When it comes to people asking me how fatherhood is going that is my standard answer. I’m only being half a smart ass when I say it; the other half of me is completely serious. Actually I am fully serious.
Mankind has survived approximately 500,000 years of existence (depending on how you’re counting), child bearing, child rearing, crying children, hungry children, children in need of a diaper change, elements, poxes (literal and figurative), seemingly smart people saying what turns out to be wrong about family, and seemingly dumb people saying what turns out to be correct about family.
I think about Cave Man and Cave Woman hunting and gathering as little Cave Baby learned how to crawl quickly. Cave Baby DID learn to crawl quickly since a small child makes a delightful snack to some sharp tooth predator. That is when Cave Woman actually survived child birth.
It isn’t with full glibness when I sum up the early parts of fatherhood I can sum it up as, “I haven’t dropped her yet!” as Sienna can survive some temporary hunger or temporary dirty diaper. Sienna also has a squirmess factor of 2 million, especially with those early late night feedings and diaper changes. Though man, what a beginning.
The Beginning
“I’ll be back as soon as I can. I’ll text you and let you know what happens.”
With those words or some proximity of, Danielle walked out the door to our apartment. That she was wearing her bedroom slippers at the time might have been considered off. That it was about 10:30 at night and I had just shoved money into her hand for the car service that was waiting for. That I was going to have to call her mother and tell her to meet Danielle at the emergency room.
You know, typical first night at home with Sienna. All five pounds, nine ounces of Sienna, our daughter who had been home for all of seven hours. Who mostly resembled a giant diaper with a biscuit head. I have terrible news for all parents your newborn child most likely looks like a small pug crossed with Winston Churchill. No offense, this is a fact of life.
Sienna came into the world three and half weeks early via an emergency C-section. Emergency C-section where her head was a tiny bit caved in and her umbilical chord was wrapped around her neck and requiring three slaps from the doctor before Sienna decided she would stop scaring us all by not making any noises. On the level of: this-is-annoying to holy-goodness-terrible the birth the entire previous four days had been: part-of-life-I-love-modern-medicine-it-could-have-been-much-worse. Danielle spent the post-birth days in a hospital room, I stayed on the extra couch next to her bed, and Sienna spent time in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU).
After four days of this particular living arrangement we were THRILLED to finally take Sienna home. That Danielle’s fever started rising immediately upon coming home and spiked to such an extent that she had to go back to the hospital’s ER and leave me alone. Not so much fun.
Which is why I was staring at Sienna and told her, “I guess it’s just me and you. I can get through any of this - I just can’t drop you.” I had spent four days of her life learning how to change and feed her from the Nurses in the NICU. I have full faith in my ability to change and feed her taking however long it needed to take. I then called my mother-in-law and told her to meet her daughter at the ER.
So there you have it. Day 1 of 100 days of Sienna. I decided to count from the time she came home.
Yes, Danielle (and my mother-in-law Trudy) came home at 3 AM that night. Danielle pumped up with some uber-powerful antibiotics that could probably double as paint thinner in a pinch. Heck, Danielle had so many drugs from the time she arrived at the hospital to our first night home I am pretty sure she’ll fail a drug test someday.
Anyone really wondering WHY I’ve enjoyed the other 99 days of parenthood so much?
Before Sienna was born we prepared as much as new parents could prepare. Set up her room, packed a hospital bag, and asked parents what to expect. This led to a confusing factoid that my friend Rob and his wife Jessica experienced recently. Parents don’t remember newborn.
Why don’t parents remember?
Another friend Steve put it to me a different way, “I have a five year old son. If we have a second kid I have to relearn everything. I just don’t remember.” It appears that living entirely in the moment is a benefit/hazard of being a new parent. I could not believe that my father could not remember me from this age. Or that some of the smartest people I know can’t remember what they did five days after the child is born.
99 days later Danielle and I are able to piece together most everything. Not of just the first few days. Just of EVERYTHING about being a parent. Or to paraphrase my father, “If you want to remember something you better write it down. Otherwise you’re going to forget. Trust me.”
Here are ten things I’ve learned, so far, that other parents might want to know. Or they might not.
- Take a picture. Your child will mess with you being doing a cute action for about a week and then never EVER do it again. You want that cute memory? Take a picture.
Advice will come from weird places. Sienna never slept in a bassinet. Why? At a New Year’s party a parent with twins told us she just put the kids directly into the crib from day one. It never occurred to us that you could do that. We did it. Sure Sienna looked like a burrito in a desert – still it worked. - Diapers start with “N” not “1”. The reason Sienna looks so tiny was because it was the wrong size diaper. These diapers looked so large I thought she was going to be smothered.
