Before I became a dad last year, I’d had panic attacks and anxiety episodes all over the world: in Nigeria, Ivory Coast, the Philippines, Vietnam, India and even in the charming English seaside town of Southsea where I live.
It may therefore seem strange to people that I should have chosen a career as a travel writer.
Twenty-odd years ago when I made that decision, I thought it would help me overcome my fears about myself and the world, but until recently I felt I was taking some steps forward, some steps back.
My travel anxiety over those years had a complex blend of causes. Minor childhood trauma, unresolved grief over the deaths of loved ones and severe doubts about who I was and what I wanted to do with my life had all played their part at different times.
When I met my wife Oge and we decided to have a baby, that was anxiety-inducing enough.
That we were eventually compelled to travel to her native Nigeria to obtain IVF treatment threatened to be intolerable. But we must do what we must do.
Our first visit to the St Ives Fertility Clinic, Lagos, involved emotional peaks and troughs.
Initially, I was cheered up to see a poster depicting a grinning granny, the caption beneath reading: ‘Sixty-seven years of age – oldest successful IVF patient in Africa.’
The meeting with our doctor soon sent me back to the jitters, though, especially when my flustered brain misunderstood him and thought that he had asked Oge and I to have sex right now before I “made my sperm deposit”.
I did make my deposit a few days later and I will not disturb you with the details.
Somehow, I managed to hold it together for the fortnight I had to spend in Lagos. (Oge had the much more difficult job of staying on there for three months to have embryos implanted and receive hormone treatment).
On the plane back to the UK the familiar symptoms of my travel anxiety struck hard.
My throat dried out and I found myself compulsively swallowing. My chest felt blocked up with tar. I fidgeted so intensely that the elderly woman in the seat next to me told me off three times.
Dark thoughts invaded my head. I’d only found out the previous night that the likelihood of our IVF treatment working first time was 5-15 per cent. Those digits – 5-15 – taunted me like a heckler.
I dwelled on other worries. How would I hold the baby, when – if – it arrives? How would I know if it’s hungry, sick, too warm, too cold?
And if I’d had a pound for every time a prospective parent had told me about their fears of bringing a child into a world that’s going to the proverbial hell in a handcart, I’d have earned enough money by now to build Junior a subterranean nuke-proof bunker in the American Redoubt.
When Oge returned to the UK, one of the embryos had survived. Thankfully, against all odds, this developed into fully-fledged Amara, who was born in February 2025.
I learned more about patience in the paltry two weeks of my paternity leave than I had in 45 years.
One reason is I that couldn’t afford to be paralysed with anxiety. The forms of anxiety I’d suffered with for 20 years were inward and self-centred.
Am I embarrassing myself? Am I going mad? Am I dying? But feeding, burping, changing and cleaning a baby necessarily put the spotlight on her and off me.
Amara soon proved herself to be a role model for resilient travel. She stayed improbably cool and quiet on a succession of trains and taxis that we had to take from Southsea to a friend’s wedding in London.
At the reception we expected Amara to melt down from the louder, brighter new location. Au contraire – like a starlet mobbed by paparazzi, she was besieged by friends and relatives and smothered with kisses and compliments.
As soon as we boarded the train home, she fell asleep and didn’t wake until we were safe home.
Our next trip would be more challenging: to Atlanta during Trump’s immigration crackdown.
As a precaution I’d deleted numerous social media posts that the authorities might have judged me for.
However, on our way to the airport I found out two things that upped the anxiety levels somewhat: (1) the U.S. had just that day put Nigeria on a list of nationalities that would require extra scrutiny due to concerns about overstayed visas and (2) an ice storm was about to cause massive disruption to large parts of the country, including Georgia.
Once again, there was much to learn from Amara’s mien. She slept happily for the entire flight and sat patiently at passport control.
That was one less thing to worry about as I steeled myself for the immigration officer to interrogate Oge about her being Nigerian or me about the more political of my Facebook posts.
But none of this happened. Instead, the officer and I had a pleasant chat about writing and he asked me if he could read my latest book. I said I’d leave him a copy on our way back through the airport in two weeks’ time.
I wouldn’t be so bold as to say fatherhood has cured my anxiety, but since Amara came along I haven’t had a critical episode of it.
Focusing on another’s welfare over my own helps, as mentioned, while being a dad has obliged me to be generally more responsible.
If getting a baby to sleep at 3am is hard enough sober, it’s torture when you’re doing it after a few pints. I confess that I did once fall asleep for a few minutes sitting with Amara in my arms. If I hadn’t been sober I might have dropped her – or worse.
Not only has my newfound moderation made my daughter safer, but it has also decreased my spirals of drinking to feel better one day, only to be stricken with hang-xiety the next, which means getting back on the sauce to fight off the hang-xiety, which only worsens things the following day, and so on.
I’ve learned that I can’t live a life completely void of anxiety. A fear-free existence is unrealistic and undesirable: there’s no meaning without struggle, no journey without obstacles, no story without conflict.
So my aim has been to manage my life so that anxiety doesn’t limit or diminish it. And part of that solution, if you can call it that, has been fatherhood.
Tom has written a book, The Years of Travelling Anxiously, a new memoir about travel anxiety, available here
