My First 30 Days of Fatherhood
Anecdotes of my first 30 days, for posterity, for anxious fathers to be, and for all the soldiers in the struggle.
Day 1: I promised myself I wasn’t going to look at it, the crowning, but I did. After all you’re right there, holding a leg up! It’s like watching that iconic chest-burster scene from Aliens, except it’s not the chest… Nothing will ever be the same :|
(It was actually kinda beautiful.)
Day 2: We’re at the base of Maslow’s pyramid, and it’s all about the milk. Baby even tried to extract from me. That’s how primal things are getting. These things are wild animals and need to eat every 2–3 hours around the clock! My new job seems to be supporting Mom, buying her time between feeds.
Day 3: I will never ever ever get used to wiping Baby’s vagina.
Day 4: Starting to believe in the analytics of babies — weight, sleep, poop, pee, frequencies, colours. Only in healthcare is being average the mark of success.
Day 5: Mom and I are still on shift work, only one of us can sleep at one time. It’s my 3–5am rotation and I’m sitting in the dark, Baby is sleeping on my chest. This right here, Baby, is the most important thing I’ll ever do with my life.
Sleep Strategy #1: Fingertip in her mouth while playing the soothing sounds of white noise or Lullatone (this is my jam).
Day 6: It takes a village to raise a child. Parent-friends understand the struggle and bring food. Childless friends bear toys that are later returned for store credit. We just need survival tools right now.
Day 7: Unreal. This whole week has felt like one long day. We’ve foregone prolonged sleep and just nap intermittently now. It’s funny what this does to your sense of time. It also doesn’t help that I’m somehow still wearing the same joggers and tee from Day 1.
Day 8: Realizing that baby maintenance is all in the moment, trial & error. What works today likely won’t work tomorrow. There are few absolute truths in this game, just hypotheses and correlations.
Sleep Strategy #2: If I put her on my chest and really slow my breathing, she’ll start mimicking my relaxed body rhythm and fall asleep.
Day 9: Immobilized with her on top of me, I’m binge-watching Netflix. Scared that if I fall asleep, she might roll to her doom. On the plus side I finally finished watching The Office. That’s about 50 hours of TV and this is only Day 9.
Day 10: In the last hour, Mom has called Baby the following names:
Princess Cuddle-Lots, Baby Bear, Hunny Bunny, My Love, Monster, Sugar Pie, Princess Snuggle Buns, Hungry Hungry Hippo, Sugar Butt, Sweet Sugar Plum, Goma Bear, Mini Monkey, Little Bae, Sweety Pie, Sugar Princess, Stinky, Fart Machine, Boo Boo Bear, Peanut.
Day 11: Creeping over her crib, watching her sleep. Poking her to see if she’s still breathing. I’ve officially become “that dad.”
Day 12: Getting a little stir-crazy at home. It’s the same day, every day. Trapped in a house, with little sleep, enslaved by a baby and her schedule – eat, sleep, poop. I can’t watch any more TV or refresh any more Instagram feeds. I need the outside world again.
Day 13: Applied some of that miracle mother’s milk onto Baby’s hair. Going to see if we can get a Chia Pet thing going on.
Btw – Yes, I did taste it, the milk. It’s a little sweet and in a blind test, you might even choose it over normal 2%. Just saying.
Day 14: I’ve had this numbing headache for the last two days. Mom and I are convinced that it’s my brain atrophying from the lack of stimulation and social interaction with the outside world. We’re starting to take turns running errands, just for a little taste of that sweet freedom. Standing in line to return something at Best Buy has now become a treat.
Day 15: Mom’s hunched over in the corner of the living room, with little mechanical arms, connected to tubes, pulling on her nipples. This is what pumping milk looks like. I’m not sure what I expected this process to look like, but it wasn’t this! This is hilarious!
Sleep Strategy #3: Put on some weight or wear a big sweater (whichever comes first), so baby can feel like she’s nuzzling into a warm vibrating bean bag chair.
