#081 - Learning to be a Parent

My wife Siobhan hounded me for several months about writing a blog post for our son Nolan's first birthday. As you can see, I clearly heeded her requests, as we are now 3 full months after his birthday and I'm just getting around to starting.

It has been a remarkable year (15 months). Sometimes I feel like I can barely remember life without Nolan, though I do have pretty clear memories of what it was like when Siobhan was pregnant, so I'd say more accurately I barely remember what life was like before Nolan started growing. Did we really used to take 2-hour naps on Saturday morning after the gym? Did we really used to "sleep in"? Did we really used to be able to fit everything we needed for a weekend trip in a bag or two? I suppose in some ways not being able to remember all of that is kinda helpful -- every now and I then I miss the ability to do something that we were able to do before Nolan, like sleep in, or go out for a date night dinner, but I most of the time I don't even really remember what was so great about our lives before him so I can't say I really miss it.

Instead, what we have is this amazingly funny, happy, sweet 15 month old who brings new joys and new challenges into our lives every day. What we've lost in terms of free time we've gained in family time. We eat so many more meals together, we love when we're able to be together for his bedtime, and we have a lot of fun taking him to the park.

I'd say that generally there is a lot more stress in our relationship, which maybe sounds like a bad thing when you say it out loud, but it's a product of needing to have more things readily available (his necessities like diapers, wipes, food), needing to be on a tighter schedule (he's a ticking bomb when he doesn't eat on time), and needing to have a set of eyes on him a great majority of the time (he's at the age where his toys are kinda boring but sharp things and electrical cords are very fun). You lose a little bit of the flexibility to just say, "Oh, darn, I forgot."

At the same time, to counter that stress there is the great benefit of being invested in a very important task together. We're both focused on the goal of raising this child together and keeping him in a safe, healthy environment, and that creates a really strong bond. I'd be totally lost without Siobhan, and -- even though she is amazing and definitely lifts most of the weight in caring for Nolan -- she needs me to be as helpful as I can be when necessary, and to give her a break when she needs some time to decompress. We have found a pretty good parenting flow, where when one of us is really stressed our or upset, the other tends to dial it down and put their own issues aside to help take the pressure off. Or if I'm getting really frustrated with Nolan, she can swoop in and redirect him, or vice versa. I hope that most parent couples operate in that way, though I can see that it'd be a huge problem if one person's stress just exacerbated the other's instead.

We just got back from a 2 1/2 week trip to the Philadelphia area for a wedding, family time, and Thanksgiving, and if there's any time you need that balance, it's living away from home for that long. Normally it's Siobhan who gets stressed out about our travel, making sure we have everything packed and where are we going to sleep and is Nolan going to be happy. But this time, I was the one who had a lot of trouble. Nolan had a few very unusual bad nights of sleep, then he dealt with a fever and an ear infection for a few days, and there was a snowstorm in the middle of all of it, so I was just getting a little worn out trying to deal with all of that while moving place to place and living out of a suitcase and trying to work my full time job at the same time. Siobhan was exhausted from training for and running the Philadelphia marathon, not to mention taking Nolan to the doctor for his ear infection, and still she managed to help take the stress off my and let me know that she was going to listen and be there for any needs that I might have.

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One of the weird indirect benefits of having a kid is that you suddenly become a valid source of information for other people who are trying for children or expecting. I never put any thought into this before, even though we constantly asked our friends with older kids for advice from the moment we knew we were going to be parents. It's been kinda fun to feel like you have valuable input, even though I am always hesitant and acknowledge that everybody has different experiences, and just because I found something to be true doesn't mean it's going to work for you. But I wanted to make a note of some of the things I've thought along the way, either to help those who might be expecting, or to look back on in a couple years and realize what an idiot I was. Again, if you disagree with what I have to say, that's totally cool. Obviously we can't be friends anymore, but I respect your opinion, even though it's garbage.

From the pregnancy phase:

- Don't buy too much stuff ahead of time. Especially clothing. As Siobhan likes to say, "Once we brought Nolan home, it was like Target threw up all over our front porch." The other thing to be careful about is sizing. I was a huge baby, so everyone kinda assumed Nolan would be big, so we didn't have very many NB sized things for him. Then when he was smaller than expected, we didn't have much to put him in right away. It could go the reverse though, too, and you'd have all these NB sized things you just have to give away.

- But DO load up on diapers and wipes, especially if other people buy them for you (and if you have the room to keep them). We had awesome friends and family who loaded us up, and we went a crazy long time before buying wipes.

- Go to the classes and hospital visits. (This is mostly for dads, like most of the stuff I'm mentioning. Moms are good. Dads need some reassurance.) Our birth class was like 7 hours long on a Saturday. I did not want to go to that, you can be sure. But it was a good experience, and it gave you answers to questions that you think you might be too embarrassed to ask, but are actually important to know when the time comes, like, "Where the heck do we park? Do we just drive up to the emergency room when she's in labor?" There's nothing worse than having to figure that out while your wife is screaming in agony trying to bring your child into the world. Dads are happy to sit there looking around the room waiting for other dads to ask. These classes and visits answer all your not-dumb questions.

From the hospital phase:

- Bring comfy stuff. There's no such thing as, "Well, I'm going to bed," when you're in the hospital. It's like you sleep for 2 hours if you can, and then you're up, and then you can try to sleep again. If your hospital doesn't have comfy stuff for you, like a good pillow and a blanket, you are going to be miserable trying to sleep.

- Get used to people seeing your wife naked. You can draw the line at the guy who picks up and drops off your food, but basically everyone else is seeing her naked like all day. You get over it quickly.

- Ask tons of questions. The nurses in the recovery room are your heroes, they are everything you aspire to be when it comes to taking care of a child. Watch, ask, learn. And when you are leaving swipe blankets, diapers, wipes, lotion, whatever they have there for the baby, just swipe it all. You're paying for it anyway.

From the new parent phase:

- You're going to be fine. I've heard so many people (and I was probably one of them) be like, "I've never changed a diaper, I don't know how to hold a baby, I'm not sure I'm ready for this." There's no such thing as ready or not ready. You don't really have a choice. You start changing diapers, you start holding the baby, and in hours (or days at the worst) you are a pro. You'll be fine.

- Get out of the house early. When the babies are really little, they can sleep anywhere with any noise level. Bring them in the car seat out to dinner. When your kid gets to be like 7-8 months old and wants to move around and needs to be asleep by 7 PM, your ability to go out to dinner with them drops precipitously. (Again, this is just me, it could be different for you.) When Nolan was like 10 months and screaming in his high chair and throwing food on the floor when we tried to go to dinner at like 5:30, I missed this stage.

- TRY to go out and do things. It doesn't mean you have to stay and stick through meltdowns or a fussy baby or blowout diapers. But some people become glued to their houses when they have a baby and to me that doesn't seem like a fun way to live. Go out, go to a park or a fair or a street market or something, and if it's not working, just go home.

- When people say, "I'd love to watch the baby if you want to go out," take them up on it. They might be offering just to be nice, but call them out on it. Can't beat help.

From the toddler/wobbler stage:

- Take videos of your kid doing cute things and watch them before you go to sleep at night. It's the freaking best.

- Give people lots of unsolicited advice as if you've reinvented the wheel of being a parent, they love that. Wait a second...