The first look took me completely by surprise.
Everything else we had spent the last six months researching, planning, working towards. The cot was installed. The room freshly painted yellow - we decided to be surprised by the sex, rather than find out from the scan so we could paint blue or pink. I had read up abut the technicalities of baby care, and how to be a supportive husband for a new mother. The visit from my mum had been planned. The plane ticket for her mum had been booked. Time off work scheduled. The technology researched and in place.
Everything was ready except me.
As I saw the wailing scrap of my daughter for the first time, like so many new fathers before me, I was overwhelmed with a slew of competing emotions. Pride, joy, fear, gratitude, a deep sense of my own weakness and frailty - and overpowering unbreakable love. People throw the word miracle around a lot. But when you see one in front of you, it's effect on you is earth shattering.
I wept.
Now the father of three teenage daughters, I don't cry so much, but I continue to experience all of those emotions in some measure as a father. I took to being a dad fairly well, I think. I was good at being fun daddy, silly daddy, engaged daddy with small children. I have my collection of fun parent stores to tell about how I got it wrong, and the scrapes we got into and the trips to casualty in the early hours of the morning.
The transition to "dad-with-teenagers" has been harder to handle. It's a profound gear shift in thinking as you move from being the centre of their world to being someone they push against and wrestle with as they move towards maturity and independence in the way they think and live. After a poor start (sorry Jenny) I think I'm getting into the swing of it.
As a Christian dad, there are some fundamentals that I have always had pinned firmly on my mental "Dad to-do list".
I've failed periodically in some of these areas, but keep coming back to them as the fundamentals of fatherhood. I'm around - and trying to be around more. I'm trying to do things with each of them they will enjoy - even when it takes me out of my own comfort zone. I try to talk about faith in Christ outside praying before food and church. I pray for each of them every day, and cry to God that he would have mercy on them.
And if you're a dad reading this on Father's day - don't obsess about how much you've failed (that's all of us) - just pick up again on one or all of these areas, and keep going. You may just get back bored indifference or hostile sarcasm. But deep down they will learn, appreciate and be becoming secure adults. Which after all, is the job God has given you as a parent.