Why does it feel unexpected?

When my daughter was born it was weird rush of excitement, fear and sudden feeling of surprise. I mean the first two make sense but the last really took me for … well, surprise. I mean I had a little more than nine months heads up that this was going to happen so, Why did it feel unexpected? This wasn’t my first time seeing a birth so it couldn’t have been what I saw. It is confusing but I don’t why it happens and there really isn’t much out there for this.

I am writing this because it is a strange feeling and I am halfway to understanding it, but it is a thing I am curious if it is normal? Being that this my first child being born I can’t say anything experience, which is typically what I rely on to rationalize things. But through a method of thinking about it I, maybe, came to some rationalization of why it was a surprise.

My rationalization comes from first analyzing the situation’s context, surroundings and greater picture of the world. The context being that my first child was being born, I had barley shed the graduation gown from college, just getting my first real job, and in the process quitting the job that got me through college. It was a lot of personal movement on top of the moment that some call the moment that makes men out of boys. Then on top of the context of my life that was in a bit of upheaval, the nation and practically the whole world are going crazy trying to solve this pandemic, with wild and fickle policy, that seemed to be flip from day to day. It was an uncertain time for many and for me life suddenly got very real for me during this uncertain time.

So looking at it from the lens that the world was literally on fire more than it had been in a minute. In the chaos I was supposed to be able become a dad, I think it is always a shock when you see your child is born and I don’t think I am special for having it, I do think that I found myself under an extraordinarily different set of world events that may give me a stranger and more extreme shock to becoming a dad. I am probably thinking too much about it but again it is a strange feeling becoming a parent, and it is a strange world that hopefully I can at least prepare my daughter for it.

thanks for reading.