3 Weeks
Shittin' Bricks
I want to preface this by saying in no way am I complaining. I am not naive to my position of privilege. I am grateful to have a healthy son and the ability to feed, clothe and house him. I just want to be honest and tell the truth about my experience through the early stages of parenthood. I want to normalize people being honest about the struggles and challenges around it. My hope is that at some point someone else with a newborn reads this and feels some comfort in company. Knowing they weren’t the only ones who at one stage felt like putting their baby on a kicking tee and pretending they were a football, trying to kick a grand final winning conversion after the siren in front of 80,000 people. I think hearing that others have felt that way or similar can give people some peace of mind.
I’ve been wanting to write this one since last week, but I’ve been so fuckin’ time poor lately I haven’t had a chance. Who’d have though having a new born would equate to having less time to do the shit I wanna do? Certainly not me! Well, I kinda did, but didn’t realise it would be this significant. That said, it’s probably not entirely fair to blame everything on my son. I have been working on a bit of a time sensitive project at home, which is all but complete now. so HOPEFULLY… I should have a little more time from now on.
Sleep, or Lack of…
So I guess, that’s probably a good place to start. As I’ve mentioned countless times before, I lean heavily on my routine as a tool to maintain my sobriety and to manage my mental health. It’s been challenging to ensure that I still make time to do the inner work on myself that in turn makes me a better person and hopefully a better father. When you throw in some extra fatigue caused by a new born’s sleeping patterns things get more challenging again. This is why I am so grateful to my past self for getting the ball rolling when I did in terms of implementing and cementing my routine. The thing is, routine is easy… once it’s become a routine. It’s almost set and forget. In time, you can trust your routine. I no know that If I have a bad nights sleep I’ll still get up at 4am, get to the gym by 4:30am, battle through work and hopefully, get a better sleep the following night. I’ve found the best way for me to regulate my sleep is by reverse engineering. You can’t control exactly when you go to sleep. You can control what time you wake up. So, by waking up at the same time every day, I find the time that I get tired and fall asleep naturally calibrates over time. I spent so many years trying to get to sleep earlier. Getting myself all worked up about not getting enough sleep and ultimately making things worse. It’s almost frustrating to recall how many years I’ve spent doing this when the solution was so simple all along. So, my goal in relation to this is to just, keep doing it for as long as I can because I truly believe the best thing for my son is for me to maintain that routine, look after my mental health, stay sober, so I can be the best version of myself possible for him.
If you struggle with sleep, try waking up the exact same time every day for a fortnight or so. See if it works for you. I’m not saying that it will, but if you’re struggling with it and always have, what do you have to lose? It certainly worked for me! (apologies to those poor bastards that work shift work. You guys are hero’s)
Shittin’ Bricks
Ultimately, I’ve been pretty fuckin’ lucky so far. He’s a bloody good boy, which does make me wonder if he’s even mine… I kid. The midwife came for a visit last Wednesday and was very pleased with his progression. He had put on 400g in his first 15 days. Apparently that’s great. He sleeps more at night time than he does during the day. Usually, when he’s awake, he’s pretty content to just sit in his rocker and just kinda look around at shit, like he’s figuring it all out. It’s actually really fuckin’ cool to watch how inquisitive he is.
That was until maybe two days. He’s started to do this really fuckin’ awesome thing where he thinks he needs to attached to someone at all times. Not even his beloved motor driven rocker with a speaker that plays nursery rhymes that aren’t even remotely annoying is an option at the moment. It makes it really fuckin’ hard to get anything done. I’m certain this isn’t unique to my situation and is something he will get over, but it’s difficult not to let the frustration of the situation boil over. From what I understand, as he opens his eyes more each day, his vision becomes clearer and he see’s more shit! Everything can be a little overwhelming for him. Essentially, hes just a little bit scared and is just after a little bit of comfort and reassurance. I sympathise with that. I don’t want him to ever feel like he isn’t safe. I imagine it would be terrifying going from floating around in a warm, dark, womb only three weeks ago to taking in all that light, movement and noise all at once. Conversely, it’s also terrifying looking at the washing and dishes building up and not knowing when you’ll get a fucking chance to get to them because you can’t put the little bastard down for 5 seconds without him throwing a tantrum. It’s proving tricky to find the right balance, when you think you’ve found it, the next day he is in a different mood.
I know I’ve been really lucky in comparison to some stories I’ve heard. According to just about fuckin’ everyone, I have a “good baby” and at times I too am struggling. I’m learning that it’s really fucking hard to listen to your rational brain when you’re doing something so very important for the first time ever. That’s why it sucks so much when he’s battling a little. At times when he is upset it feels like there is nothing I can do to console him. I’ve never felt a greater sense of helplessness in my life. Momentarily I just feel like I’m not going to be able to do this and it breaks my fuckin’ heart. The thoughts that run through my head are absurd, I know they are, but this is a whole new series of thoughts I’ve never had to navigate before. Now I have to figure out how to apply the mechanisms I use to process the thoughts I struggle with to a whole bunch of new ones. So at times I’m still trying to figure out which ones originated in my rational and emotional brains. Each thought is as loud as the last. These thoughts are always easier to categorise retrospectively. However in the moment, with an inconsolable baby that is so dependent on you in one hand, trying to warm a bottle in the other, it’s so fucking easy to think of yourself as failure. You feel like You’re doing you’re absolute best and it just isn’t good enough!
