I Will Survive....

Having children is a true blessing. My son is almost 7 and my daughter is 14months after him turning 6 early next year.

I always knew I wanted to be a father, even as a kid I dreamed of having children.

With my son, we had decided not to find out the sex. When he was born the Doctor took him out of the womb with his back facing me, I clearly remember the absolute shock and pride when they turned him to face me and I could see I had a son. In that instant, I had become a father, and for the rest of my life, my priorities had now changed. He had become my world, and purpose.

Due to the close age gap between my children we decided to find out the sex of my daughter to alleviate some of the post birth stress and to allow us to prepare (pink room, pink clothes).

For a father, there is something about a son, every father I think (maybe even secretly) wishes for a son. Obviously a healthy child is all a parent can truly hope for, but for a father, the dream of a boy is evident.

Having said this, I have been blessed with best of both worlds, and I can unequivocally say, that yes having a son is amazing, but having a daughter gives me as a father a completeness that I could not imagine getting from anyone else.

To me she smells like candyfloss, and at night when I climb into bed for a cuddle with her, her glistening pure white skin seems to glow in the dark, even on the hottest of nights she feels cool to the touch, and when she notices me climbing into her bed and I see her excitement and welcoming eyes, I feel good about life and who I am.

I am hard on myself, and this journey that I am on, has made it even harder for me to look in the mirror and feel pride. My greatest fear is letting my children down, and juggling my emotions in this regard has not been easy.

A few months ago I was sitting in the same spot I sit in as I write this, when my son came up to me and said out of the blue, "sometimes a mistake is just a mistake, it not the end of the world."

I by no means describe my life as a mistake, but recall after my very first session with my shrink. I had literally thrown my whole life at her in the hope for her to give me the miracle answer (maybe even a pill or two) and to send me on my way. This unfortunately is not the way it works and what she said to me was, "this is not life or death."

Both of them were right, sometimes we get over consumed by the problem that we can not see the wood from the trees, maybe even loose perspective of life itself.

Yes, my life is confusing, sometimes difficult, and absolutely I feel tremendous pain at times, but unlike illness, or true tragedy, I have a certain amount of control over my life.

I often jokingly say that I do not believe it is birth that is the miracle, but that we manage to survive. All of us are so similar in our desire to live. Apple's CEO, Steve Jobs said in his speech to Stanford University, "isn't it amazing how we all want to go to heaven, but none of us are willing to die to get there."

Yes our desire to live is great, but surely it is how we live that truly matters, like I said to my son this morning, all that is really important is that we are happy.....