The first few days

Another adventure calls for another blog. This time round, it's going to be longer than marathon training and be about more than just food. In part this will act as a way of sharing my experiences with you, dear reader, and in part it will act as a permanent diary for me as a record of all the changes and lessons over the coming months and years.

I've been meaning to start this blog for a while now and keep coming up with different topics that I wanted as my first post. Rather than write lots of different posts, I'm going to make this a long first post and then try to stay on top of things from here on. I also want to be as honest as possible about the whole experience of being a father. Please don't mistake this honesty for a lack of love for Jacob, who I adore even more than my cat Pollo.

The Birth

Nothing quite prepares you for the moment when the midwife passes you your newly scrubbed baby and you look down at him. In the movies you always get the strings and big hearts in the eyes, and for me it was a little like that. My main emotion however was that of shock, that something that had always been an idea and a dream was now a reality. The honest truth is also that newborn babies straight out of the womb are not the prettiest of things. Jake was definitely purple and grey in places, covered in dry blood and with some nasty looking red marks from the forceps. However, I was still determined to hang on to him until they made me let him go to be weighed.

Working It Out

The parents of the kids I work with often complain that there's no manual for a baby and while there is plenty of advice and support out there, your baby is completely unique and you have to work out what works for you. The first full night that we had at home was horrendous. Jake had been very well mannered during the day at the hospital, sleeping a lot and even allowing himself to bathed and tested without complaining too much. I'm not sure what I thought our first nights would be like, but I had imagined a few hours sleep interrupted by some feeding and comforting. Jake had other plans. While we could comfort him and get him to feed ok, he found it hard to sleep by himself in his crib. We both shed some tears as it got on to 5am and we still hadn't slept. I could have hugged Kelsey's father Dan when he came in at 7am to offer some support and we managed a couple of hours of sleep. It's all trial and error and I think that Karyn put it best when she said that you spend your time working out what works for him and you for right now.

Steep Learning Curves

No matter how bad things get, as long as you're working together, you do come through the other side, often with lots of learning under your belt. Babies need to be burped. If he's awake, he's awake and doesn't want to sleep. Be calm and he'll be calm. Tag team parenting means that at least one of you can sleep at a time. It's then a question of remembering these lessons and being able to apply them to the next time you hit that scenario. Our second night was a little better as we made sure we burped him a little and swaddled him well. We got around 4 hours of sleep, and discovered the fun of taking him for walks around the kitchen. I sang to him, trying to work out what songs I knew and what songs I could remember my parents singing to me. Kelsey apparently timed herself for loops of the kitchen island, giving Jake a baseball style commentary as she went. He's getting to the point where if you hold him close enough he'll watch your eyes and mouth with interest, which is an amazing experience.

Friends

You don't realise how much of a support network you have in your friends and family until something big happens. The number of people who have offered help, support and advice over the last 3 days has been breathtaking and makes you realise that you're not in this by yourself. In some cases, just knowing that you can ask for help makes the problem go away as you know that you'll find a solution somehow. In other cases, it's the emotional strength that just having your friends and family around that helps. We had our first social engagement last night for a few of our friends and while they took great pleasure in seeing Jake, we both took great pleasure in catching up and having conversations that weren't exclusively about the baby. The fact that Jake has such a large number of interested, excited and engaged aunts and uncles (as opposed to blood related Aunts and Uncles, as I was explaining to him at 3am this morning) will mean that he'll get so many different viewpoints and understandings about the world that it makes me feel excited for his future.

That's about it for now. Hopefully future posts will be limited to one subject. If there's anything you want to know about or for me to expand on, leave a comment.