Like all new parents, we received a lot of unsolicited advice. Most of it was terrible.
When your kid isn’t sleeping, the last thing you need is for someone to give you a special tip that they used with their baby who powered through the night at 7-weeks-old. If you have one of those magical kids, congratulations. Enjoy your rest, play the lottery, and keep it to yourself.
My general rule of thumb is to stay in my lane and only provide help when asked, and I think that’s the right approach to take with almost any situation in life. But even when solicited — which happens by default (and by mistake) because I was one of the first members of my circle to become a dad — I’m still sensitive about these requests for three reasons:
Every kid is different.
Every parenting situation (relationship status, career ambitions, financial pressure, family support, religion, etc.) is different.
I am not an expert.
With that giant preface out of the way, I am going to break the rules and share my one piece of unsolicited advice, which addresses a critical element of preparedness that often goes overlooked by parents gearing up for the next chapter.
“Are you ready!?”
One of the funniest questions people ask expecting first-timers if they’re ready. It’s hard to be “ready” for something you’ve never experienced, especially when it’s as life-changing as having a kid. And I believe we (especially Americans) have a misguided interpretation of what it actually means to be ready.
The first thing we think of is economic and professional stability. Babies are expensive. There are massive costs associated with even a normal birth, let alone one that comes with any unforeseen complications. And the stress of potentially losing your primary source of income with an infant in tow is a valid enough reason for caution.
Then here’s the question of emotional readiness. Do we have the maturity needed to handle being parents? Have we accomplished all that we hoped to accomplish and seen everything we wanted to see before having kids? (Spoiler alert: absolutely not). Are we prepared to handle a rare but possible birth complication?
And finally, there’s the “what do I do with my hands?” element of readiness. Can I change a diaper without a shit volcano erupting onto my carpet? What do I do if the baby won’t nap? How do I install this car seat without losing my mind?
These topics are critically important. These are all questions you should ask and answer before showtime. But the thing with all of them is that they focus on our lives prior to having a kid. We can set financial goals and hit them. We can check off bucket list items and have difficult conversations with ourselves about giving up what we had in our pre-child days. And we can smash through books and courses to learn what we think are the fundamental skills associated with being a competent parent.
But becoming a parent is really a future us endeavor. Everybody’s got a plan until they get punched in the mouth, and you will both metaphorically and literally get punched in the face in this process. In my opinion, the key to being ready doesn’t lie in what we do before the baby is born, but how realistic we are with ourselves about how things will be once they’re with us at home.
That’s why my only piece of unsolicited advice is to actively manage your expectations.
Don’t make an ass out of u and me
I cannot write this section in good faith without first acknowledging how unbelievable single parents are. It’s a role that is unfathomably difficult, and doing it alone is superhuman.
If you are lucky enough to enter into parenthood with a partner, you should never, ever assume that you’re both on the same page about how you will parent together. It doesn’t matter if you’re planning on a “traditional” relationship with a primary parent or aiming for a 50/50 split of responsibilities. It doesn’t matter what you discussed in your early days of dating when kids were a fun conversation topic but not an immediate reality. To protect your partnership and minimize resentment in the heat of battle, you have to actively manage your expectations ahead of time.
There’s no exhaustive list of questions to answer. It just comes down to being brutally honest with each other about your expectations as co-parents. I know couples that fully embrace a primary parent model where one person does the vast majority of the caregiving and the other is around for the fun stuff but otherwise lives a relatively similar and carefree life as they did before kids. And some of those couples are perfectly happy, specifically the ones that aligned on this distribution of responsibility ahead of time.
We opted for a more egalitarian approach. It was really important to both of us that we felt supported by the other and that we were both doing the requisite work. We did our best to align on everything from who handles night feedings to how each of us kept and/or sacrificed our hobbies to the need for additional childcare and even a safe word for when we just needed a minute to ourselves.
And it can still feel impossibly hard! There are unfortunately loads of studies about how marital satisfaction dips significantly after the birth of the first child. The point here is that no matter what your perceived shared values or parenting styles are, or how rock solid you believe your relationship to be, you should have the tough conversations and manage your expectations with each other before it’s 4 a.m., your tank is empty, and your resentment is at a boiling point.
Be honest and kind to yourself
Short but sweet. You have to be able to give yourself grace, especially during the early stages. You are going to be tired. You are going to feel like you’re fucking up. You are going to think about what you gave up.
And that’s all totally normal.
You won’t lose your identity - I hate when people say that. But your identity is going to fundamentally change. You should set your own expectations for what that means and how you will cope with a dramatically different life.
This is where I know I could have been better. I didn’t extend myself enough grace, and I didn’t sufficiently manage my own expectations. It’s something I’ve had to actively work on over time, and it’s what I would do differently if given a mulligan.
Kid highlight of the week
Let’s end today on a slightly higher note and talk about weird kid traditions.
I manage bedtime with the toddler almost every night while mom takes the baby. And every night, mom talks through the toddler’s monitor, and the toddler asks her to say three things:
Goodnight, I love you.
Sweet dreams.
Baby Billy’s Bible Bonkers
This is call-CPS levels of weird, and it’s my fault. If you don’t get the reference, it’s from the show Righteous Gemstones and is in reference to the game show that Walter Goggins’ character Baby Billy Freeman tries to pitch throughout Season 3.
Anyway, I said it out loud once, the toddler thought it was hilarious, and now they are the last words she hears from her mother every night before going to bed.
We gotta get your 2.5 year old some Baby Billy clogging shoes.