The (Surprisingly) Essential Dad Stuff
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(I’m writing something every* day for #100days. This is post 87/100.)
“Nothing can prepare you to be a parent.”
That is both a cliche and true.
So many people share that advice, that sometimes it’s better not to buy anything but the essentials until the baby arrives and you know what you really need.
The intensity of a newborn sharpens your love for great products and enlarges your rage for bad ones.
At 4am, when you’re doing your 4th diaper change for the night, and you run out of wipes, the fluorescent light in the bathroom flickering on slowly will send your blood boiling in a deeply irrational way.
This past month though, a few certain baby things have made me feel passionately, surprisingly grateful.
- Nils Frahm — Solo
With a new baby sleeping all the time, electric-guitars, dubstep-drops, and sped-up dolphin sounds are not what you need.
Nils Frahm’s ‘Solo’, minus the song ‘Wall’ has been the perfect post-baby album.
It was on repeat during the labour. It’s been on repeat for most of the first month.
He can sleep to it, we can sleep to it, and it just sets the room at the right temperature sonically.
2. Baby Bjorn Cradle
This thing is deceptive.
With one pinkie finger, you can rock it back and forth with enough force to make a baby sleep.
This is an all-time great baby cradle feature.
Newborns are essentially in their fourth trimester. For all their mental capacity, they might as well still be in the womb.
So anything you can do to replicate the womb — white noise, subtle rocking, making them feel secure — is crucial for getting them to sleep.
I’ve laid half-asleep in the middle of a maelstrom night and been immensely thankful that all I needed to make sure the boy fell asleep was the rocking of his cradle with my pinky finger.
It’s the little things that count sometimes.
3. myBaby Sound Spa
For more than a month, 16 hours a day, our apartment has been filled with ‘Brook’ sounds.
16 hours a day. The repetitive ‘babble’ of a ‘Brook’ has washed over us, and calmed this little baby through the hours of nights, and days, tears and changes.
This likely means that IRL brooks will both soothe and terrify me.
4. Stability Ball
We never would have imagined it, but this thing got us through labour at home, labour at the hospital and is the single best way to get the baby to sleep.
We’re on it 40–50 times a day, getting him to sleep, settling his cries, and keeping him occupied while one of us showers, eats or sleeps.
5. Baby Bjorn Carrier
The left-hook right-hook sleep combo is putting him in the Baby Bjorn carrier, while bouncing on the stability ball.
The ability to soothe a baby and put it to sleep is the competency that new parents most desperately seek.
When you find something that works, you feel euphoric, in-control, relieved and joyous all at the same time.
The Baby Bjorn carrier is a miracle of sleep-activation. It gives you your hands back, which you don’t appreciate until you have lost them to holding a baby for 2 and a half straight hours.
It lets you type, it lets you do dishes and washing and drying. It lets you eat and make coffee and oatmeal. It lets you walk and walk outside
The love I feel for this carrier is real and true.
6. Hario Cold Brew Pot + Baratza Grinder + Mistobox Subscription
Epic beans delivered to your door, that grind quickly and easily in the Baratza, and turn into delicious, smooth cold brew in the Hario is a combination good enough to make you feel excited to wake up in the mornings.
7. Ottelengi — ‘Jerusalem’
Mum has taken it upon herself to cook us a different Ottelengi recipe from ‘Jerusalem’ every night.
Oh. My God.
This food. This flavour. The anticipation every day for what dinner might hold. An oasis in the desert.
8. Freo Fanatics 1994 (whoever you are)
Somewhere in the world, right now, some guy without a profile picture is uploading footy clips to his YouTube channel, not knowing really why, or what for.
On the other side of the world, when it all goes quiet, and the baby’s sleeping, and Jules is following suit and my brain feels like mashed potato, and my back aches, I get the mollification of mindless football chat that soothes me, and puts me almost instantly to sleep.
Every night, when it all goes quiet, I put my headphones in, and Freo Fanatics 1994 on, and for a few simple minutes, think about nothing.
That’s everything I need at that moment.
That footy fan on the other side of the world will never know what his pirate YouTube channel has meant to me this past month.
9. Zojirushi Rice Cooker
Things that just work, really matter when you have no time for them not to.
Mornings are the weirdest: the start of the day, but really the end of the day too, since the nights are what take the most effort and emotion.
Having a rice cooker that churns out delicious, perfect steel-cut oats in the morning makes that transition to another day a little more simple.
10. Petit Bateau Kimono Bodysuit
I never anticipated how happy I’d be to own baby clothes that don’t require putting the baby’s head through the head hole.
He’s already crying and annoyed, pulling the head hole over his face just sends him into the screamosphere.
That’s why petit bateaus make me happy. They button open and closed. There’s no head hole.
I never would have known this was a thing. I never would have imagined this could be a problem that needed solving.
I know now.
