Why I’m here
I’ve recently become a parent. It is undoubtedly the most profound experience and honour of my life.
When preparing for the baby (can you ever actually be prepared??), I couldn’t find much on how to navigate it all as a non-binary parent. I leaned into a lot of dad content, as I was the non birthing parent looking to show up for both my postpartum wife and my baby. And look, some of it did resonate, but a lot of it was rather ridiculous and unnecessarily gendered.
I was particularly tickled with the app ‘daddy up’ that took the concept of tracking and matching fetus growth with other objects and instead of the usual fruit comparison, they likened it with woodland creatures and shed tools. Something about that was very funny to me; like comparing a fetus to a tape measure somehow made the whole thing more masculine. In saying this, I checked the app every week and watched my baby go from the size of a sweet sugar ant to an ice pick axe and then to a mallard duck, and did love the humour and whimsy that app brought me.
So in saying all this, I’ve decided to journal my parenting experiences and reflections in a public domain, because I genuinely didn’t find much that spoke to my lived experience directly. My hope is that another non-binary parent can somehow come across me in the depths of the internet and feel seen.
And you may be wondering, how much does your gender identity really come into play as a parent? Well for me, it’s A LOT. It’s in life admin and next of kin hospital admissions, it’s on congrats cards and in conversations about what the baby will call you. It’s at parent groups when you’re deeply aware that you’re not mum or dad, and ultimately, it’s when your baby looks at you lovingly, and all-knowingly and you are suddenly vulnerable and courageous and delighted to be yourself.