My daughter, I told someone yesterday that we had a baby. Then it hit me. I didn’t have a baby. Your MOM had a baby. I just said, “Push.” Believe me, you’re in this world because your MOM had you, not me… which makes me wonder if sexism began long ago when men watched women give birth and felt totally inadequate about ourselves. We used to create religions and art to exalt the voluptuous figures of women. Somewhere through the ages, though, as we watched female bodies perform miracles, we men became uncomfortable in our own skin with a destructive mix of desire and weakness. To compensate, we decided to make you feel uncomfortable in yours. At its worse, this means physical domination. But, the purveying sexism is more subtle. Today, I see confident women doubt themselves because of the shape of their body. Women share beautiful photos of themselves with newborns, having to ask people to not judge the extra pounds they added to make pregnancy possible. It’s bigger than self-perception because an idea of self can only disturb the movement of neurons. Your physical body has a mass to it, has a gravity, has a force that can disturb dimensions and time and the undiscovered ways of the universe. Whether you can make a baby or not, your physical form alters reality, and if we can control that, we’ve entirely limited your impact. So listen, my daughter, our current reality – one that makes people ashamed of their bodies – needs to not only be disturbed with an idea, it needs to be shattered by your body freely waxing and waning, creating and destroying as you will. When you feel ashamed of weight added or unhealthily obsessed with weight lost, look at this ultrasound of you. Due to potential complications, we got this high resolution scan, and it was so detailed that when you rolled over, the two dimensional image took on depth the way that shadows of dancers do. Your physical existence felt so real, I cried more then than at any other time during pregnancy. That’s when the doctor told us you finally weighed one pound. I remember your first pound, and you were captivating. May you always live and feel that way no matter the shape or size of your body. #fatherlessons