An open letter to dads, from a dad who's still figuring it out.
Yesterday, I heard my baby's heartbeat. Less than an hour later, I was unmuting my microphone to present ideas for a brand positioning campaign. And for some reason, that transition hit me harder than usual.
We had our second appointment with the gynecologist at 4:30pm. My wife was lying there, Olivia was with us, and I was trying to explain to our two-year-old what was happening on that little black-and-white screen. Somewhere in those shades of gray was her future sibling. A tiny heart beating away, completely unaware of how much was already changing around it. It's a strange thing, listening to someone's heartbeat before you've ever met them. Before you know their face, their personality, or whether they're going to inherit your stubbornness, which, for everyone's sake, I really hope they don't.
By 5:15pm, I was in a brainstorming session. Ideas to present, people waiting for my input. I'd rushed home, joined the call, unmuted my microphone, and gone back to being a Creative Director. Just like that. I've made similar switches hundreds of times, from playing with Olivia to answering a client, from a difficult conversation with my wife to a meeting where I'm expected to have answers. But this time, I noticed something I hadn't really paid attention to before. My brain had moved on, but emotionally, I was still somewhere in that examination room.
There's actually a psychological concept called micro-role transitions. Researchers Blake Ashforth, Glen Kreiner, and Mel Fugate explored how we constantly move between the different roles we occupy in life, and how crossing those boundaries can be more demanding than we realize (Ashforth et al.). Which makes sense, except I'm not sure anyone ever explained what to do when you're expected to be completely present in one role while you're still processing what just happened in another. Because I was participating in that meeting. I was thinking, contributing, doing my job. But a part of me was still listening to that heartbeat.
And I think that's something we don't talk about enough when we talk about fatherhood. We discuss sleepless nights, diapers, financial responsibilities, being present, being good husbands, raising good kids. But I don't remember anyone preparing me for the emotional transitions between all those things, or how difficult it can be to explain what you're feeling when you're not even sure what that feeling is.
Pregnancy is an especially strange experience from a father's perspective. My wife is physically connected to our baby every second of every day. Her body is changing, adapting, creating an entire human being while she continues taking care of the little human we already have. My experience is different. I feel connected to our baby, I love this child already, but pregnancy sometimes becomes overwhelmingly real in these intense little windows. A positive test. An ultrasound. A heartbeat. Sociologist Jan Draper studied how fathers experience ultrasounds and found that seeing the baby often strengthens their awareness of the pregnancy, making the child feel more real (Draper). I find that fascinating because it puts words to something I've experienced twice now, yet still struggle to explain.
Except this time, there's already a little girl running around the house who needs us. And that's a whole different ball game. Olivia is two, still breastfeeding, deeply attached to her mom, and lately there have been more tears, more sensitivity, more moments when she needs our attention immediately, preferably both of us, preferably yesterday. I don't know how much of that has to do with sensing that something is changing or how much is simply being two years old. Research by psychologist Brenda Volling suggests that children adjust to the arrival of a sibling in very different ways, without a universal pattern of distress (Volling). Still, watching your daughter struggle with feelings she doesn't yet have the words to explain does something to you. Especially when you realize you're not much better at explaining your own.
Meanwhile, my wife is exhausted. She's pregnant, still breastfeeding, raising a toddler, and somehow continuing to show up for the rest of life. I watch her push through days when I know she'd love nothing more than twelve uninterrupted hours of sleep and absolutely nobody touching her. And I want to make things easier. I want to be more patient when Olivia cries for the seventeenth time before breakfast, more attentive to what my wife needs, more capable of taking things off her plate. But I'm also trying to be good at my job, build a better future for us, keep up with the bills we already have and the ones that haven't arrived yet. Sometimes I'm tired, distracted, impatient, or simply not as good at any of those things as I want to be. Which is difficult to admit when you love the people you're doing them for.
I think this is where a lot of dads get stuck. We care deeply, but somewhere between trying to be dependable and trying to figure everything out, we forget that we're also experiencing something enormous. Psychologists Ronald Levant and Mike Parent have studied how traditional expectations of masculinity, particularly the idea that men should restrict emotional expression, can leave some men struggling to identify or put their feelings into words (Levant and Parent). A separate 2025 review of 47 studies on fathers seeking emotional support during pregnancy and early parenthood found barriers involving masculine expectations, fathers' perceptions of their own needs, and access to support (Mancinelli and Filippi). Apparently, some of us have spent so much time learning how to keep it together that we've had very little practice explaining what happens when we can't.
