His wife had a miscarriage. He wants other dads to learn from his experience.
"Just grieve. It’s OK."
When Doyin Richards and his wife started trying to have kids, he always assumed they'd have a boy.
He had some misconceptions about raising girls, he says.
"I didn’t know what it was going to be like raising a girl. ... Princess and all this nonsense I’m not interested in."
Then, his wife had a miscarriage, and his anxiety around the assigned gender of his child came to a sudden — and devastating — halt.
He struggled with the idea of being able to grieve. His wife had lived through the trauma of the miscarriage, and he knew he needed to be there for her.
But he also felt a pressure to not grieve himself. It's a response often ingrained in men: to be strong, to fit into the stereotypical box, and to not address the sadness that they feel when their partner miscarries.
The miscarriage completely shifted his perspective on parenting.
"It made me realize it’s not about gender. It’s about having a child to raise," he recalls. "Anything you can do with a boy, you can do with a girl."
The next time his wife got pregnant, he knew he wasn't going to take having a child for granted anymore. He's now the proud father of two amazing daughters and has dedicated his life and his work to championing involved fathers and making a space for men to share their feelings around fatherhood and parenting.
Hear Doyin share his story and his message to other men struggling to heal in the aftermath of miscarriage:
Or, as he puts it: "Just grieve. It’s OK."
Could you let other dads know that?