There is still a stigma out there for males not to be emotional, not to be hands-on, not to stress, not to cry. This stigma has to change because it is making it so hard for us to talk, talk about how we feel and why we are feeling it. 

Before I continue, I want to explain this may not relate to all fathers out there, but I have seen this lack of emotional regulation repeatedly.

I am lucky I can express my emotions fairly well and I have a great support system in place around me. But there are many, many men out there that aren’t like me.

I am an emotional male, I like my Romcoms with a glass of wine and like to have a cry. Girls’ night (with Ben) has been many of good nights.

For our regular blog readers, you know, when Heidi was pregnant with the twins, there were complications and it knocked me around, I got sucked into a dark depression, one that took me a very long time to recover from.

But today I want to talk about Lincoln. I love Lincoln, I have since the day we saw those 2 blue lines on the stick. Lincoln was the first person in the world to give me the ultimate gift,  the gift of fatherhood. However, it wasn’t all smooth sailing.

During the pregnancy with Lincoln, there was a complication and the doctors told us that Heidi had a 50% chance of miscarriage. This Shattered and broke my heart into a million pieces.

This broke me harder than anything else I had experienced in my 30+ years of being on this planet. The number of tears I cried in the emergency room for the possibility of losing someone I had never met yet was seemingly endless.

Now, I’m not an overly open religious person, I have my beliefs and I don’t announce them publicly or push them onto anyone else. However, on that fateful Saturday morning at 4 am,  I was on my knees in the laundry sobbing and praying,¦ no, begging, for my little boy not to be taken away from me.

That was the first time in my life, that I felt useless. Helpless. Out of control of life. These emotions came so quick, all of a sudden I was full of these new emotions and I didn’t know what to do with them. A dangerous cocktail of uncertainty, fear and sadness.

Lincoln came out ok. He came out perfect and to this day, I hug him, I kiss him and I always tell him I love him.

The love from my friends and family got me through the sea of tears that I cried through this terrible time.

I always wonder, what if I didn’t have that support system or wasn’t able to express these emotions. I would of be an absolute mess, well more of a mess.

I just want to remind you that Dads aren’t superheroes when it comes to pregnancy. Dads stress when things don’t go to plan, we cry when things go wrong and cheer when things go right. Well, we want to, but sometimes we don’t, sometimes, it’s all held in on the inside eating away at us not wanting to say anything.

So if you are a new parents-to-be and you are feeling any of these emotions, put the phone down, turn the TV off and switch off social media for just enough time for you both to ask each other, honestly, “Are you ok?”