted my new bald look. Even though I “accepted” (at this point, I need to stop these bunny quotes), I paced my transition. I wore caps, beanies, and wigs, consciously or subconsciously, especially in front of the camera. I didn’t update my social media pictures for the last 2 years, or made sure I wore some hair piece when I did.

When our baby was three months old, I was looking at a picture that we just took and I immediately updated my socials. It came so naturally. I looked at myself in the picture and I was happy with what I was seeing.

And maybe that’s what this is all about. Not becoming someone new, but becoming myself again :)