So I am in no position to offer advice on fatherhood since my wife and I’s first child was born five days ago. That hardly makes me an expert. Haaa. So I will be posting just some thoughts and musings as I stumble my way through it.
But one of the things that I find amazing is just how little we sometimes know about things unless we actually experience it ourselves. For example: When I was engaged my wife and I were often told by married couples that marriage was hard and difficult. They prefaced it by saying,”It is wonderful…and fun…and amazing…..but it’s also very hard.” For my wife and I we knew that marriage had its ups and downs and would be hard as we learned together what it meant to be husband and wife. And after being married for two years we can look back and say that marriage is hard, but it is also amazing and wonderful. But it took the experience of actually getting married to know the difficulties, the challenges, the wonderful experiences, etc. Nothing that our good intentioned married friends told us impacted us like doing it ourselves.
This is how having a baby feels. Everyone says how wonderful and amazing it is. But they also talk about the lack of sleep, the challenges of being parents, the difficulties focusing on your marriage, etc. And before the baby your typical response is, “yeah, yeah, yeah…I know…it’s going to be hard.”
But there is nothing like those last moments when the hospital discharges you and you are sent home with the baby for the first time. Now that we are at home I can say that no matter what my friends told me it wouldn’t have made sense until we actually experienced it ourselves.
How can one convey what it’s like to sleep off and on through the night…a couple of hours here…feed the baby…a couple of hours here…feed the baby…change the baby…bathe the baby….repeat cycle?
They can’t! It has to be experienced. And after only five days I can say that all the things I was told were true. “It’s wonderful. It will change your life. That there’s nothing like looking into the eyes of your child for the first time. ” And it’s also true that “It’s hard….that you don’t sleep much…etc., etc.”
So after five days it is true….being a parent is hard, but it is great. And it’s something that can only be conveyed through experience, because no matter what anyone tells you, it doesn’t compare to walking through the process yourself.
Have any of you rookie or experienced mothers or fathers had any experiences such as I describe? Was it easier or harder than you thought in the initial stages?
Thought this was hilarious!
all I can say is to be patient with your wife. if five days from now she wakes up at two in the morning after all of the newness has worn off and cries, “I can’t do this” (spoken from personal experience with BOTH of my children) (holding the baby, crying, trying to breastfeed, and sleep deprived)… just tell her that she can do it and that you love her… just keep telling her that!
Ha! Didn’t I tell you it was actually 10 times harder than anyone tells you.
And the feeding part, who knew there were all these experts in nursing a baby? Aren’t they supposed to just start sucking and that’s it? 
And here’s the bad news, it does not get any easier. Every milestone they hit, there is some other thing that you can’t wait for them to figure out or stop doing. Can’t wait for them to crawl or walk? Well once they do, you have to watch them every second they are awake. Stop the bottle? Well now you have to hand feed every bite and figure out what they will eat…. and on and on. Then you find yourself wishing for the earlier times when all they would do is go to sleep on you and need to drink milk…
Also hardly any advice works for all kids exactly how it works for another family. We received/read/watched plenty of advice on soothing a baby, some things worked sometimes and then stopped after awhile or not at all and so you end up with a mix of yours and other peoples techniques mashed together.
But it definitely is worth it, we still go into Jake’s room every night after he’s asleep to look at him before we go to bed.
As you go along and watch their development a lot of things start to click also, things that you thought would be difficult bringing up a child you figure out that they have to do these things. Like getting colds easily, if they don’t ever get sick and exposed to germs, a simple flu would kill them later on. Tantrums, if they didn’t have them, they wouldn’t figure out how to control their emotions.
It’s only 18 or more years depending on how many kids you have.