Happy First Month Birthday, Scarlett Amelia Gansen!

A brief overview of how parenthood has treated us so far.

A month ago, Lele woke me up at 3 AM, saying it’s the time. Around 22 hours later, Scarlett — our baby girl was born.

She was born eighteen days early, but fortunately, she was completely healthy. Meanwhile, the doctor said Lele had performed superbly and that she was also scatheless.

Four days later, we were back home and have since been testing and learning how to be the best parents we could. Using no pacifier. Making sure Scarlett eats every 2.5–3 hours (so far, she has already gained over 1 kg) via Lele breastfeeding her. Taking pictures daily. And introducing the world to her.

Through the weeks passing, people have kept asking whether we still get enough sleep. It does feel so. But to be certain, I looked at the facts AKA my Ouraring data.

According to the smart ring, I slept 6h 54min on average, last month. Meanwhile, on average through January 13 — May 12, I slept 6h 58min. At the same time, my sleep score for the last month was 73 vs 74 for the last five months.

So in short, there has been only a very small disturbance in the sleep on my side. Perhaps it’s that becoming a father makes the body adjust easily. Or as I’d like to believe that Scarlett is just an awesome baby.

Although yes, it’s a bit harder on the mom. Especially as she needs to wake up a couple of times during the night to feed Scarlett. However, she has an option to stay longer in bed, this way also getting the complete rest needed.

Maybe this will change in time but as for now, everything’s alright.

Other than non-existent sleep disturbances, our life has changed in the following ways:

• We take more long walks together, giving Scarlett a chance to sleep in the fresh air and enable Lele to leave the home every now and then.
• Lele needs to think twice before eating anything as everything affects the breastmilk, possibly giving gases to the baby.
• I want to stay at home more to maximise the time spent with Scarlett and to help Lele whenever needed.
• And both Lele and I are evermore ambitious to build our businesses, as we now have a much bigger reason why to strive for greatness. Although at the moment, I’m the one that can invest more time in that.

All in all, it’s been a wonderful first month with Scarlett Amelia Gansen around us.

And to everyone who thinks that they’d want to first achieve some career success before thinking about having children of their own, think again. Really, the baby is not an excuse why not to do something but rather a reason why to try harder and do more.