A mother and a baby develop a bond long before a baby develops a bond with their father. They continue to bond through feeding together and spending time together during the day whilst (in my case) I’m at work. I also that my time will come. There is going to be things that only I can do for him and opportunities for us to bond. I get that and I am so lucky just to have a healthy, relatively calm baby. I’m just impatient and want to feel like I am contributing in more ways than earning money and doing shit around the house. The earning money and housework stuff doesn’t make me feel content or fulfilled. In theory, I get a great deal. After work I get to come home and my job for the afternoon is to hang out with him on the lounge so his mum can spend some time to catching up on the stuff she wasn’t able to do during the day. How good! I’m excited to get home, I think about him all the way there. So I go home, quickly get my shit together, set myself up for a long shift on the lounge in front of the TV. The times where I go and grab him, sit down with him and he’s still upset are just so fucking deflating. So I take him for a walk around the house, check his nappy, give him a bottle, burp him, put him in his pram and cut laps around the lounge room. Sometimes all of this shit still doesn’t work. I try my hardest, I want him to know that I can help too. I can do just about anything mum can. I want him to feel safe with me. But when I give him back to his mum and he calms down almost instantly, it’s so fucking hard not to feel “less than”.
I get it though. I do. Sometimes, a baby just needs their mum and no person or thing other than their mum are going to do the trick. at almost 34, I still need my mummy sometimes. It’s just hard to remind yourself of that when you’re in an emotional mind state. This is why I am more concerned about myself than him. I have internal, probably unjustified, trust issues. I have a fear that one day I could snap. I don’t think I will. I’m just scared that I could. I’m not known for it. I don’t think I’ve ever been really close to it in the past. I don’t think I’ve ever even been in a fight? Not even at school. I wouldn’t know how. It’s just a fear of mine. A lot like my fear of suicide I spoke about in my last blog, it’s just kind of there and I don’t really know why. In this instance I think fear can be a great thing. I’m scared because I just so badly want to be great at this, but there’s no instructions (I wouldn’t read them anyway because I’m a man, my son won’t read them either for the same reasons) and I think the level of fear is directly relative to the standard I want myself to achieve in terms of being a dad. When I hold him, I get a sense of how small and fragile he really is, especially in comparison to me. I’m fragile too, but that’s more emotionally and for me to discuss with my psychologist. What I am getting at is, I could so easily, and significantly hurt him with one small mistake. Falling down the stairs while carrying him, rolling over on him in bed, whatever. I think that’s where this irrational fear comes from. If I could hurt him so badly by accident, what could someone who snaps do to a baby. I’m fuckin’ terrified of that!
A lot like when I was freaking out about moving to the coast, buying a second house, getting my other house rented out, starting in a new role at work, the impending birth of my first child, all happening within a month of each other, I think everything is going to be okay. Everything is fine in regards to all that now. It was always going to be. Maybe my freaking out about it all is what ensured that it did all end up okay? Fucked if I know. I’m just telling myself that I’m only freaking out because I care so deeply and just want everyone to be okay.
Everything is Going to be Okay
Eventually, he does settle enough for me to have him back on the lounge and he sleeps on me for hours. Each and every day he changes just a little bit. His eyes open wider, his curiosity grows, he does bigger farts, cried less during a nappy change, pisses higher when getting a nappy change, it all just makes me so bloody proud of him. Especially the farts and piss gear.
By far though, my favourite thing he’s developed lately is this…
Ignore my tired eyes and have a fuckin’ look at his little arm giving me a cuddle. It’s shit like this that makes me certain that ultimately, we’re always going to be okay.
Can’t wait to see what surprises the little prick has in store for me this week.
Cheers Wankers
X
Good read mate. I think we all have certain fears. The rolling over in bed always scares me.
Heartwarming one, mate.
I'm not going to provide any advice other than the advice you've already given yourself, it all winds up okay. Ultimately, he's half you and half your partner so you guys will know what's best for the little fella and it already sounds like you're nailing it.
The fear thing is an interesting one. I feel it too, and I arrive at the same conclusion; it's there because of what you don't want because if it did happen, it'd be terrible. It's such a strange thought to fear doing something you don't want to do... I'm not going to try and diagnose it yet but you're not alone with this one, mate... at least we can share in the frustration lol.
As I stare down the double-barrel shotgun of the twins arriving, my attention is shifting towards how I'm going to keep a routine going, and I think I'm going to try your strategy of keeping the start of the day the same.