Day 16: Gearing up to go back to work soon. I’m now sleeping on the couch, so Baby can sleep with Mom, making the nighttime feeding routine easier — boob, mouth, eat, roll, sleep.
Day 17: One thing I’m learning really quickly about parenthood, is that personal time (sleep now included) is incredibly scarce. You have these short, disparate windows and you have to be incredibly disciplined if you want to pursue your interests and not completely lose yourself. Live!
Day 18: It’s Mother’s day. It took being a parent to really understand that a mom sacrifices everything for her child. Much love, admiration and respect to moms! That said I totally botched the occasion by doing nothing to celebrate it. Because on some level, it’s no different than International Bacon day. It’s a money grab!
Day 19: It turns out that Mom wasn’t too thrilled about yesterday. She’s going through a lot mentally and physically. This job is brutal. So I hid around the house, little anecdotal future baby moments for Mom to find and cheer her up. Dads — feel free to use this fine piece of cheese for your own dog days.
Sample: It took 3 years, but we finally did it! Baby grew enough hair for a bowl cut. We kept it real and used an actual bowl as a guide. It’s glorious!
Day 20: I’m back at work and I’m trying to figure out that cool balance of stoic father and annoying photo dad.
Day 21: Probably because it happens so rarely, but putting a sleeping baby down, without her waking, literally feels like this, or this, or this. Boss shit.
Day 22: Today, I fell asleep beside Baby and these were the types of dreams I was having — I woke up and saw the back of Baby’s head, panicked that she was face down suffocating. I quickly flipped her over, only to realize she had no face!! — the paranoia is real.
Day 23: Grandma called me today to tell me to get off my ass and stop sitting around holding a baby, while eating shrimp chips, and playing video games. This has become my new resting state, celebrated by dads across the world. It’s stage 1 of dad bod.
Day 24: Going out now consists of aimlessly strolling up and down the aisles of Walmart for 1.5 hours, so Baby can sleep.
Sleep strategy #13: Get a stroller, put the baby in it and move. Drive, push, whatever. Just keep moving.
Day 25: Sunday morning 7am, holding baby, swaying to Ottis Redding. I’m keeping that nursery rhyme epidemic at bay. I know it’s inevitable, I’ve seen YouTube. I’ve seen that 54 minute Wheels on the bus video that’s been viewed 2 billion times already. But maybe Baby will be the exception.
Day 26: Went out with friends for the first time in at least 30 days… I’m starting to see why parents tend to only hang out with each other. The baby and her schedule are so engrossing, that it becomes hard to make the time and to mentally context shift out of it all. Non-parents can’t fully grasp this. It’s still fam and it’s still love, but there’s this unspoken chasm of judgement and envy that separates us now.
Day 27: Surprise surprise, Baby is wearing pink again! We have enough pink hand-me-downs to clothe her for a full year. No beef with the colour itself, just the gender stereotypes it implies. But I’m Asian and I’m cheap (the irony) so I’m putting my fight against pink on hold.
Day 28: Mom felt guilty for eating lunch today because Baby was by herself in the other room. I think an ongoing theme of parenthood will be that of sanity vs. guilt.
Sleep strategy #9394: Get close up to her face and slowly close your eyes. Repeat until she mirrors you and keeps them shut. Maybe this worked, or maybe I just fell asleep. It doesn’t matter really, things were quiet for a bit.
Day 29: We’ve been told by a lot of people to not spoil the baby by always holding her to sleep. Long view, this might be true and it might help our sanity. Long long view, she’s only going to be this age and size once. I’ll just deal with the consequences later.
Day 30: I let Mom read this and she’s nervous that we’ll be judged by other parents. So I’ll just set that bar real low for us - I dropped baby on Day 17 – Yep, I didn’t lock the stroller in properly, and the seat tipped. Luckily she was still strapped in. She’s fine and I feel terrible. Go hate. Aren’t we all in this together, just figuring it out anyway?
NEXT:
Thank you Sean for the idea of logging. Writing has been therapeutic, for those wee hours when baby is lumped on top of you like a bag of potatoes, and this new reality of fatherhood hits.
