Today I start one week of paternity leave. No work for an entire week. Actually, a better description would be “not going into my place of vocational employment” for one week. I’ve learned that infants with even the mildest of temperaments still require quite a lot of work, especially when they team up on you with their 3 year old sister. Pleasant to be around. Pretty exhausting.
But as one paternity leave begins, another ends. Today I end my two week hiatus from this site. As you crunch the numbers in your head, you are clearly noticing that two weeks of online absence is twice the length of Zachary’s current lifespan. True. But the week before Zachary’s birth was hectic. Stacy’s body started telling us that Zachary was soon to arrive, and thus I spent every day trying to get as much done as possible. Living each day trying to tie up every possible loose end makes one terribly productive, but it also leaves little time for, you know, hobbies.
Now we are starting to settle in, though. It’s been a strange process. On the one hand, we are veteran parents with almost three years of experience. But since those three years didn’t include the first nine months of our daughter’s life, we are a little in the dark about how to parent baby Zachary.
So far, two things have helped us. The first is composure. It must be tremendously difficult to be a first time parent, you bring your kid home from the hospital and they are up half the night. While that scenario was frustrating, it didn’t break us. There was never panic. I knew from my experiences sleeping on the floor next to Elli’s crib on nights when she was ill that eventually I’d get to sleep again. It might not be for another night or two, but there would come a point when my child would chill out and find peace again.
In addition to composure, the other big help has been tools. Newborns can’t talk. Shoot, they can barely keep from punching themselves in the face and kicking their feet through their own poopy diapers when you try to change them. So it’s tough to know what they want when they start to get fussy.
When I played basketball on a regular basis, I had a go-to move. The turnaround jump shot. I had practiced it for years and years, and it was second nature to me. I knew how to use it to create space, and I hit it with regularity. When my game got off or the team needed a bucket, it was turnaround J time.
As the parent of a newborn, I have a go-to move. The Happiest Baby on the Block. Some of our friends have been using it, and we became believers watching them pacify their kid. It’s amazing. Sometimes I feel bad that I’m using Voodoo or The Force or something otherworldly on my kid. It works that well. I’m sure there are other helpful techniques out there for child soothing. But this one had a sticker on it that read, “As Seen on Dr. Phil”. It must be the best.
Renew and Restore
