When you first cradle your newborn in your arms after accompanying your wife through an exhausting delivery, you will feel amazement, excitement, fear, accomplishment and love. You may also feel confusion because, while you experience all these emotions, you may not feel like a father. Let there be no doubt, you are a father, but feeling like a father doesn’t always come right away. Sometimes, not for months. Please, don’t worry. Without looking through your music collection, I think I can safely say you’re not a bad person.

Despite all the TV shows and movies that suggest the arrival of a baby flips a magic switch that immediately makes us the best version of ourselves, the truth is there are millennia of biologically implanted hunter-gatherer instincts to overcome. And when you see that baby for the first time, that switch gets flipped first. I spent our first night in the neonatal wing hiding behind a blind I’d constructed out of hospital gowns and a defibrillator, just waiting for a slow orderly to pass so I could spear them with an IV stand. You can’t blame me. I suddenly had a family and they needed to be fed.

I’m not suggesting you won’t really love your baby. On the contrary, you’ll love them from that first glance. But, your love may come in the form of a typical male reaction: problem solving.

They say having a child is like being shot out of a cannon. Actually, it’s like being shot out of a cannon welded onto a top fuel dragster that’s sitting on the nose of an Imperial Cruiser. There’s no time to comprehend what happens from minute to minute, let alone from day to day. Space and time bend. Stars turn into streak of light. Physics as we know it loses all meaning.

Your life has just been upended in a way no book or friend’s story can prepare you. Plus, there’s a new life in the mix. When this kind of upheaval occurs, most guys instinctually go into fix-it mode. Every challenge you face turns into a ‘84 Ford Tempo that won’t turn over. You pop the hood and look inside. You tinker around or, if you see smoke, you run for the fire extinguisher. While this is all very natural, you still might not feel like a father. Obviously, you’ll feel like a mechanic.

That feeling of actually being a father might not sink in until you slow down and adapt to your new life. For some, it might not happen until you get a full night’s sleep. And yes, you’ll still problem solve, but instead of breaking the situation down on a whiteboard as it happens, you might just let the chaos unfold, reveling in the absurd joy of fatherhood. You’ll have plenty of time to figure out how to get that puréed carrot vomit stain out of the drapes.