Parenting: 6 Months In

Overly-Confident Advice From a New Dad

Prior to being a dad I pontificated on how to be one. Now that I have 6 months under my belt, I feel certified to offer advice to anyone and everyone. I’ve cracked parenthood. An online course is forthcoming for the low price of 12 payments of $24.99.

At the very least this 6 months has given me a wonderful vantage point from which to view the magic and mystery of having my own kids.  Far from advice, this is a quick rundown of certain lessons that have consistently crept up. And if this is the result of only 6 months with only one kid, I can only imagine how much more I still have to learn.

Parenting Cannot Be Equal

I view myself as a proud member of the Fatherhood 2.0 generation. It’s a more hands-on, shared responsibility, time-in-the-trenches approach to being a dad than the model of the last 2,000+ years. While I do believe I deserve heaps of credit for my sacrifices, it’s worth pointing out that it is almost impossible to create a truly equal parenting structure.

Using time spent with your kid as the main metric to measure parental contribution is the source of the problem. Very quickly an illusion forms that if, at the end of day, we both have spent 12 hours total taking care of our kid, then the parenting is equal.

But then it only takes a few reflective moments to realize how much work Marisa is doing behind the scenes. That onesie I just grabbed out the drawer didn’t just magically appear. The daycare and pediatrician visits didn’t schedule themselves.

Fatherhood 2.0 very much relies on Motherhood 1.0.

Tell Me Why Your Kid Is Special

I believe there are two reasons pediatricians tell you what percentile your kid is in for weight and length. The first is scientific: once you know the percentile, you can figure out if your kid is growing in a healthy trajectory. The second is purely psychological: parents are looking for any fact they can share with the world to prove how amazing their kids are, because in turn it shows how great they are as parents.

Miles is currently in the 99th percentile of length. I do not consider this an accomplishment for anyone involved. Yet I’ve heard other parents brag about these very same statistics. I get it. Everyone wants to be in the 1%. But I think we’re all grasping at straws for this one. Do you know what it takes to be in the 99th percentile of height for a 33 year old male? 6 foot 3. Not exactly life-changing stuff.

Over the next few years, I will meet parents whose kids are veritable prodigies. I will hear how Timmy tied his shoes two months ahead of schedule. I’ll need to feign fascination as Sammy’s dad revels in her preschool reading ability. Certainly there are landmarks to applaud, but in these early years the time span between accomplishments is so condensed that to think any one person or family has already won is absolutely absurd.

Why Is Everyone So Negative?

When you first tell people you’re going to have a kid, they respond with joy. They hug you and tell you what a blessing it will be. There is no better community than the one surrounding you from pregnancy until you give birth.

But boy does that community turn dark quickly. 

Tell someone your kid is sleeping through the night and they’ll immediately respond with “well that will change, just wait until their sleep regression…” Tell someone you’re having fun with your first kid and they’ll respond with “you know what they say, your second kid is going to be a nightmare.” I’ve even heard stories of women telling other women they had an easy childbirth only to find themselves excommunicated from the Church of Eternal Suffering.

It’s like everyone has the flu and is mad at you for not having it. If “having kids is the best” why does it seem like once you’re in it, everyone wants to linger on the downsides instead of celebrating the upsides? I get wanting to bond over the common hardships all parents face, but bonding over the the times that are a ton of fun seems like a healthy - and necessary - counterbalance.

I’m happy to acknowledge that raising kids is not all rosy, but if 25%+ of my life is going to be spent focused on it, you better believe I’m not hunkering down for two decades of depression. Is this going to dictate who my parent friends will end up being? Almost certainly!

Why Infants Strain Marriages

Speaking of downsides, a baby’s potential negative impact on our marriage is one thing we heard over and over again. Before having a kid, it made sense conceptually, but now it’s very clear how two adults who love each other can devolve into incompatible monsters.

It all starts with sleep. The ability to tolerate stress, rationally solve problems, and clearly communicate is all strongly linked to how rested you are. 

An infant tips both sides of the scale. In those first few weeks, a baby Oppenheimers your entire sleep schedule. All the while, they introduce an unsolvable puzzle into your relationship. They don’t care what parenting books you read. How they are feeling now is completely unrelated to how they were just feeling. Like Vin Diesel in Fast & Furious, they live their life one quarter mile at a time.

