A personal post about single fatherhood, anxiety, and learning to see the world through my baby girl’s eyes—
Without running a proper survey—or even asking a single friend—I’m willing to bet there isn’t a parent alive who hasn’t tried, at least once, to see the world through their child’s eyes.
It sounds like the most natural impulse in the world: to know what the person you love most is feeling at any given moment, so you can be there the second they need you.
I experienced it for the first time the very moment Sara came into this world—and to be honest, I have never been more terrified.
The Moment I First Tried to Be “Sara”
I won’t go into the immediate bond I felt with Sara here. Maybe that deserves a post of its own.
But I will say this: the second I looked at her, I saw myself.
She looked so much like me there was no denying it.
I know—it’s a strange thought.
But for a moment it felt like I was looking at me… just smaller. Softer. This time… as a baby girl.
At first, it was magical. Hypnotic. Like something borrowed from a fairy tale.
And then came the next part.
The nightmare part—no less for me than for her.
Welcome to Planet Earth (The Brutal Version)
Because suddenly, with absolutely no warning, this helpless little creature is pulled out of the safest, warmest place on Earth… and dropped into a loud, cold world that doesn’t care who you are and doesn’t pause for your confusion.
A world that simply happens to you.
How is it possible that this tiny baby—who literally took her first breath a minute ago—is already being poked with needles?
How is it possible that before she’s even had time to recognize a human face, people feel free to touch her, handle her, flip her around, examine her… as if her brand-new body comes with an “Open for inspection” sticker?
And yes, I know: this is all routine. This is how hospitals work.
But try seeing it through her eyes.
Then came one specific moment that completely broke me.
The Neonatal Unit (And the Moment I Broke)
A nurse in the maternity ward pulled Sara out of her cozy, womb-like wrap with one hand, carried her to the sink, turned on the faucet—and placed her under a strong stream of water so hot the room filled with steam in seconds.
Sara screamed. Sharp. Panicked. Unfiltered.
And the nurse, without even looking at me, casually said:
“It’s fine. They’re used to this temperature.”
I froze.
That was the first time I heard my one-hour-old daughter scream like that.
And the person in charge—the person who was clearly experienced—looked completely unbothered.
My heart shattered.
A moment later, the nurse finished what, in my mind, felt like Sara’s official initiation ceremony into planet Earth. She dried her, wrapped her back up, and handed her to me as if she were returning a grocery bag.
By then, Sara was calm again.
I wasn’t.
I was shaking like an eight-year-old who got separated from his parents at a theme park.
The Wall I Built (And How She Destroyed It)
I know this isn’t typical. But after fifty-two years of emotional distance—and near-total isolation from other people—Sara’s birth did something to me overnight.
I suddenly started feeling what another human being feels.
I felt her distress in my bones.
I felt, deep in my aging heart, the terror of arriving in a brand-new world with no preparation, no language, and no control.
And here’s the irony: judging by the life I lived before Sara, you’d think this wouldn’t shake me so much.
I’ve always been anxious. I won’t even call it anxiety.
Let’s be honest: it was closer to paranoia.
I’ve spent most of my life painfully aware of how I’m perceived. How I’m judged. How I might fail. How I might be misunderstood.
Living like that for decades builds something inside you.
A wall.
A thick one.
My personal version of The Wall—the one Roger Waters sings about—protecting me like an emotional fortress.
But Sara’s birth destroyed that wall in seconds.
It taught me, with zero filters, what real humanity looks like. What real empathy feels like.
And how deeply another person’s pain can hit you when it’s no longer theoretical.
Would I have felt the same way if it were someone else’s baby?
Honestly? Probably not.
At most, I would’ve made the appropriate sympathetic face, said something like “Oh wow, poor thing,” and moved on with my day.
That was my old version of empathy: polite, socially acceptable… and mostly fake.
Which only proves the point.
Babies of the World, Unite
One of the hardest things about seeing the world through Sara’s eyes is her unbelievably frustrating diet.
There is no way Sara enjoys drinking baby formula eight times a day.
How does she do it, for the love of God?
How is it that in 2025—with all the innovation, technology, and artificial intelligence—we still haven’t invented something tastier?
Something with variety. Flavors. Options.
What could possibly be more basic and more human than that?
Just because babies can’t complain doesn’t mean we get to abandon them to this miserable, boring nutritional routine.
In one of my previous posts I wrote that Sara is a born boss—an actual leader, and a relentless, no-compromise kind of stubborn.
You know how it goes: once she decides something, no court in the world can stop her.
The more I think about it, if all the babies in the world could unite to rebel against this nutritional neglect, there is no doubt she’d be the one leading them—calling for a hunger strike and letting the parents suffer.
Knowing Sara, that day will come.
And the world will never be the same.
When Sara Was Born, I Was Born Too
When Sara was born, I was born too.
Now I live through her eyes—my miniature version, the upgraded model, the much better edition of me.
Every second, every moment, every breath feels like it belongs to her.
I’m going to do my best to experience the world through Sara so I can be there for her before she even asks.
Before she even realizes she needs help.
I know. It’s extreme.
Maybe it’ll pass.
Maybe it won’t.
For now, I’m enjoying it while I can—until the day I realize I’m becoming overprotective.
For now, I keep looking at the world through Sara’s eyes…
And somehow it has never looked so beautiful, or so full of hope.
There’s no doubt a baby’s first landing in our world is brutal.
And I can’t help wondering: is there really no softer way to welcome these fresh new citizens of Earth who just came out of the human oven?
Sure, you can’t exactly offer a pre-arrival orientation course.
But still.
A little compassion wouldn’t kill anyone.
