5 things I wish I’d known in advance

Let’s be totally clear: I’m not qualified to write this; I have no special knowledge or insight. I’m just an average schmuck who, a little over one year ago, got treated to becoming a first-time dad.

All the cliches are true, of course: it’s mindblowing. Leo’s birth was the happiest day of my life, and has brought me even closer to Katie. The thing that’s surprised me most in some ways is: the hard parts haven’t been as hard as I thought they’d be. And the good parts have been even better.

A friend is about to become a first-time dad, and we were talking a bit about all the advice you get. It’s a whole cottage industry — unsolicited advice, a million parenting books (Parent Like the French! The Paleolithic Parent! Parent Like Picasso!), prenatal classes — and only about 10% of it actually useful. So I was thinking: if I were to go back in a time machine and hand myself a message in a bottle, here’s what I feel like I learned that would have been helpful to know in advance.

1) Own it!

You’re Big Papa. Own it! You’re not some snivelling half-dad. A lot of North American culture wants to turn parenting into some kind of bland domestication. It has only two modes: your roaring twenties. And then you turn straight into some embarassed caricature sent out to domestic parenting pasture. Fuck that shit! Embrace the manly art of being a great dad. And insist on you and your partner staying you. Life changes. Embrace the next chapter. Dive in with both feet! Reject the habit of grim humor where you say stuff like… “Well, I guess our life’s over now… ha ha ha (eye roll).” You’re about to start a tribe! Make a castle! Be a family! Stay yourselves, be adults, and do it more like the French do.

Embrace your roles

Some guys are like: “Well you know in the first few months there’s really nothing much for the guy to do; it’s all about the mum.” I understand why some people say this, but to be honest: it’s 99.9% slacker bullshit. As if the fact that dudes can’t nurse somehow makes us redundant; or gets us off the hook for doing the work!

A couple weeks after Leo was born a friend of a friend asked me: “So do you feel like you have a role?” I was like uh what?! There’s so much to do. And being a dad is awesome. Why would I want to miss out on that in the early stages?

Here’s the roles that kinda emerged for me that I think dads should own and become ninjas at before and after the kid arrives:

• Nest-builder. Get the house ready. You are the Nest-Builder-in-Chief! Clean out the storage. Get rid of that crap you’ve been meaning to get rid of.  You’re about to be inundated with baby stuff, so make room for it. And organize your closets and stuff so it doesn’t take over your house and infantilize your world. Clean. Help make a list of the stuff you need. Get it. Organize it. Don’t just leave it to mum; she’s got enough on her mind already! Here’s a list of some stuff you might need. Knowing the house is ready helps mum relax. And she’s about to push a goddamn bowling ball through her hoozit, so if there’s one thing she’s going to need to do, it’s relax a little.
• Nourisher. When you get home from the hospital, you want a cozy little world. So you can revel in all the baby euphoria and your cozy little baby cave. Your job is to absolutely punish the family with delicious, nutritious meals. You’re feeding her; she’s feeding the baby. Do a *massive* shop before the baby comes. Like 3x your normal shop. Fill the freezer and pantry. Raise your health delicious game. Friends might offer to drop off meals; co-ordinate that shit. Mum will love you for it, and baby’s basically eating what she’s eating.
• Soother-in-Chief. Holy crap crying babies really *do* have an off switch! And you can be the hero who activates it.  With a few techniques (and a bit of empathy / understanding what baby’s first weeks and months and months are like), you can take the role of Soother-in-Chief. When it’s 3 in the morning and the baby is wailing and you make them stop, it’s a bit of goddamn magic.

Your Yoda here is Dr. Karp. Read the book or (even better) watch the video. I did both and found the video massively useful; it’s like reading a book about karate or yoga vs. watching someone do it; once’s just easier to grasp than the other. And it can be hard to get your swaddle on to start. Karp also does this slight head jiggling technique that totally worked for putting Leo to sleep. It’s all about the five “S’s” or whatever; but the main thing is: swaddling, sucking, shushing, and swinging / rocking / jiggling really do work to help crying babies relax. For obvious reasons when you consider…

The first three months are different

When a baby come out it’s not really a baby; they’re basically still a foetus. If human hips were different, we’d come out at 12 months, instead of 9. But our heads are too big, so we have to squeeze out early. This means the first three months are different; some call it the fourth trimester.

What it means for you is: the first week, and month, and three months of being a parent are special and different. You want to help baby feel like they’re back in their former home. Create a womb-like environment. This is where you swaddling, rocking, and shushing come in; you’re making them feel like they’re back in the womb. Which is actually a surprisingly noisy and constantly moving place. People stick babies in a silent, motionless space and then wonder why they cry. They’re freaking out because they crave something familiar.

Imagine you stepped through a transporter malfunction wormhole and suddenly find yourself in a totally different dimension. After spending your whole life enveloped and wrapped up in a tiny warm space, you’re suddenly massively exposed to weird wide open unenclosed space. You feel totally naked and exposed. Instead of rushing blood and heartbeat and constant noise in your ears, everything is weirdly quiet. Instead of dark, diffused light and sound, everything is all harsh and bright. Of course you’d freak the fuck out; who wouldn’t? That’s why the soothing techniques work; it’s a bit of something familiar in your crazy alien world where nothing makes sense.

