I just wanna keep living this past year over and over….
I’m not ready for this every year.
I wish I could explain the feeling. It’s so joyous, yet it won’t stop echoing that time is running out. Like the tide coming in and receding, it’s been a constant reminder the last few days how the moments spent with my precious boy and loving partner are ever-fleeting.
I know I’m preaching to the choir - but having kids is tough on the mind, body and soul in all the best ways.
– Will Irvin-Linneman, via Facebook, regarding his son’s one-year birthday
This quote came from a timely Facebook post from one of my friends. Will and his partner, Peyton, are new parents with a kiddo that’s about seven months older than our newest baby. I say timely because the content of Will’s post struck an incredibly deep chord in our hearts.
This post is about the depth and significance of that stricken chord, and my reflections on the first 5 months of being a dad to my second daughter.
The Meaning of Life#
The MEANING OF LIFE?! Get outta here, Christian! — I know, I know. The headline of this subsection offers a preview of a very bold take.
Will’s words represent an emotion that my wife, Blakeley, and I had discussed over and over in the last few months. Upon reading his post, I immediately messaged him asking if I could use his words in a blog post that sat incomplete in my drafts, which was tentatively to be about my experiences on my 14 weeks of paternity leave. At the time, I was planning to write about lessons I had learned: tips for getting your kid to sleep, observations about her development, etc., but after seeing his raw outpouring of emotions on the topic, I knew I had a more broad message to write about.
In the first few months of life, your child grows at a blistering rate. To them, of course, nothing is really changing. Similar to how we can observe years of our adult careers pass by in the blink of an eye, our kids do not take note of the abundance of change they experience in their youth. We, the observers and caretakers, attentively note every new development. We notice them suddenly start to ponder about their surroundings. We smile with joy the first time they consciously open and close their little hands, the first inklings of free will and bodily autonomy swirling about in their elastic (oversized) noggins.
Within the excitement and pleasure that floods our nervous system, there is a more complicated emotion that underpins everything else. I am not sure if there is a name for it in scientific literature, and I will not spend my time researching it now. The emotion is one that I am sure feels different to everyone who experiences it, yet, I have absolutely no doubt in my mind is a feeling that is universally recognized by all loving and involved parents.
It is a joyous pain that is rooted in the concept of time itself. It emerges out of the yearning to halt the progress – the overwhelming desire to freeze your precious child in place, so that you never need to experience the painful truth that their development and your own do not stop. It is a harsh, bitter reminder that with each passing moment of exciting change, there will be one less to relish in. Eventually, that little human will grow to be entirely their own, only connected to you by history and genetics. One day, you will be no more. One day they, too, will be no more. It is the truth of this horrifying reality that defines the incredibly tragic love and emotion that is parenthood.
In our many conversations about this stabbing love that we’ve felt in the first five months of parenthood, my wife has lamented this fact. She has expressed her overwhelming urge to silence the pain. In these chats, I’ve always found myself returning to one, and only one, important fact of the matter: without its finitude, the love is meaningless. If we had our way, and we could halt the passing of time entirely, there would be no progress to celebrate. There would be no ending to resent, and similarly, there would be no real thing to celebrate at all. It would be completely normal. Completely unspectacular. And completely devoid of true meaning. For it to be special, it must end. I believe that this resolution, albeit a bittersweet one, is ubiquitous in life. It applies to many scenarious, like the loss of a loved one or pet.
I am sure there are other emotions out there that humankind can feel or has felt that compete with this feeling, in terms of the perceived magnitude. However, I doubt many emotions can trump it. From a biological perspective, our entire purpose is to reproduce. To further our genetic lineage. Without that driving force, our lineage (and by extension, our species) would never continue, and arguably would never have been. This is no new revelation, and is understood by us humans at a relatively early age. However, I think humanity possess the capability to drive ourselves to higher heights. I believe the emotion I’ve described elevates the human experience to a higher dimension.
Consider, for a moment, what humanity might look like if it did not feel this emotion. Without it, we would be left with only the urge to participate in the act of reproduction. Once that urge is satisfied, our parental “duty” would be accomplished. “Hey kid, you’re here. Good luck, and peace out,” is what I imagine the extent of our post-birth participation would look like. Considering how long it takes a child to even be able to hold its head on its own, I don’t think this would be a very good evolutionary strategy. The emotional toll of parenthood drives us to protect and nurture for much, much longer. We teach and we protect, every day, in the hopes that our offspring can one day experience the same kind of reward we have felt upon watching them come to understand and explore the world. I wonder if this emotion is deeply rooted in humanity’s societal success, enabling our ability to work together in groups, for the sake of our atomic preservation. Needless to say, I believe it is one of our strongest assets, and perhaps our entire individual purpose.
