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Fatherhood is a commitment – in health and in sickness

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Photo by Shanin Hundt

The Observer-Reporter’s Brad Hundt hangs out with his 1-year-old daughter, Bronwyn.

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Photo by Shanin Hundt

Bronwyn Hundt spends some time reading with her father, Brad Hundt.

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Brad Hundt/Observer-Reporter

Bronwyn Hundt had fun at the recent Three Rivers Arts Festival in Pittsburgh.

I’ve only been a father for 13 months now, so I don’t feel like I’m in any kind of position to pass along meaningful advice or intone thoughtfully about the joys and pitfalls of parenthood. I’m still learning the ropes myself.

One slice of wisdom I can offer to anyone who’s about to become a dad is this: Stock up on boxes of tissue.

Because you’ll be shedding tears as your baby grows and changes and you realize how fleeting the time is?

Yeah, there’s that. But stock up on boxes of tissue because you’ll be getting sick. Maybe more than you ever have since you yourself were a wee tot.

During my extended bachelorhood, I once enjoyed an eight-year run where I caught only one cold. Let me emphasize that: one cold. Everyone around me in the office could be coughing and wheezing and honking, and I would escape scot-free, the germs seemingly bouncing off me. I became convinced that part of my inheritance from the hardy German and Scandinavian farmers that populate my family tree is an impenetrable immune system.

Nothing punctures that bit of hubris like having a baby in the house.

When Bronwyn, our daughter, arrived in May 2022, I had braced myself for all kinds of things – odoriferous diapers, wailing at 3 a.m., the impossibility of watching a three-hour movie without interruption – but I never quite bargained for how many germs our adorable young’un would pass along. Rather than germs bouncing off me, they now cling to me as if I’m draped entirely in Velcro.

She’s in day care, and I’ve had several friends and colleagues commiserate over the last several months, telling me all about how their child or grandchild once hauled home one illness after another. One point they’ve emphasized is the grim inevitability of it all – she’s going to get sick, they say, and you will catch it. But just wait, they promise. By the time she reaches kindergarten, she won’t miss a day of school because she will have caught every virus under the sun!

That was cold comfort this past winter. About one week after New Year’s Day, with 2023 still full of newness and promise, I started coughing. Then my nose started running. Bronwyn had had a cold, and because she has not yet skilled in the art of covering her mouth when she sneezes, I picked it up. There was nothing I could do but ride it out.

Fast-forward two weeks later. The cold was evaporating, but Bronwyn had recently had a few episodes where she had thrown up. One night, my wife, Shanin, and I were munching on some fish, and she said that she was not feeling well. It hit her suddenly. Shanin went to the bathroom, and threw up. I was well enough to get to the store to stock up on ice, crackers and all those stomach-bug necessities.

The next day, I started to feel, shall we say, not my usual self. By evening, I was in bed. The stomach bug had claimed me.

After a day or so, I was back in gear, but then my nose started to run again. Then I was coughing. Within just a handful of days of getting over one cold, I had picked up another. To paraphrase Al Pacino in “The Godfather, Part III,” just when I thought I was out, I was pulled back in.

There was an oasis for a couple of weeks in February where, amazingly enough, everyone in the household was well, with no coughing and no cookie-tossing. But then, Bronwyn brought home another stomach bug. This time, my wife escaped, but I wasn’t so lucky. Thankfully we were still well-stocked with crackers and ice cubes.

As the weather has gotten warmer, the amount of illness in the household has, thankfully, subsided. When the snow starts to fly in six months or so, I’ll have a better idea of what to expect.

So, as my second Father’s Day as a dad rolls around, I’ve come to realize that, like marriage, parenthood is one of those things that you commit to in sickness and in health. And when I sit with my daughter and read a book, push her in her stroller, or see her smile when I pick her up from day care, the commitment is more than worth it.

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