Recollections of a first time father

Just when he was beginning to enjoy being young and gainfully employed 27-year-old Frank Odyek unexpectedly discovered that he was going to be a father.
“The first time my son said “dada” my heart skipped a beat then burst into a zillion little pieces. Just when I thought I would die, I felt the pieces gel together and soar with new life, new perceptions and desires. It was as if a new person had taken over my body. At that moment I learnt with conviction that there is no limit to how much a human heart can love,” Odyek tells of first time fatherhood.

The bombshell
Odyek, a business development executive, was a typical Kampala young man partying up a storm with his friends all over Uganda. The last thing he expected was settling down and becoming someone’s dad. “I’m now ashamed by my reaction when my then girlfriend now wife told me she was pregnant. I was terrified by the prospect of the responsibility of fatherhood,” Odyek reminisces.
He was concerned that he would not be able to support a family both emotionally and financially and told his girlfriend as much. “I remember opening my mouth to protest and promptly shutting up at the sight of the look on my wife’s face that seemed to dare me say anything stupid and be murdered,” adds Odyek. But thanks to his wife’s strength, he was soon on board with the baby venture.

Unexpected delivery
The now father of two reveals that they had a smooth pregnancy and were counting days when his wife woke him up with the news that the baby had not kicked for over 12 hours. The couple rushed to hospital and was advised to take a scan. Although the lab technician assured them that the baby was well because he had a strong heartbeat, the doctor felt differently. “The doctor said that he had had a multitude of such experiences where the mothers goes back home only to get complications later so he decided to deliver the baby there and then,” Odyek recounts.
The new arrangement threw the father-to-be in fresh panic unearthing all the doubt that he had carefully buried the past months. “The realisation that I would be a father in a few hours left me stunned. I felt the ground sink. For a long time I just stood staring blankly until my wife directed me to go home and pick the baby’s and her belongings for the delivery,” Odyek reminisces. Reluctant to leave his wife alone, he called in relatives and friends to stand in for him as he went to pick up the suitcase that had been packed weeks before.
Luckily the baby was not delivered until Odyek returned to the hospital. He recalls hearing a baby cry as he was sitting surrounded by his friends who had come for emotional support and knowing without doubt that his son had been born. “I cannot tell how I knew but I knew that that was my son’s cry,” he adds.
Odyek describes the first time he held his son as a profoundly life changing moment. “If you have watched an engineering demonstration of nuts and bolts turning and clicking together to form say an engine that is how I felt as parts of my old self melted away and new ones developed. I must have blacked out for seconds because when I came to my senses, I found myself crying; embarrassingly huge heartrending sobs. I had never cried before,” he elaborates.
The bond
The reluctant father took to fatherhood like a fish in water. He says him and his son whom they named Emmanuel Komagum Odyek became synchronised like clocks tuned to each other. “I would wake up just moments before he did for his night feeds,” the proud father explains.
He says Emma’s birth brought him nothing but abundant blessings and he is better off as a father than he would have been on his own.