- You will want to break at some point. It is a biological result of not enough sleep, and mostly, not enough sleep. That is the EXACT moment your child will smile reflexively at you and you will melt. Then all will be well.
- If you have a daughter and someone calls her a him it will bother you. I thought it wouldn’t. It does. I also don’t care that we have a blue baseball hanging from her stroller. You can ask people! You-can-ask.
- You will think you are ready for work. I did a podcast a week after I returned from Sienna being born. I still don’t know why I did it.
- Take the child out right away. I was on leave for three weeks since I was taking care of both Sienna and Danielle. We made sure to have Sienna out to one of our favorite food places within a week of being home. Find a place you trust and take the child there during off hours. The break is pleasant.
- It is fun to show off your child. It is. Can’t be helped. It just is.
- Watch other parents operate. We’ve learned a lot from watching our parents who have kids interact with Sienna. Mostly because the muscle memory of a parent when it comes to a newborn is amazing. I had no idea Sienna could do pull-ups until a friend showed us. Kind of awesome.
- It comes down to three things: hunger, fatigue, or a dirty diaper. Take care of those three and you can make it through most anything.
- (Freebie) Take to heart that your child will eventually crawl and talk back to you. The times of a peaceful visit to a restaurant will go away. I believe people when they tell us this. Especially when we have a sleeping Sienna and the parent telling us this information looks at his or her own child with murder in the eye and mumble, “Enjoy the time…enjoy the time.”
In the first 99 days we’ve already had quite a few adventures. Some intentional, some not. Sienna has been up to Massachusetts, out to Long Island, has met both sets of grand units, gone to an Easter dinner, had Passover, been to a bunch of bars and places for brunch, attended a Mets game, watched hockey (I feel guilty about letting out a yelp in excitement and Sienna started crying) and basketball, had diaper changes in a parking lot, rolled over during tummy time, performed dance moves, been strolled around upstate New York, started daycare, and punched the cat in the face. It was a good punch too.
There have moments of course. Being so still you have to look three times to see that she is breathing. The eight diaper changes a day. Sienna needing an hour to feed when she was just learning. Her acid reflux. Danielle being so tired that I took a day off from work so she could just rest. Sterilizing for the millionth time. Arguing with the insurance company. Rolling Danielle to the NICU and her look of horror when seeing her daughter and counting how many tubes were attached. Those are the memories that will fade quickly. Those are the ones that when a parent asks, “Do you remember when they were this small…” I probably am NOT going to remember. Still, it is part of the first 99 days and that is what happened. Heck, Cave Man or Cave Woman would love if those were the biggest problems they faced.**
Sienna loves strange character voices. Much to Danielle’s horror the same “cutesy voices” that Danielle hated that her mother would use with other babies…Sienna LOVES. Sienna and Grandma may understand each other the most (Grandma also comes over to make sure Mommy and Daddy can go out on dates). If you sing to Sienna she does a full limb dance. Babies also have excellent comedic timing and Sienna is no exception. Any statement of “she is so quiet right now” will immediately receive some sort of noise from her direction. I am also employing Sienna as the cutest baby comedy prop EVER. When she meets new people the statement of, “she is so cute” is said (required by law) at which point Sienna stares at the person blankly. I then say, “Sienna, melt her (or his) heart with a smile” and she lets out a huge open mouth smile. Because right now when she hears my voice – and isn’t tired, hungry, or needs to be changed – Sienna smiles.
Sienna now weighs in at a robust 10 pounds or as I like to say, The size of some of my friends newborns.
People wonder why we haven’t done the birth announcement. Read all of that again. We’re busy people. Sorry. We’ll get to it.
Sienna has been great as far as taking it easy on her parents though. I think she is trying to trick us into having a sibling – though we aren’t falling for that. The first hundred days with Sienna has been about slowly figuring out everything. That and filling out her baby book so we remember some of the funny, strange stories or the great visits or words of wisdom our friends have given us.
Most importantly though, I haven’t dropped her yet.
Wayne
*I also do not SHAKE my daughter. That is just dangerous and is far more controllable.
** I am also thankful this is the worst we’ve had to face. I’ve spoken with friends and some had stories 100x worse. I am not kidding when I say all of this could have been much worse. It was not a game of one upsmanship, only what friends experienced.
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