The first birthday

The night before her first birthday, I sat on the floor of her bedroom and watched her sleep. I'd done this a hundred times in the previous year. This time was different in a way I couldn't quite name. The small body in the cot was no longer the newborn we'd brought home. The man on the floor was no longer the man who had carried her in.

I went to bed and didn't sleep well. The next morning, my wife and I took the photo, gave the gift, ate the cake. Friends came over. The day was good.

The bigger thing was the small evening conversation we had after everyone had gone home. I want to write about that conversation, because it's the actual reset moment of the first year, and almost no one tells fathers it's coming.

This module is about marking the year without performing it. What twelve months has done to all three of you. The photo. The conversation with her. The conversation with yourself.

Resist the performance

Australian first birthdays have inflated. The smash cake, the photographer, the venue, the invitation list of thirty people including colleagues you haven't seen in six months. It is a beautiful day, mostly for the parents, occasionally for Instagram, almost never for the one-year-old.

Your child will not remember the first birthday. Your friends will remember the next one if it's better. The pressure to make this one a production is mostly external, and most of it falls on your partner, who's been carrying the household admin for the year and is now carrying party admin on top.

A modest first birthday looks like:

• A morning at home, slow, with the people who actually held the baby in week one.
• Cake that one of you made or bought, not commissioned.
• One photographer-quality photo, taken on your phone, of all three of you.
• An afternoon that returns to nap, dinner, and bedtime as usual.

If you want a bigger party, do the second birthday. By then your kid actually knows it's happening. The first birthday is for you and your partner, even if it doesn't say so on the invite.

The photo you take

There is a photo you should take that nobody will tell you to take. It's not the smash cake. It's not the gift unwrapping. It's the three of you, on a couch or a bed or the kitchen floor, looking tired and slightly surprised that you've made it here.

The reason it matters: you will not look like this again. The shape of your faces, the bags under both your eyes, the haircuts you've been neglecting, the slightly-haunted look of two people who've slept five hours a night for three hundred and sixty-five nights, that is a specific season of your life. It ends after this year. The photo of the three of you in this state, alive and somehow upright, is the photo you'll come back to in ten years.

Take the photo. Print it. Don't filter it. It's better unfiltered.

The conversation with her

After the guests have gone, after the cake plates are in the sink, after the small one is asleep, sit on the couch with your partner. No phones. One drink each, if you both want one.

The conversation has three questions. Take your time on each.

1. What was hardest, that we got through.

Pick one for each of you. Hers might not be the same as yours. Hers might be the night feeds, the work return, the body image, the loneliness. Yours might be the four-month wall, the work pressure, the loss of friendships, the marriage tension. Name it. Don't fix it. Just name it.

2. What we got right, that surprised us.

The same. One each. The thing you discovered about each other that you didn't know before. Maybe she handled the early weeks with a calmness you'd never seen. Maybe you discovered you could function on five hours' sleep for longer than either of you thought possible. Maybe both of you kept showing up when the night was at its worst. Whatever it is, name it out loud. The unsaid version doesn't compound.

3. What we want the second year to look like.

Not goals. Shape. Weekday rhythm. Weekend rhythm. Time together. Time apart. Friends. Family. Money. What you each want more of, what you each want less of. Don't try to solve it that night. Get the shape on the table. Sleep on it. Come back to it in a fortnight.

That's the conversation. Forty-five minutes if you both lean in. It is the most important relationship maintenance you'll do all year.

The conversation with yourself

A separate one, on a different night. You. A walk, a notebook, a beer at the kitchen table after she's gone to bed.

Three questions, the same shape.

1. What kind of father did I become this year.

Not the highlight reel. The honest one. You showed up, mostly. You also disappeared in some specific ways. The shape of the year is the answer. Write it down.

2. What did I lose, that I want back.

The friendships. The training. The reading. The version of you that took half-day breaks in the middle of a Saturday. Some of it is gone for good and that's fine. Some of it is recoverable in year two if you decide it is.

3. Who am I aiming to be at year two.

Not "a better dad." Specific. The man who runs three times a week. The man who calls his own father once a fortnight. The man who reads a book a month. The man who has one beer with one mate every Thursday night. Pick three or four. Write them down. Read them in the morning.

This isn't goal-setting in the productivity-bro sense. It's a small ritual that anchors year two before it starts moving.

The reset, plainly

The first year is a one-way door. The man who walks out the other side is not the man who walked in. There's no version of fatherhood where this isn't true; the question is only whether you mark the change deliberately or let it happen to you and notice three years later.

A few things you should hear at the twelve-month line:

• You did harder work in the last year than you'd done in the previous decade, even on the days it didn't feel like work.
• The marriage that's still standing at the end of year one is a marriage that's done real work, even if neither of you can quite point to it.
• The version of fatherhood you imagined before the baby came is not the version you're living. The version you're living is better in places, harder in places, and unrecognisable in places. That's the deal.
• Year two is not easier. It's differently hard. Toddlerhood replaces sleep deprivation with negotiation, mobility, and the discovery that small humans have opinions. You are, however, considerably more prepared for year two than you were for year one, even if you don't feel it yet.

The first birthday isn't the finish line. It's the first checkpoint where you can stop, look at the road behind you, and acknowledge that you walked it.

Mark the year. Have the two conversations. Keep walking.

Further watching

• Aliza Pressman on the 5 Principles of Parenting and Raising Good Humans
• James Patterson reflects on fatherhood and what it means to him