Alright. I’ve beat that horse to death. How do we parents actually go about caring for these useless, completely defenseless, shrieking, hungry little mouths? From my experience and others, I present some unsolicited advice.
Tips – But Really There Are No Right Answers#
To take a turn in the content, I would like to lay out some of the facts I’ve discovered during my time off as a stay-at-home dad with my infant. Some of them apply continuously, and some become obsolete as your child ages. Do note, of course, that it has long been known that we as parents are always learning and evolving, constantly making incorrect choices that refine tomorrow’s decisions. As such, these perspectives are inherently flawed.
Control your emotions. They can smell your fear.
Imagine you’re currently tasked with getting your screaming, frantic child to sleep. They desperately want their mom, whose smell and embrace they’ve come to recognize as their most calming physical stimuli. This is no easy task. The key is to remain calm, and to reduce your heart rate. If your mind is calm, your body will follow. Take deep breaths, and do everything you can to prevent the shrieks from overwhelming you. The baby is not being hurt by crying. It is their only viable form of communication. Once you’ve calmed yourself, you can observe their emotional and physical cues to address their needs. There were times where I was attempting this exact feat, and as I felt my body calm, I felt my daughter’s relax, too.
You will grow more efficient in your preparations, actions, and responses to scenarios.
Day one of changing diapers, preparing bottles of milk, changing their outfit, dealing with blowouts, etc., is full of chaos. You are learning in every moment and experience. Be patient and give yourself grace. With every lesson, you will hone your abilities to provide for them. You’ll learn how to preemptively thaw milk, and you’ll develop muscle memory when it comes to efficiently cleaning up a dirty diaper. The key, as I’ve stated, is to remain patient and calm. Remember, they can smell your fear. I mean this only partially metaphorically.
Absorb the moments with as much of your deliberate, conscious mind as you can.
Sometimes you will yearn for free, quiet time. It will come. Be patient, and enjoy the chaos of these moments with your family. Someday the house will be quiet and still, and you don’t want to feel like you wished away the sound of laughter or cries.
Your partner needs to remain in your mind, even when you want to be selfish in your thoughts.
It is surprisingly easy to yearn for time to yourself when you’re in the heat of early parenthood. Do your best to forgo these desires, when possible. Remember that it’s you and your partner, together, tackling this challenge, and not you tackling this challenge now and your partner dealing with it later. In these moments, communication is key. If you find that you’re burdened with the weight of the responsibilities, simply tell your partner this fact. If they are committed to the Team ideology as you are, they will listen and will understand. It is give and take, always.
The joy and love you feel when you stare at your sleeping child is one that’s not easy to encapsulate in words.
Relish in the moment. Commit it to memory with every effort possible. It does not last.
Sing to them.
I make no claims of possessing any ability to sing. I have, however, been addicted to 90s/2000s grunge rock for a while. I have serenaded my infant daughter with renditions of Pearl Jam more times than I can count. Our moments of singing and dancing in the kitchen as her milk thaws in the sink have elicited some of the biggest smiles I’ve seen on her face, and the experiences of which have marked me for life. Belt those lyrics. You are their whole world. If you’re lucky, your little one will try to sing along with you. Prepare your heart for utter euphoria.
These are my initial tips. Around the time I first drafted them, I grabbed a few beers with one of my good friends, Josh, who is also a young father. He has a one-year-old and another on the way, and is well-positioned to offer pointers based on his experience. I asked him to share some that I wanted to include in my writing, so here they are, in the order he sent them. In some of them, I’ve added my own annotations.
Understand there are situations/events outside of your control, and that you have to do the best you can with the things that you can control.
My interpretation: Be flexible and forgiving when things don’t go the way you were expecting them to.
Be as present as possible with family time. They’re watching and paying attention to you even when it doesn’t seem like it.
My interpretation: Put the f*cking phone down.
Being present isn’t just being home. It is actively interacting and participating.
