A Dad's Letter to His Unborn Kid

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A dad-to-be pens some sweet words to his child-to-be

By Matt Blair

The trouble with writing a letter to a son that hasn’t been born yet is that there’s so much to say, it’s hard to know where to begin. Meanwhile, the more you think about how huge a thing fatherhood is, the more mistakes you realize you’re bound to make.

Before long, the only point you can hope to get across is “I hope I don’t screw this up.”

For one thing, this early on, it’s hard to give you any specific advice. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t even know you. The doctor thinks you’ll be a boy, but it’s too soon to say for sure.

And what if you turn out to be a girl? That would be great, of course, but I’ll already have embarrassed you by calling you a boy in front of a national readership. Mistake number one!

Even knowing you’ll probably be a boy offers up a whole range of things I could do wrong. Should I encourage you to be good at sports? If you don’t like sports, will you feel like I’m pressuring you? Should I try and get good at sports myself, so you don’t have a lousy coach? If you do turn out to be a girl, would it make this entire paragraph sexist?

I’m being unfair, and I’m sorry. I know this is a lot to lay on someone who weighs less than a sandwich. After all, this isn’t even about me; your mother’s the one doing all the hard work while I read the books, lift heavy things, and try not to say something stupid. She deserves the real attention, and she might as well enjoy it while it lasts, because soon our lives are going to revolve around you.

Besides, you’re the one with all the big challenges ahead. I don’t mean to brag, but I can already walk and talk. I can eat solid food and get what I want without crying. I don’t even need diapers, and if I play my cards right, I never will again.

You’ll learn to do all of these things, and I’ll be there to help you, but it’s tough to explain how to do them in a letter. Letters are for the important, big picture, “father and son/maybe daughter” stuff that turns even the toughest expecting father into a trembling mess if he really thinks about it.
What if I’m not a good listener? What if you never feel like I gave you enough attention and love? What if we end up like the kid and the dad in Field of Dreams, and the only way to make things right is to come back from the dead and play a game of catch with you? And if so, what if you don’t like sports?

How about this? I can’t promise I won’t make mistakes. In fact, I can promise I will. But I can also promise I’ll try my best, and I’ll put you ahead of everything else in my life.

If I had actually manned up and given you some real fatherly advice, it might have been something like “do one thing in life, and do it well.” Instead of giving you that advice, I’ll promise to take it. I’ll try and make “being a dad” my one thing, if you try and turn out as great as we know you’ll be. Deal?

Oh, and I promise not to create a Twitter account where I pretend to be you and say all the cute things you’d probably say if you could talk. Those are just weird.

Matt Blair is an expecting father who lives, works and writes in Toronto. You can visit him online at mattblair.ca, or on Twitter at @mjblair.