It’s not every day that you get a lesson handed down to you via the internet, while you’re still drinking your morning coffee.

Yesterday was a reasonably tough day for me. We finally took Zane out of the house and into the big bad world. We got all the gear, took the nursing cover with us in case he needed to eat while we were out and off we went to the mall (yeah it’s August in Qatar, there’s precious little else you can do at 2pm in the afternoon).

Everything was fine, until we went into Mamas & Papas. After being nursed in the changing rooms for 20min I was tasked with burping and holding him, and he went MENTAL. Usually pretty good at sorting the boy out, yesterday was not meant to be. After having walked back to the car TWICE, I had to go back a third time to return something. Baby continued crying and I was just tired at this stage.

Come home and my arm was seriously aching because I’ve been holding him looking outwards and my arm is his seat. Mentally, I was tired of this for today. I needed a bit of break, thankfully sleep came easily to both of us.

This morning I saw the trailer of the Theory of Everything and it just completely smacked me in the face that I should be genuinely thankful for every single moment I have with the boy and never take it for granted. Ever.

To be clear, I have many examples in my life where fathers cannot be there for their children in one capacity or reason or another - this trailer just gave another example, but reminded me clearly of this fact.