My interpretation: Put the f*cking phone down and play.
If mama is on baby duty, it always helps knocking out household chores. Everyone is happier afterwards. Throwing on a podcast or some good music for entertainment always helps.
My interpretation: Find ways to be useful when you aren’t on kid duty. Do so with joy and humility. Remember: it’s a team sport. Find ways to make it joyful.
Getting up for the baby in the middle of the night, even when you have to get up much earlier, pays dividends.
My interpretation: Be selfless and willing to help, even when you might feel reasons that you shouldn’t have to. Admittedly, I could use to improve in my effort in this category.
[You] have to be really efficient with your personal time. I enjoyed working out for an hour or two in the past. [Now,] most workouts are 20-30 minutes. The only way to have a longer workout is getting the baby involved, ex: running with the baby in stroller.
My interpretation: Efficiency is one of those areas you can reclaim some personal time the most. When your time becomes limited, you are forced to make smart decisions about how to use it. The more planning you are able to put in to it, and the more flexible your planning is, the more efficient you’ll be with your use of your time. This, of course, is mere lip service from me, as I am still always working on my organizational systems, and furthermore makes no mention of your own personal work effort.
Recently, I’ve come to realize that my mental capacity at 8:30 PM is highly limited, and if I put off working on math or coding (or any other cognatively intensive task) until this part of the day I am highly likely to brainmelt watching YouTube or something like that. As such, I’ve been working on making the habit of getting up very early on days I want to be the most productive with my time. Since my wife gets up to get ready for work at 5:30 AM, I’ve resorted to setting alarms to 3:00 AM. It’s early, but it forces me to go to bed early and start my day off with one of more productive wins. The net result is that even if I don’t do anything “productive” after my work day, I’ve still gained ground on my personal ambitions and can go to bed feeling victorious.
The key discovery I’ve made recently is in downloading the iOS app “Alarmy”, which allows a user to create a “mission” to disable the alarm. Stolen from a Reddit post, I’ve printed out and laminated a QR code that I scan to fulfill the “mission”. I placed the QR code in the bathroom, which forces me to get up and make my way to the bathroom before the alarm can be quieted. To avoid waking my wife and baby, I set my phone to vibrate for this alarm. I keep it near my pillow. As an added layer of redundancy, I can set my Garmin watch to vibrate for an alarm at the same time. This full approach has been the most successful attempt I’ve made at ensuring I actually get up when I decide to get up. A huge win, in my book.
Enjoy the sacrifice of old hobbies to create new ones. Life is always changing. Adapting is the only way to survive. No more binge watching TV shows, but get to read the kiddo a bunch of books at bedtime.
My interpretation: Josh’s perspective here is elegant and positive. It’s hard to find yourself in a position where you don’t have time for what you love anymore. This might not be the case entirely, but there’s no doubt that a new baby occupies a massive amount of time and energy. Similar to my remarks on efficiency, this has been an opportunity for me to determine what is really important to me and what isn’t. I get to PC game a little less, but along with the habits I’m working on as described in #6, I’ve found that I still have a couple nights a week where I can game guilt-free.
Date night is a necessity. Just you and the wife. Get a babysitter for a couple hours and spend quality time with each other.
My interpretation: As Josh stated, this is a necessity. Right around her five month “birthday”, I arranged for a weekend getaway for my wife and I. We stayed at a quaint local Bed N Breakfast, and experienced a true hidden gem. Blakeley and I had a wonderful time, and were able to soak up the intimacy together, as well as revel in our successes as new parents. It was a weekend I’ll always treasure.
Gratitude. Take a step back and realize how fortunate you are to have a child, a partner, and a family in this life. Think about all those things you take for granted day to day. Health, shelter, food, etc.
My interpretation: Josh’s words need no elaboration here.
Create memories. What did you remember as a kid? Let’s see if we can create fun lasting memories for our kids.
My interpretation: Akin to the topic I delved into at the top of this post, this thought is of paramount importance. As my grandfather-in-law once said to me, there’s “nothing more important than family.” Ultimately, we amount to very little more than the impression we leave behind on those we spend our lives around. Create lasting memories. Breathe life into your loved ones with your acts. It’s all that matters.
I hope that my words in this post help someone. It has felt wholesome and rewarding to share them into the ether. I hope my kids grow up to know how much I love them, and how much they mean to me.