Where's the T?

Still there! But perhaps less

With apologies to Joanna Bregan, who rightly warns against the nightmare of cleaning them up, my baby has been playing with one of these:

The offending item

You may notice that T is off the board. It’s one of my baby’s favorite letters to remove. It also can stand for testosterone, which my baby has partially removed. From me.

Well, Maybe

If you’re not a link clicker, the short version:

New fathers showed a 26% drop in morning levels and a 34% decrease in evening levels, compared with single nonfathers, whose morning and evening testosterone went down by 12% and 14%, respectively (a decline attributable to the passing years). The study also revealed that testosterone levels were lowest in men who reported spending the greatest amount of time spent caring for their children.

Studies are coarse instruments, and there are many other factors setting human hormone balance. But I have changed since becoming a parent, in ways consistent with lower T. Shall we name them?

Less Competitive

I like board games for many reasons, one that I’m good at winning them. But when I’ve played such games post-baby, I feel less joy from victory and less sting from loss. Moreover, my desire to play board games is reduced; it feels a bit like some of my motivations (socialize with friends, mental exercise) are intact, while another (crush rivals) is more-or-less removed.

I’ve similarly chilled out when it comes to video games; I haven’t been making it to Smash Bros tournaments since baby was born, and that’s only partly from being busy. Like with board games, the activity itself sounds fun, but the struggle for rank is not much motivation.

I still care about the same about making money, but my focus in that arena is much more on how I can spend the money for the benefit of family, and less on abstract number-go-up stuff.

More Socially Self-Conscious

One of my great pleasures in life is holding forth. I am, after all, a blogger. But in the last year, I’m timorous about going on too long. I still expound at length for my wife, particularly when I think she’ll enjoy it, but in conversations with friends I feel more internal pressure to cede the spotlight. Most conversations I will naturally think “hmm, have I listened enough?” This hasn’t been a deliberate area of growth, either! I’ve always known it was something to work on, I’m just better at it now.

I noticed this most strongly when I did a long, reflective speech for my family on my birthday, and it felt like a rare and precious indulgence. People used to say I’d make a good cult leader. I don’t think they’d say so now!

More Minivan Accepting

We got a teensy SUV recently, and I wouldn’t call it gender euphoria per se, but driving that thing around makes me feel like a million bucks. It’s just such a family car, absolutely begging to be decked out in car seats and, later, sports paraphernalia. It makes me long for a ponytail. Go team!

(I used to find that shape of car kind of unbearable. I tell myself I’d still cringe at having a bigger one, but, well, give me a few years.)

More Flexible

I’ve always had a really hard time with changes to my environment. I still do. But I’m much less rigid than before. I’ve gone from the person in my marriage whose rancor and panic prevented home improvements, to the person in my marriage browbeating my wife into buying felt organizers.

I’ve also been a night owl forever. But I decided to start waking up at 8am every day, two hours before my prior wakeup time,¹ to make it easier for me to spend the night with baby three nights a week. Magically, today, I woke up at 8am with no alarm.

Or, when I felt like rebranding this blog, or pausing habit tracking, I just did it. A couple years ago, I might have been too attached to how things were, even if it didn’t fit me anymore.

Happier

I just feel better, overall. Even with the sleep deprivation. I will attribute most of this to the baby herself, who is very sweet. But I also feel vindicated. I’ve never been obviously all that feminine, but I have always had this itch that boy stuff - or at least certain boy stuff - is a drag. And lo and behold, turn the T knob down a few notches, and I feel more like myself.

Ever since I was a small child, I’ve been bummed out that I couldn’t actually bear children. It just seemed like making a person was obviously the coolest possible thing to do, and it was insane to me that, at random, only some people could do it.

That envy is quieter now. The baby is right there! She’s born! It’s time to do the work.

1. Yeah, yeah, I know it’s still not that early.