Without sleep, you’re both working at 60% capacity. It’s easier to blame the other person for not doing something right than to spend the energy to collaboratively come up with four different solutions, none of which may work.

There’s no one way to overcome this, but there are ways to mitigate it. Can you make sure one person is rested at any given time? Can either person find a way to raise their hand when they’re absolutely spent and say “heads up, I’m a zombie!”? And when something goes wrong can you find some time to sketch out what you’ll do next time?

The smallest steps can lead to happiness all around.

Frustration vs. Despair

Babies are blobs. Babies make noises. Babies seem helpless. So when you see a helpless blob on the floor making noises that sound an awful lot like crying, the first instinct is to pick them up or solve whatever problem you think they’re having. 

I, personally, don’t think we’re giving babies enough credit. First off, we have to forgive them for only having one way to communicate. After extensive research I’ve found that “WAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH” means anything from:

• I think I have fingers, which kind of freaks me out.

• There is a toy I want that is out of reach.

• A strange noise just happened and I may have been responsible.

• I’m incredibly hungry.

• I thought you had disappeared.

• I bonked my head and it hurts.

• I’d like to travel to that side of the room but I can’t.

• I make noises because I can and it’s fun.

It took a little time to overcome the “my baby is in peril” instinct that a wail/cry induces, but my god it was great once we did. Because then we were able to let Miles be frustrated, to figure it out, to learn what was merely a passing discomfort. And then of course we were there when things really did go south.

Principles vs. Playbooks

Expectations are everything. And kids have a habit of not adhering to any of your expectations. There are certainly step-by-step guides on how to execute every aspect of parenthood, and each of those guides has plenty of positive views on Amazon, and at times, each of those guides directly contradicts one another.

We learned this the hard way when we wanted Miles to sleep through the night. We read four different books, and tried to follow them all. Ever try to mix four different recipes? The outcome is very bad banana bread.

Having principles vs. tactics has been far more helpful in their flexibility and adaptability. I want our kids to be resilient, curious, kind, and self-motivated. (That list has not been vetted with Marisa and it will probably change, but it feels like a good starting point.) 

That means “sleep training” is less about waking a baby up exactly at 4:15am for exactly 4.5oz and more about the kid learning that it’s ok to wake up and go back to sleep. It means that sometimes they sleep less and sometimes they sleep more. It means that schedules are more like the New York City subway than the trains in Zurich - it’ll get you there, but within a 20 minute window.

We’ve “failed” on this front in really only one area so far: freakin' Miles won’t eat unless the bottle is perfectly warmed. Absolute diva. Doesn’t touch it if it’s too cold. That’s on us, and honestly if we want to overcome it we’d have to endure a few terrible feedings but we’d probably win out in the end.

Getting Back to Normal Life

This one I think we’ve done a decent job at, but not a great one. Of course there is no going back to the exact same life, schedule, routine, flexibility etc that we had before becoming parents. But we both thought it was extremely important to inch our way in that direction from day 1. 

Travel was a huge priority. Be it NYC to Florida car rides or NYC to LA flights, we bit the bullet early and cannonballed into the deep end. As with most things in life, the fear and pressure you feel standing in the security line with a baby and car seat is 80% imagined. Did I hate being the people holding up the line? Of course. Did my heart rate elevate as the car seat didn’t go through the first time because I didn’t yet know that the handle needs to go into a certain position? Yeah, I wasn’t thrilled. Does anyone in that line remember who I am four months later? No, of course not.

Just as with learning stick shift, having a baby plops you right back into normal life but with reduced skills. All of the sudden, you, hi, you’re the problem it’s you with the crying baby or stroller blocking the sidewalk. You’re the one who’s a little less willing to venture out because staying home is just that much easier.

A few things got us over this hump. First off, the more new situations a baby is put in the better (resiliency, curiosity). Second off, the happier we are the happier our baby will be. I don’t know if there’s any science behind this but I can’t imagine it’s great for the kid to feel responsible for the parents losing out on life. Third, it’s all actually easier than we thought. The first time is always the hardest. Find ways to be ready to feed them and let them nap on the go and you can get away with a lot.

6 Months In, 6^3 Months to Go

There you go. That’s all you need to know in just a few paragraphs! The good news is I’m sure it only gets easier when they stop being a blob, start moving around, start talking, and start having opinions. I’m also pretty sure adding a few more kids to the mix doesn’t change anything. Don’t worry - I’ll be sure to report back.