Parentgood

Father Knows….nothing at all.

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I’ve never really cared for very small children.

I never had to deal with babies while growing up (my younger brother was born when I was four, so I didn’t have to help with any of the baby stuff), and have always regarded them as sort of extremely loud, legally binding tamagotchis.

When Linds and I got married, we agreed that we weren’t going to have kids for at least five years. We made sure that some of our bills were paid, we made sure we went on a tropical vacation, we got the stuff out of the way that we wanted to do. The five years stretched to seven. I was okay with that, because I’ve always been worried that my dismissive attitude would persist. Sometimes, that paternal instinct just never kicks in for some people – I was honestly worried that could be the case for me.

When we found out we were going to have a baby, that fear didn’t decrease, because even though I was excited about impending fatherhood, I didn’t feel nearly as excited as I thought I should feel. This was going to be life changing, and most days, all I could conjure up was “yeah, that’ll be pretty cool”.

As I found when I held Caleb for the first time, I really needn’t have worried.

It certainly doesn’t hurt that this kid is pretty much parenting on training wheels so far (sleeps through the night, is constantly happy (like, ridiculously so… the day care lady wants to adopt him), he’s had no health issues other than the sniffles and a light fever so far). Still, I could not have possibly anticipated the reprogramming my worldview would get. I spend my evenings lying on the floor, laughing til my stomach hurts over a baby giggling. I know the characters to Wallykazam.I have a phone full of baby pictures. If you had told me two years ago that would be the case, I would’ve laughed.

So, sorry this one doesn’t end up being an advice column. I don’t really have any to give. I still know practically nothing about parenting. Caleb changes every day. Everything is new and scary (he rolls over now! Both exciting and terrifying). Even so, all rational thought is overridden by a single thought that I would’ve scoffed at five years ago.

It’s worth it.

68 thoughts on “Father Knows….nothing at all.”

  1. have always regarded them as sort of extremely loud, legally binding tomagotchis.

    This is fantastic writing. Well done, sir.

    2. You know, though I love my kids, I'm still not much of a baby guy. I recently wrote about my bah humbugging holidays in a work conversation:

      I must admit holidays have gotten better as my children grow older. I no longer have to pretend to be a child and react to all of the gifts with exaggerated excitement because the slack-faced toddler who is in the corner playing with wrapping paper isn't showing the proper level of joy.

      I still stand by that. But it's really to say the space between 5-11 has been great. (I've only gone to 11 so far.) In fact I'm considering dropping my holiday bah humbugging entirely.

  2. Everything is new and scary (he rolls over now! Both exciting and terrifying).

    And how!
    Niblet has been crawling since July, but only in the past few weeks has he been following his whims and curiosity, exploring beyond the toys/people in the room he's occupying.

    This morning, while trying to comb through Kernel's ever-present, food-encrusted tangles without causing tears (impossible) or removing large knots of hair (near-impossible), I twice had to drop everything and dash to catch an impetuous & tenacious toddler before he tumbled down the stairs.

    1. I'm think I mentioned it already, but Pete started crawling on NYE. We spent the next 2 days completely rearranging our house since the little bugger was now mobile.

      1. We never had to worry about Kernel - she didn't do much exploring, was content to just hang out wherever we were. Didn't stick things in light sockets or help herself to Tupperware, pots & pans, measuring spoons or items under the kitchen sink.
        With this guy, we've been rearranging & purchasing child-proofing devices for each new (dangerous) thing he discovers. It's not just that he wants to climb up the stairs or go down the stairs (I'll be repurposing one of our doggy gates as a baby gate this evening), but that the spindles in the bannister & railing upstairs are wide enough for him to fit through.

        1. that the spindles in the bannister & railing upstairs are wide enough for him to fit through.

          Familiar with that. We had to wrap our railings with plastic to keep him from falling into a stairwell. We however, had to leave a different section open because it was the only way for the cats to make it to where the food and litter box are. Unfortunately the ends of that section have larger openings so he can still squeeze through. I expect a lot of crying when his head gets too big to do that anymore.

          1. Our kids love traveling by way of spindle gap. It's not a huge fall in most places, so we haven't proofed them yet. We will probably have to for the next one.

    3. I can count on one hand the number of times that crawler/toddler HPR fell down the stairs on my watch.*
      So that he could have a bedroom, we cleared out an upstairs den-type room for him to live in, and our main living room was in the basement.
      The setup of walls and lack thereof didn't allow us to have a baby-gate at the bottom of the stairs.
      Man am I glad I don't live in that building anymore.

      *He seems OK today though! Children are resilient!
      Also: not the worst thing I let happen to him... Never let your kids ride in a bike trailer without wearing the seatbelt!

  3. This is me in a nutshell. FW and I are planning on a family in the next few years, but I just worry if I'll ever have it click. I know I probably will, but what if man, what if.

