I’m a new dad. In the run-up to this momentous life event, I did my due diligence, reading up on the arts and sciences of babydom and daddyhood. I was determined not to be one of those bumbling sitcom-type dads. But as informed as I thought I was, there’s a lot the books and blogs don’t tell you. Here are the biggest surprises (so far):
[Heteronormativity alert! If this article is a trigger for you, we invite you to have/get a baby and then write your non-cis version and send it our way, please!]
1. Babies are funny
My wife and I spend hours upon hours of our day making fun of our baby. Let’s be honest, people, our little guy is a hot mess! All day long he snorts and huffs like a thirsty wildebeest. The rumble of his bowels would make any Harley Davidson enthusiast proud. He has old-bald-man hair — tufts on the back and sides and nothing on the dome. When he sleeps, he smacks himself in the face (Moro reflex!) and wakes himself up totally confused about why he’s getting hit in the face—a natural slapstick artist. Yes, of course, having a baby is also soooooo serious. The biggest commitment of my life, magical, blah blah blah…and it’s also really, really funny!
2. Equity is tough
Us dads have millennia of karmic debt to work off. Many of us enter into this endeavor being optimistic that we can be “better” (better than our own dads, at the very least). To me, this means giving our partners enough support so that they’re not bearing an unjust share of the baby burden. In theory, this sounds totally doable. In practice, it is soul-crushingly difficult not to give into chronic shirking. You are tired. You are working hard to support your new family. Dads, we can slack a bit and rest assured that baby will be OK. Mom’s the one who doesn’t have a choice in tending to baby’s needs. It’s 3:00 a.m., and baby starts crying — we can pretend not to wake up. We can pretend not to notice a diaper that needs changing. And so on and so forth. There are countless choice points like these, day and night. All those seemingly meaningless micro-shirks eventually amass into a mountain of old-school inequity. Real equity is hard work.
3. Diapers
Until recently, our baby was too small for the compostable diaper service we’d signed up for. So we had to start with disposables. We tried a bunch of different brands. Here’s a the hot tip: Target diapers are a fraction of the price and are a million times better than all the fancy diapers. They feel better. They work better. Everything about them is the best. Whole Foods diapers are the worst! They are cheap, flimsy and ingeniously designed so that everything shoots out the sides.
4. Small diapers are hard to find
Speaking of diapers, if you have a low-birth-weight baby, the compostables won’t fit your tiny baby. Who knew it would be such a pain the arse to get premie diapers? Pretty much the only place that carries preemie diapers is Target. Walgreens, CVS, etc., do not care a whit about your teeny tiny person. Preemie diapers might also be the last consumer product in the universe that you can’t get shipped fast on Amazon Prime.
5. Breastfeeding isn’t always a cinch, and your partner will be in the depths of despair
Everyone knows that breast is best. Except for—sometimes—your baby. All the pleading, prodding and cajoling in the world won’t make them understand where their food comes from. In the movies, babies always belly right up on those tas and do their thing. In reality, many babies need a minute — or a month — to figure things out. Take heed that there’s a reasonable chance these challenges will plunge your lactating lady into a dark place full of fear, tears and self-reproach.
6. Baby cranial-sacral therapy
Yeah, that’s a thing. Who knew? Heal all that birth trauma now and save the big bucks on therapy later.
On a related note:
7. You need a baby to truly appreciate all the horrible things that can go wrong with babies
You might think you get it. But you don’t get it until that tiny squirming helpless person is in your arms.
8. Infants can crawl!
Have you heard about breast crawl? Soooo cool. A baby, just minutes from the womb, can start crawling up their mother’s body to the breast and latch themselves on. A few days later, they still have the reflex, and they can crawl up your body (they’ll do it whether or not you have breasts). It’s a crazy feeling. Especially if you don’t know that newborns are supposed to crawl. It takes all their strength to lift their proportionally ginormous heads and then kick their legs to move themselves.
9. The new normal
“Is it normal?” Well, yes and no. There’s a range of normal. A wide range. So wide that if something was wrong, it would usually fall into the range of normal for some baby somewhere. And your own baby is rarely ever normal for themselves. Everything is always in flux — eating, sleeping, pooping, crying — the patterns constantly shift as they grow. So yeah, it’s probably normal. Except when it’s not.
10. Something sweet
It’s always good to end listicle articles with something lighthearted and sweet, to leave the reader with a positive, winsome feeling. I should probably write something like, “I’m surprised every morning by that look in his eyes when he sees his daddy.” But truthfully, the thing that surprises me the most is that so many people still decide to have kids!