About forty-five years ago, I watched a science show that featured a Russian medical experiment: giving birth in water, supposedly to soften the shock of leaving the warm, protected space babies spend nine months in.
Say what you want about the Soviets (yes, this was the Cold War era)…
At least they tried.
The title of this post is obviously a reference to Charlie Kaufman’s brilliant film Being John Malkovich (highly recommended if you haven’t seen it yet—like everything he’s written).
I’ve watched that movie many times and never imagined I’d experience it in real life.
Seeing the world through someone else’s eyes really is one of the most extraordinary things that can happen to a person.
And Sara—at just two and a half months old—has upgraded my life tenfold.
And before I end this post, just so I don’t come across as someone who hates humanity in general and hospital staff in particular: everything I wrote about the medical team was exaggerated for humor and storytelling.
I’m genuinely grateful to the incredible maternity ward staff who took care of Sara and me.
Now Tell Me
So tell me—how do you see the world through your children’s eyes?
And what on earth do you do when you have more than one kid at home?
Stay in Touch
If you enjoyed this post, feel free to subscribe by email—so you’ll automatically get a notification whenever a new post goes live.
No spam, no ads—just the posts.
Read Next
If you’d like to read more about Sara and our life together, here are two more posts you might enjoy:
Beyond the Blog
Alongside this blog, I also give talks about late fatherhood, surrogacy, and the emotional journey of becoming a parent later in life.
Sara and Me 
I wasn’t sure what to expect when I started reading this, but it pulled me in almost immediately. The way you describe trying to be “Sara” from the very beginning—especially the hospital scenes—felt raw and unsettling in a way that most parenting posts avoid. Lines like “a loud, cold world that doesn’t care who you are and doesn’t pause for your confusion” really stuck with me.
That said, there were moments where the intensity felt almost overwhelming. The neonatal unit scene, for example, is incredibly powerful, but it also left me feeling a bit trapped inside your anxiety, without much distance or relief as a reader. I understand that this is the point—but it’s definitely not an easy read.
What I appreciated most was your honesty about empathy. Admitting that your old version of empathy was “polite, socially acceptable… and mostly fake” takes a lot of self-awareness, and it’s rare to see someone say that so plainly without trying to soften it.
The humor around formula and “Babies of the World, Unite” was a surprising shift in tone. For me, it worked as a brief release, though I can imagine some readers feeling it breaks the emotional flow.
Overall, this didn’t feel like a typical fatherhood piece at all. It felt more like a meditation on vulnerability, fear, and what happens when emotional walls collapse overnight. It’s not comforting, and it’s not universally relatable—but it is honest, and it definitely lingered with me after I finished reading.
LikeLike
I’ll be honest: this isn’t usually the kind of parenting post I’m drawn to. It’s long, intense, and unapologetically inside one person’s head. But somehow, it still kept my attention.
What stood out to me most wasn’t the anxiety or even the hospital scenes — it was the voice. There’s a very specific mix here of dark humor, exaggeration, and self-awareness that makes the text feel more like a personal essay than a “dad blog.” The comparison to Being John Malkovich actually works, not as a gimmick, but as a way to frame the whole piece as an exercise in perspective rather than sentimentality.
I didn’t agree with everything (especially the hospital framing, which at times felt a bit unfair to the staff), and the formula section felt intentionally absurd — almost like a stand-up bit dropped into the middle of an essay. But that absurdity also made the narrator feel human, not curated.
This isn’t a post that tries to reassure or give advice. It doesn’t tell you how to parent, and it doesn’t try to make you feel good. It just says: this is what it felt like for me. And in a sea of polished, performative vulnerability online, that honesty is surprisingly refreshing.
LikeLike
I found myself underlining a lot while reading this, especially early on. The line
“a loud, cold world that doesn’t care who you are and doesn’t pause for your confusion”
perfectly captures something we all know intellectually but rarely allow ourselves to feel so vividly. From that moment, it was clear this wasn’t going to be a comforting parenting piece.
The hospital scenes are where the post really tightens its grip. The description of the nurse placing Sara “under a strong stream of water so hot the room filled with steam in seconds” followed by the casual “It’s fine. They’re used to this temperature.” is brutal. It’s written so viscerally that I almost wanted to look away. As a reader, I felt torn between understanding that this is routine medical care and fully sharing your sense that this was an “official initiation ceremony into planet Earth.” It’s effective—but also emotionally relentless.
What surprised me most was how self-critical the post is. When you write,
“That was my old version of empathy: polite, socially acceptable… and mostly fake,”
it reframes the entire essay. This stops being just about fatherhood or anxiety and becomes an uncomfortable reflection on how conditional our empathy often is.
The tonal shift in “Babies of the World, Unite” caught me off guard. Lines like
“There is no way Sara enjoys drinking baby formula eight times a day”
and the image of her leading a hunger strike are almost absurd, but they also underline the same core idea: how powerless babies are, and how normalized that powerlessness becomes. I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or feel guilty—and I suspect that tension is intentional.
By the time I reached
“Now I live through her eyes—my miniature version, the upgraded model, the much better edition of me,”
the post felt less like a story about Sara and more like a confession about transformation. The repeated admissions—“I know. It’s extreme. Maybe it’ll pass. Maybe it won’t.”—add a vulnerability that prevents the text from sliding into sentimentality.
This isn’t an easy read, and it doesn’t try to be likable. But when you end by asking whether there’s “really no softer way to welcome these fresh new citizens of Earth,” it feels earned. Even if I didn’t agree with every framing choice, I finished the post feeling like I’d been inside someone else’s nervous system for a while—and that’s not something most writing manages to do.
LikeLike