Can dads ever have the stuff that moms are made of?

We were lucky.

Our daughter started to sleep through the night early on, in her crib. Waking up every couple hours to feed and put her back to sleep and starting the day like we'd pulled back-to-back-to-back all nighters was a fading memory, lost somewhere in the blur of those first few sleep deprived months.

Then last month, we were hit by the most perfect of storms on our baby voyage.

Our daughter started going through another developmental spurt. Among other things, this meant she was learning how to categorize - I'm quite sure she has me pegged in the i-can-make-you-pick-things-up category. It also meant she was experiencing a major shift in how she perceived the world around her, which would be incredibly confusing for anyone and meant that she needed to be close to us and held by us, all the time. 

At the same time, we realized that she was allergic to dairy, and had to switch her infant formula (which we had introduced at 6 months to complement breastmilk) to some awful smelling-tasting non dairy version which she rightly insisted was totally unacceptable - which then meant she didn't get a full feed before going to bed, and needed to eat several times before morning came. And, as if that wasn't enough, she fell sick, with a fever that lasted a couple days and a cold that lasted a week.

She was back in bed with us, waking up every couple hours needing food and love, sleeping restlessly in between, and murmuring and rolling around enough to keep us from getting more than 30 mins of sleep at a stretch. A few days of that routine, and I fell sick, maybe with the same bug she had, maybe just beaten down by exhaustion. I slept on the couch, and my wife soldiered on for marathon night after marathon night, feeding, holding, comforting and loving our daughter as she slowly gained back her health and confidence.

At 6 am one morning as I grumbled awake, I could hear my wife speaking to our daughter ever so softly, in the same gentle voice I had heard in the distance throughout the night. I was still feeling tired, at my wits end, and I'm ashamed to say, annoyed at the little creature whom I love so much. And I hadn't even been in the same bed for the past three nights. My wife had, and as I heard the bedroom door open and watched her walk toward me, her slow, almost forced movements gave away the exhaustion I know she felt. But as she gazed up from the bundle she was holding close to her chest, what I saw was not exhaustion, or frustration, or even annoyance. 

I saw kindness, the kind that doesn't fade with fatigue. I saw love, a love that can keep expanding until the universe is filled with it. I saw a mother, so tired she could barely keep her eyes open but determined to keep her child safe and healthy no matter what.

As I quickly got over my self pity, I couldn't help but question my own capacity for such unrelenting love, and I couldn't help but wonder, can dads ever have the stuff that moms are made of?

Happy Mother's Day.

9 months in!