What it's really like to be a dad.

you might be wondering what it's like to
be a father and if you have your own
kids you might be wondering what someone
else's perspective is about their
fatherhood today I wanted to tell a few
stories that exemplify what it's like to
be a father and why if you don't come
into fatherhood with a a strength of
mind it can really break you there's
things that can happen as a father that
are out of your control and can can
really traumatize you so some of these
stories I'm going to start with the
first story was um my first life or
death experience with my daughter so
this is an experience where
she could have experienced a fatal in
incident because so she she's allergic
to Dairy eggs tree nuts she was allergic
to peanuts as well and she was also
allergic to gluten at one point so like
wheat
products so the way we found this out
was we were just feeding her some
noodles at dinner one day and her that
later like half an hour later her lips
started puffing up and I'm like she
looks weird right now my wife didn't
believe me at the time but we ended up
taking her to the ER anyway and on the
way to the ER she started going limp and
we were we were really scared because at
this time we were in traffic after a
football game uh outside of
LSU so so we're trying to get to the
hospital as fast as we can and we get
there they diagnos her with a bunch of
these allergies uh gave her an EpiPen
and some B drill and she was all right
after after that I think she did stay
the night but this leads into the life
or death
situation so my wife was flying back
from Malaysia with my daughter I had
come back uh to the us to start working
again already and I get a call in the
middle of the night it's like 1:00 a.m.
my phone's ringing I pick it up and it's
my wife she's in tears freaking out
saying she's having an allergic reaction
right now she's over the Pacific Ocean I
didn't even know how she was calling
me so she's over the Pacific Ocean and
she had given my daughter a an epip pin
and also some
badil and which if you're uninformed you
might think that this is fine now but
whenever you're
you take you take an epip pin you need
to go to the ER after because there may
be a rebound effect of the
allergen so that's what we were we were
worried about we were worried that the
symptoms would go away and then come
back even fiercer and potentially be
fatal so um we were I was just we we
couldn't do anything we just had to wait
this out and I was just pretty much on
my knees this whole time
just I'm praying to I don't even believe
in I don't I mean I don't know what I
believe in I was just praying into the
air saying like
please whoever is out there help this
little girl make it through and I mean
thankfully she did we made it through
and uh she was able to get back to the
States and we took her to the hospital
and everything was
fine but what this taught me about
fatherhood was that for a I mean you
can't control everything but B I'm not
as Invincible as I thought I was
so as a young man you pretty much think
you're in Invincible because I mean
pretty much any situation you get go
into you're going to come out and be
fine even like if someone else no one
else is really on your
mind um it's just you're you're young
you're fit you can do whatever but now I
have this extension of me that feels
even more important than myself
so this fragile thing right this child
is completely dependent on you and it
doesn't really fully the the
consequences of that don't fully
manifest until you have a situation like
this hopefully you never experienced a
situation like this but that those
situations really
show what it takes to be a parent I
think and you might think that I would
come out come out of this weaker than
before but because of this vulnerability
but I think that's where parents really
shine because they show resilience by
taking this Frailty and using it as a
source of motivation as a source of of
Their Own Strength because now they have
to be even stronger to compensate for um
the Frailty of their
children and I think this is
uh it should be a universal parent
parental tra trait I I would say that
most parents are like this I like to be
optimistic though so um I mean I could
be
wrong yeah I mean it's not just it's not
just resilience and strength that is
part of the uh experience of being a
father you can you also experience these
moments where you see um that your kids
are stronger than you could ever imagine
as well so uh for example my daughter
she because she's so allergic to all
these different things during Halloween
um obviously she can't eat any of the
candy she can eat some things here and
there uh but just to be safe we don't
let really let her eat any of the
Halloween candy but she'll still go
gather the candy and be happy and um
just come home and not not even worry
about it and it's also moments whenever
like we go out to eat and there's has
nothing for her to eat and she's just
I'm
okay I'm okay and we'll still find her
something to eat
but watching her be so mature and like
handling her situation so well it that's
a different kind of emotion that father
that it brings a completely different
depth to being a
father yeah so I just I mean the truth
about being a father is that there more
love more pain than you can ever
imagine
so and you're more resilient than you
ever thought possible so um I'll see you
next time