Life as a first time dad - The first 6 weeks

In the first of a series of blog posts that will run throughout the year, new dad, Chris, shares his experiences of parenthood and of life as a first time dad.

The First 6 weeks

Now is a good time to look back and reflect on what has been a bit of a whirlwind few weeks. The first thing I have to say is as good as the NCT classes that my wife and I attended during the latter stages of her pregnancy they cannot adequately prepare you for that moment when suddenly 2 becomes 3 and the realisation that you now have full responsibility for another life. I don’t think anything could prepare you for that moment, it truly is surreal and from that point onwards it felt like the first few days were all about learning through trial and error and trying to get any sort of routine in place seemed like an almost impossible task.

We learnt a great deal in the NCT classes about how to prepare for the big day with techniques shared on how to bring on labour and how best to manage contractions etc, it was all very interesting although in all honesty I would say that the key benefit for us from attending the classes was that they connected us with fellow parents to be and we now have a network of friends to share experiences with which has been hugely beneficial particularly for my wife.

The aforementioned techniques that we learnt in the classes were interesting but despite our best intentions the plans we had in place went straight out of the window! Labour happened very quickly, so fast in fact that there wasn’t even time to run the bath so our plan for a water birth was ripped up on the spot! So there’s my first tip: By all means have a plan but understand that there’s a good likelihood that Plan A will become Plan B or even Plan C so it’s best to go into this with an open mind! Unfortunately you’re not in control; your baby is making all the decisions so just go with it! Speaking of plans, our plan was to give birth in a midwife led maternity unit as opposed to a hospital. This was my wife’s preference because she preferred the intimacy and personal touch that you can get at such units. This did partly go to plan with my wife giving birth to our beautiful baby girl after just 2 hours at the midwife unit but unfortunately there were complications right at the end that necessitated a midnight dash to our nearest hospital and for me this meant a 45 minute ambulance chase with my 30 minute old daughter tucked safely away in the back of the car! I’m not sure what I was talking to her about for those 45 minutes but whatever I was saying I didn’t get much back in response!

Probably the single biggest challenge of the first 6 weeks though has been feeding. We had every intention to breastfeed our baby, we learnt all about it in the classes we attended, both the NCT classes and also the free NHS classes, which I would highly recommend by the way. We were sold on the idea of breastfeeding however this didn’t go to plan either! Unfortunately for us our daughter had tongue tie which wasn’t identified at birth and this led to 2 weeks of extreme pain for my wife whenever she was breastfeeding and unbeknown to us 2 weeks of struggle for our daughter as she worked extra hard to feed but lost a lot of weight as she simply couldn’t get enough feed in. The climax to this was the realisation that breastfeeding and indeed expressing just wasn’t working for us; despite her best efforts my wife wasn’t producing enough milk to satisfy our baby and because her weight was dropping fast we resorted to formula feeding and we’ve been on an upward trend from then onwards. This wasn’t the original plan but you have to find a solution that works for you. So there’s my second tip: If it’s not working, do something different, for us breastfeeding didn’t work and despite all the experts rightly saying that breast is best, it simply wasn’t for us because it didn’t give our baby daughter sufficient milk to enable her to regain the weight that she lost post birth.

My final tip that I have gleamed from the first 6 weeks of parenthood is the need to get sufficient sleep and here I’m talking about for my wife not me! Of course you are going to be deprived of sleep and your body will adapt to a certain extent however you have to take every opportunity to get sleep whenever you can. This is a challenge that my wife continues to find difficult but just being able to get a couple of hours during the day can make a massive difference, so try and sleep when your baby is sleeping or what we do is I look after our daughter downstairs in the late evening so that my wife at least has a head start and can get a couple of hours of uninterrupted sleep before the night-time feeding shift begins!

I could go on but these are the 3 keys tips that I’ve picked up from the first 6 weeks of parenthood:

1. Go into labour with a plan but also an open mind as you may well have to change the plan!

2. If it’s not working, try something different, there isn’t a magic formula to parenthood unfortunately a lot of it is trial and error

3. Get sleep, whenever you can; when your child sleeps during the day, take the opportunity to catch up on some lost sleep or work with your partner to give you some uninterrupted sleep time

I hope you have found these parenting insights interesting and I look forward to sharing with you my experiences of the next 6 weeks of parenthood!