Start a routine early

Everyone has different opinions on this and people like to trade war stories and competing theories and bore each other at dinner parties about it and blah blah blah. All I’m saying is: this worked for us. And I credit Katie for it; looking back I think she was an absolute genius.

You’re in your alien world. Nothing makes sense. You don’t even know the difference between night and day. It’s bewildering chaos. But: you start to notice a few patterns. Things you can start to rely on. You being to notice that, at around about the same time in your little cycle, you have some milk, feel some nice warm water in the bath, put on some nice fresh jammies, and you go to sleep. Chaos chaos weirdness chaos but then… milk. bath. sleep. dum dee dum dee dum — milk. bath. sleep. rinse and repeat: milk. bath. sleep.

This sends a signal in a complex world. It creates a routine and set of expectations. It gives them something to rely on and predict. It starts to make sense. I’m not saying to become a Routine Nazi; I’m just saying: give your little baby the gift of something predictable, and something that starts to teach them what the fuck night and day are all about. And start early. We basically started doing it in the first week, and as a result, Leo basically slept throught the night very early, and kept doing it.

A big part of that is: we just got lucky. Every kid is different. But I think a big part of why Leo is a good sleeper is because we started that routine early on and stuck with it. I’m always a bit surprised by people who pick some arbitrary date on the calendar to wait to “start a routine.” Start it as soon as you can! Train that kid. They’re in alien space. Give em a pattern to make sense of it.

Don’t be shortcut dad

I always wanted to take shortcuts. Really? A bath? We’re tired — can’t we just put him to bed without one? But Katie was awsome about sticking to it; and it totally worked. By taking shortcuts we would have just created more work for ourselves later. And by sticking to it religiously it was like the north star that totally oriented his little world.

Do the full man’s half

Here’s how I do the math: we’re in the 21st century. You either believe in equality or you don’t. This means that men need to do half the parenting. (And don’t wussy out with that “but babies just want their mum so there’s nothing I can do” bullshit.) Realistically though, the “man’s half” basically works out to be 40%, not the full 50%. You’re likely never going to do as much as mum does; she just plain works harder and cares more. It’s like a baker’s dozen; the man’s half is 40%. So you’re already getting a break.

But here’s the thing: a lot of guys back-slide even further from there. They cut corners, they let mum take the lead, they make convenient excuses. They drift downward from 40% to 35%… 30%… 25%. Congratulations, dude! You’re now one quarter of a real dad.

I’ve found this to be surprisingly common, even amongst urban liberal men. I’m not judging (well fuck it obviously I am) but what I’d say is:

• you’re missing out! Being a dad is awesome. Do it for real. Don’t just be 1950s dad who pats the kid on the head occasionally, checks whether they’re sticking a fork in the socket and then goes back to reading the paper. Get in there!
• it builds resentment in your relationship over time. Why do some parent couples become boring and resentful? This has gotta be a contributing factor. Even if you get away with it in the short term, it’s not a sexy foundation to build on.
• You either believe in equality or you don’t. You can’t have your cake and eat it too, dude. You want to seem all liberal and progressive? Well this is where the crappy diaper hits the road.

Get a midwife

Everyone’s different; some people need to go the obstetrician-only route. I’m just saying: in Ontario, anyway, we’re blessed with fucking awesome (free) midwife care. And you should make sure you understand the benefits before choosing.

I didn’t even really know what a midwife was; it’s a funny word that sounds kinda medieval hippy. But in Ontario and most places, midwives are clinicians. They train for four years and know their shit.  And the thing is: when you go midwife you get a whole bunch of free additional services that are really freaking useful.

This isn’t obvious. It gets presented to you as: “Do you want an obstetrician, or do you want a midwife?” If you’re a traditional trust-in-Western-medicine-when-it-comes-to-baby-birthing person (which I secretly am), it’s easy to just be like: well of course I want a doctor!

But what they don’t tell you is: when you pick the midwife option, you still get the benefits of both. You still get total obstetrics care if you need it. But you also get a bunch of free additional benefits like:

• continuity of care. You get to know and trust your midwife, and then they actually (in most cases) deliver your baby. This familiar person you trust is there on the big intimate day, whereas with the obstetrician route, that’s almost certainly *not* the case. You’re virtually guaranteed to birth with a total stranger, which is not relaxing.
• they come to your house before and after. A few hours after we got home from the hospital, our midwives (both of them) were at our house, checking in on us and being ridiculously helpful. They came back four or five times in the first couple weeks. It made a massive difference in creating a successful first few days, which creates a successful first few weeks, which lays the foundation for the whole first few months.
• they show you how to do crucial stuff. They gave Katie some hands-on coaching for nursing that made a huge difference. They showed us how to safely give Leo a bath, how to alleviate some of Katie’s shoulder pain, answered all our random questions — right there in our own home with our own stuff, so it all made sense.

Every Ontarian should know this stuff. I didn’t. Giving birth isn’t just about safely getting the kid out — it’s about the whole before and after, too. Midwives provide the whole package. (And by the way,  they’re chronically underpaid and suing the Ontario government and you should support them.)

 Help organize the birth plan and list of supplies

Here’s some stuff you might need. I copied it from [book title]. You’re in charge of making sure all the stuff’s ready, so mum can relax and feel taken care of.