ABSTRACT

Fatherhood entails processes of psychological reorganisation within the individual and in his network of close relationships. This chapter reflects on a father’s personal trajectory of self and self-other discovery from pregnancy, through the birth, to the threesome and the growing family. The author describes the brevity of the nine months of pregnancy as a preparatory period for becoming a father to a new life, one that is entirely An Other. Incorporating poems to his children from different psychic positions along the way to and into fatherhood, the reader is brought into visceral and emotional connection with fathers and their babies.