5. You’ll be afraid. The
first few months of fatherhood are simply littered with fears, fear that
you won’t be able to live up to your expectations and what it means to
be a good dad, you might not be able to protect your child and family
from harm, that you won’t be able to adequately provide for your family,
that you don’t know what to do with your child, that you will be too
much or not enough like your own father, that you’ve made a horrible
mistake. These fears and many others are completely normal and they are
a normal part of making the transition from man to husband to father.
Some are going to go away as your skills increase and others will go
away with time but sooner or later they almost always go away.
6. Your relationship with
your partner is going to change. Before you became parents you and your
partner spent a lot of time together nurturing each other and making
your relationship stronger. Once a baby shows up its all baby all the
time, everything changes. The focus of just about everything you do is
the baby; you barely have enough time sleep let alone do the things that
brought you and your partner together in the first place. If at all
possible try to carve out some time even if it’s only a few minutes a
day to spend talking with your partner about anything, something, and
anything at all other than the baby.
7. You probably take your
baby’s opinions a little too seriously. For the first six to eight
weeks of life your baby probably won’t give you much feedback about how
you are doing as a dad. No smiles, no laughing, not much response in
any way at all. In fact just about all they will do is cry. It’s
pretty easy to take your baby’s lack of enthusiasm as some kind of
referendum on your worth as a dad. Don’t! If you back off your baby
will probably too so hang on in there for a little longer it will be
worth the wait.
8. You’ll learn new ways of
being loved. Over the next few months as you learn how to master your
baby’s cues and meet his needs your baby is going to learn to love you
and to express that love in the most amazing ways. The first time your
baby cues at you or hugs you or falls asleep on your chest kind of
absent mindedly stroking your shoulder he’ll discover a true meaning of
life.
9. Your baby will teach you
about planning and flexibility. Before you became a parent getting
ready to leave the house meant grabbing your wallet, car keys and making
sure the oven was off. Now going on a trip as simple as to the grocery
store with your baby in toe takes as much planning as an expedition of
Mount Everest, that’s assuming of course your baby doesn’t fill her
diaper two or three times just as you are walking out the door.
10. You talk about very
different things than you used to. If someone would have told you a
year ago that you would be willingly participating in a long discussion
about projectile vomit, leaking breasts, and episiotomies and the color
consistency of the contents of a diaper you would have laughed yourself
silly. But you are going to do it right and you are going to love it
too.
