The First Wall

I’m 39 years old and I’m feeling jealousy for the first time. Not the petty kind, not about someone else’s success or possessions. Real jealousy, the kind that sits in your chest like a low fire you can’t put out.

My partner is breastfeeding our son, and I can’t do that for him. That’s it. That’s the whole thing.

I’ve spent my entire life doing whatever I want. Not as a rebellious posture or some kind of lifestyle brand, but as a lived fact. I decided early that autonomy was the only thing that mattered, and I built my entire operating system around it. I’ve moved cross-country very young. I’ve quit dream jobs. I’ve refused big money in favor of my values. Hyper-independent. Pathologically lonely by others’ accounts. I logged thousands of hours across dozens of domains, all feeding the same belief: I do what I want.

But I can’t breastfeed my son.

My son is four days old and I want to feed him from my body and I cannot. Not “it’s hard” or “I need to learn how” or “I need a better strategy.” Just no. Biology says no. Physics says no. Reality says no, and there’s no amount of hours I can log to change it.

It makes me feel impotent in a way I’ve never felt before.

My daughter wasn’t breastfed. I bottle-fed her while her mom recovered from the hard labor of birth. From the start, I was the one with the bottle, the one she reached for. I suspect she’s always preferred me. I’ve been the primary attachment, the one she wants when she’s hurt or scared or happy. So I know I can be that person for a child. I have evidence that fatherhood isn’t about what you can’t do. It’s about what you show up for.

But with my son, during these first critical days when bonding is chemical and physical and primal, there’s this fundamental connection I’m locked out of. I can hold him, rock him, change him, talk to him, love him with everything I have. But I can’t nourish him from my body. I can’t give him what he needs most in the way he needs it most.

When I watch it happen, something tightens across my upper back and shoulders, moves up into my face. Sometimes tears form. I’m exhausted from no sleep, but I don’t think that’s it. I think the exhaustion is just lowering my defenses, letting me feel what’s already there.

My son is the first male figure I’ve genuinely loved in my life. Whatever was closed in me around masculine love, closed for reasons I could trace if I wanted to, has opened with him. It’s lovely and vulnerable and completely new. So I’m meeting this new form of love, wanting to give my son everything, and immediately encountering something fundamental I cannot provide. The first hard wall appears exactly where the new love lives.

Sitting with these feelings longer I realized the jealousy isn’t really about my partner having something I don’t. It’s not comparative like that. It’s about discovering that “I do what I want” was never actually true. I’d been selecting from a menu I didn’t realize was pre-filtered. Everything I’ve ever pursued was within the bounds of my human capability if I just worked hard enough and committed enough hours. But breastfeeding isn’t on that menu. It’s not a skill gap. It’s a wall.

I think this is what finding your first real limit feels like. What it feels like when “I do what I want” crashes into “you cannot have this.”

It’s grief, maybe. Or the death of a belief I didn’t know was a belief. I thought autonomy and capability were the same thing. I thought if something mattered enough, I could make myself able to do it. I thought limits were just challenges I hadn’t solved yet. But some limits aren’t puzzles. They’re just facts.

So I hold him after. Every time. When he’s full and drowsy and done with what only she can give, I take him. My chest, my heartbeat, my voice. The warmth I can offer. It’s not nothing. It’s just not everything.

And maybe that’s what fatherhood actually is. Not the menu I selected from, but the one I was handed.

He’s in my arms right now, actually. Four days old, asleep against my chest while I figure out how to say all this. The wall is still there. But so am I.

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💩✨💩

Gino Andre, if you’re reading this, I cannot wait to love you how you have deserved all this time. I have done my best for you and with you, but my best today has much more capacity than I’ve ever had. I have your baby brother and sister to thank for that. I love you.