After forty years of isolation, fatherhood forces me beyond the walls I built. One visit to a kiddie pool reveals just how profoundly Sara is changing my life.
Author: YANIV
Is Sara an Antisemitic Ukrainian? | One Baby, One Exhausted Dad, and a Sinister Plan to Deprive Him of Sleep, Break His Back, and Publicly Humiliate Him by Screaming
An exhausted single father begins to suspect that his nine-month-old daughter, Sara, is carrying out a carefully planned operation involving sleep deprivation, a broken back, and public humiliation through screaming. A darkly comic story about sleepless nights, a strong-willed baby, and one father who knows exactly who holds all the cards.
Since October 7: How Fatherhood Changed the Way I See Israel’s Darkest Day
Since Sara was born, October 7 is no longer just a national tragedy in my eyes. It has become a father’s deepest fear. In this post, I reflect on how parenthood changed the way I think about that terrible day, the babies who were harmed, and the parents who faced the unimaginable. This is a deeply personal story about fatherhood, love, fear, trauma, and the struggle to comprehend a reality that no parent should ever have to endure.
A Single Father, a Baby and the Sound of Sirens
What does war look like through the eyes of a single father raising a five-month-old baby?
For Yaniv, a 52-year-old single father, the answer lies somewhere between nighttime feedings, air-raid sirens, and repeated trips to a safe room. As the war disrupts the fragile routine he has built with his daughter Sara, sleep becomes a luxury and survival becomes a matter of adaptation.
In this deeply personal reflection, Yaniv shares one exhausting night that captures the reality of parenting during wartime: the constant interruptions, the accumulating fatigue, and the quiet determination to keep going despite it all.
At the heart of the story is a simple hope shared by parents everywhere—that their children will one day inherit a safer world than the one they were born into.
A Few Words Before We Begin
My name is Yaniv. I’m a single father, 53 years old, to a baby girl named Sara, born through a long and complex surrogacy journey that lasted about four years. This blog is about fatherhood, loneliness, small mistakes, and big moments —and about trying to figure out, as I go, how to be a better… Continue reading A Few Words Before We Begin
Unconditional Love: The Unexpected Challenge of Being My Daughter’s Favorite Person
For most of my life, I dreamed of experiencing unconditional love. After a long and exhausting four-year surrogacy journey, I finally became a father at the age of 52, and my daughter Sara brought into my life a love unlike anything I had ever known.
But as our bond grew stronger, I began to discover an unexpected challenge. Sara’s attachment to me became so intense that she often rejected the company of other people who loved her deeply—especially her grandmother, who adores her more than anyone else in the world.
In this deeply personal reflection, I explore the joy, responsibility, and difficult questions that come with being a single father, and the realization that sometimes the greatest act of love is helping a child learn to let go.
A Lesser Child of GOD | How Sara Changed My Relationship with God, Faith, and Myself
For years, I blamed God for everything that was missing from my life—my failures, my loneliness, and the feeling that no matter how hard I tried, my prayers went unanswered. As my frustration grew, I abandoned traditional prayer and replaced it with daily conversations with God, hoping He would eventually listen.
Everything changed when I began my surrogacy journey. For the first time, my prayers were no longer about me. They were about the child I longed to bring into the world. During four years of waiting, I prayed for a healthy baby, a safe birth, and the chance to become the father she deserved.
When Sara was finally born, healthy and unmistakably my daughter, something inside me changed. For the first time in my life, I felt that my most important prayer had been answered. Since then, prayer has become a daily ritual, gratitude has replaced resentment, and fatherhood has given me a sense of purpose, belonging, and love that I never thought possible.
I am no longer a lesser child of God.
To Change: How My Daughter Sara Pulled Me Out of a Lifetime of Isolation
For most of my life, I lived in almost complete isolation. I avoided people, family gatherings, emotional connection, and built a quiet world for myself behind four walls. Then, at 52 years old, I decided to become a father.
In this deeply personal post, I share how the birth of my daughter Sara forced me to confront a lifetime of loneliness and emotional detachment, and slowly transform into someone completely different — not for myself, but for her.
This is a story about isolation, family, late fatherhood, and the incredible power a child can have to pull someone back into the world.
Dracula, Werewolves, Ghosts… and Sara | A Single Father’s Sleepless Night With a Midnight Baby
A 53-year-old single father discovers that his seven-month-old daughter Sara has developed a very clear philosophy about life: nighttime is for parties, games, and exhausting her father beyond human limits. Between sleepless chaos, wasted bottles of formula, and hallucinations involving Dracula and Nosferatu, he struggles to survive another night in a household where the world belongs to babies — especially Sara.
Between a Nightmare and Reality | A Dream About Blood, a Memory from Surgery, and the Strain of Single Fatherhood at 52
A disturbing nightmare in which I was urinating and spitting blood continues to trouble me weeks after I woke up. Trying to understand its meaning leads me to an old physical memory from a surgery I once underwent—and to deeper reflections about the emotional weight and responsibility of being a 52-year-old single father to a six-month-old baby. Somewhere between dream and reality, I try to understand what my body and mind might be telling me—and find the strength to keep going, for Sara.