That last part really stayed with me. Because I can walk into a room, defend a creative strategy, solve a problem, or explain why an idea isn't working. But ask me why hearing my baby's heartbeat and then joining a meeting made me emotional, and suddenly I'm struggling to find the words. And I wonder how many men experience something similar without ever realizing that the difficulty itself might be something we've learned.
And I know mothers experience these transitions too, often while carrying a physical and emotional weight that fathers can't fully understand. We're fortunate that my wife can be home with Olivia, but that doesn't mean she gets a break from being needed, especially now. This isn't about comparing who has it harder. That would be a pretty pointless competition, and I'm fairly certain I'd lose before finishing my opening argument. It's about recognizing that fathers have an emotional experience worth understanding without taking anything away from mothers. We can be grateful, excited, overwhelmed, scared, and completely in love with the lives we're building, sometimes within the same five minutes.
I wonder how many dads have gone from hearing difficult news about their child to answering emails. From fighting back tears in the car to walking into a meeting. From holding their newborn for the first time to worrying about whether they can afford the life they want to give them. Or how many have experienced something unbelievably beautiful and moved on so quickly that they never really got to enjoy it. How many of us have gotten so used to being able to keep going that we've stopped noticing what we're carrying?
I don't have the answers to any of this. I'm still learning how to be a dad to the little girl I already have while figuring out how to become a dad to someone I haven't met yet. I'm trying to be a better husband in a season when my wife needs more from me, not less. And somewhere in there, I'm still a person with ideas, dreams, insecurities, and a career that matters to me. Some days I handle it pretty well. Other days, I probably owe everyone in my house an apology. But I want us to talk about these things because I suspect a lot of fathers are quietly moving through moments they haven't even given themselves the chance to understand.
I keep thinking about all the dads who have their own version of what happened to me today. Maybe yours was a hospital visit, a difficult morning with your kids, or something as simple as watching your child do something for the first time and wishing you could stay in that moment a little longer. Maybe you went straight to work afterward, sat through meetings, answered emails, made decisions, and nobody around you had any idea what kind of day you'd already had. Maybe you didn't even realize how much it affected you until hours later, when everything finally got quiet. I think that's what I wish we talked about more. The things we experience as fathers that don't always make it into conversation, sometimes because there's no time, and sometimes because we genuinely don't know how to explain them.
At 4:30pm yesterday, I was in a room with my wife and daughter, watching a tiny heart beat on a black-and-white screen. For a few minutes, all four of us were there together, even if one of us hasn't been born yet. By 5:15pm, I was talking about advertising ideas. And today, as I sit here writing this, I realize that what affected me wasn't just how quickly everything happened. It was that I never really gave myself a chance to feel any of it. I was too busy getting to the next thing.
I can still picture Olivia looking at that screen, trying to understand the little life growing inside her mom. I can still hear that heartbeat. And I think about how many other dads might have carried a moment like that into the rest of their day without saying a word. I wonder if they, too, sometimes wish they could go back, even for a few minutes, before the meetings, the bills, and everything else that needed them.
Because if I could go back to 4:30 yesterday, I think I'd just want to stay in that room a little longer.
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Works Cited
Ashforth, Blake E., Glen E. Kreiner, and Mel Fugate. “All in a Day’s Work: Boundaries and Micro Role Transitions.” Academy of Management Review, vol. 25, no. 3, 2000, pp. 472–491. https://doi.org/10.5465/AMR.2000.3363315.
Draper, Jan. “‘It Was a Real Good Show’: The Ultrasound Scan, Fathers and the Power of Visual Knowledge.” Sociology of Health & Illness, vol. 24, no. 6, 2002, pp. 771–795. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.00318.
Levant, Ronald F., and Mike C. Parent. “The Development and Evaluation of a Brief Form of the Normative Male Alexithymia Scale (NMAS-BF).” Journal of Counseling Psychology, vol. 66, no. 2, 2019, pp. 224–233. https://doi.org/10.1037/cou0000312.
Mancinelli, Elisa, and Bianca Filippi. “Help-Seeking in Perinatal Fathers: A Scoping Review of Needs, Barriers, Facilitators, and Access to Support.” eClinicalMedicine, vol. 89, 2025, article 103512. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eclinm.2025.103512.
Volling, Brenda L. “Family Transitions Following the Birth of a Sibling: An Empirical Review of Changes in the Firstborn’s Adjustment.” Psychological Bulletin, vol. 138, no. 3, 2012, pp. 497–528. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0026921.