    It helps that she's so freaking knowledgeable about child development. Our hypothetical future children could not be in better hands.

    1. I never felt I had a moment when things clicked. It was something that slowly developed from watching the eldest grow. You see glimpses of their personality and then gradually things you've taught them. It takes so much work and a long while for it to show, but the effort you put in is returned back multiple times over.

      1. As cliche as it is, coming home and having your kids be really excited to see you is always great.

  4. When my wife and I got married, we planned on not having kids for 7 years. By our second anniversary we needed a babysitter to go out to dinner. In fact, by our 7th anniversary, we were pregnant with our third.
    By then, we decided we wanted to be done having children by the time we were thirty. #3 was born one week before my wife turned 31. Yay! Mission accomplished.
    Except 18 months later we had #4.
    That's okay, the kids each had a buddy. We were ready to be done.
    But God was not done with us.
    We had a change of heart and had #5 a year and a half ago.
    And now we're expecting #6.
    Maybe we'll be finished having children by the time we're 40.
    But you know what they say about the best laid plans...

      2. My response whenever everyone asked how it was going with watching the triplets was "about a year ago I made a decision I wholeheartedly do not regret."

    2. Congrats on #6!
      We're at two, and usually (okay, almost always) when my wife says something, she means it. She's said repeatedly that all she wanted was two, so I'm fairly certain that Niblet's our last. I'll be completely convinced when she actually starts getting rid of the bins (and bins, and bins) of infant & toddler clothes.

      My parents practiced natural family planning on religious grounds until my younger brothers were born. Mom always says that when God starts sending them in pairs, it means it's time to be done.

      1. As someone who practices NFP, I generally like to take opportunities like this to make a plug for it. We have absolutely nailed our family planning via the method, and find ourselves quite satisfied as well. Plus my wife appreciates the non-chemical, all-natural approach. It's not for everyone, certainly, but I like to think it's a good option (and cheap!) for more people than realize it.

          1. How in the world could typical use of withdrawal be more effective than typical fertility awareness?!
            I can see the fertility-types going with "heck-with-it" behaviors that may be more likely to result in pregnancy, but at that point there's a conscious choice that blurs the notion of unplanned/undesired a bit.
            Birth control/family planning are one of those areas where "life's tough; it's even tougher when you're stupid" is tremendously relevant.

            1. Aye. "Typical usage" includes "not actually using it at the relevant times." That's like saying seat-belts have a high failure rate because we're including the people who don't buckle up in the stats.

              Also, that link didn't work for me Sean.

              1. I can't get it to work on mobile. Even if I search for it I can't get the link from Google to work.

              2. I'm no statistician, but the graphs would seem to suggest that somewhere above 80% of women are having an unplanned pregnancy every 10 years. That seems...high.

                The link worked...and then it didn't.

                1. The percentage is high, I recall it's between a third and half. And, it's not every ten years but over a ten year period.

                2. The link is working for me now.

                  Looks like if you track "perfect use" (which is all that really makes sense... I mean, I wouldn't base the pill's effectiveness on people who didn't take it correctly either) it's 26% will experience failure over a 10 year period. (Guess I'm one of the 74%!). That's also for the Billings Method, and not Sympto-Thermal, which I understand is more effective than Billings. That's still higher than I was thinking it was, but I guess that's the dice roll.

                  Anyway, we like it.

                  1. That's still higher than I was thinking it was, but I guess that's the dice roll.

                    Dungeons & Dragons?

            2. I can see the fertility-types going with "heck-with-it" behaviors that may be more likely to result in pregnancy, but at that point there's a conscious choice that blurs the notion of unplanned/undesired a bit.
              Pretty much explains 3 of our four children. I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out which child was fully intentional.
              NFP appears to be working better for us now that the aversion to additional children is more serious. And having learned just how fertile we may be as a couple, we know how vigilant we must be. (That one intended? Pregnant that week.) It seems that as soon as we've let our guard down just a little because we might be thinking about having another child soon: we're pregnant!

            3. Agreed. Our rule for NFP is to determine as best we can how things are going. If we're not pretty much sure one way or the other, we ask ourselves if we're ready for another kid and decide what to do from there. It's certainly not the easiest thing in the world, but it can work with discipline.

        2. We've had really great success with NFP, too. Every so often, it made us think about things, but that's not a terrible outcome.

        1. Aye. I'm gonna need a new philosopher name come June. Aquinas, Aristotle, Nietzsche and... ?

          1. that's how I read that.

            yeesh, keep it down, you guys.

            ::slowly pushes cards of congratulations under the door with foot so I don't catch whatever you guys have::

                    3. Jokes aside, he seems like a guy I should know better than I do, so I'll have to read some Kant between now and then. Some Waffle Iron too.

            1. I'd toy with the idea of "late-career Mill."

              Heidegger is probably the front runner right now, but that's a product of significant exposure to him in college, more so than any distinct passion or agreement, like the other 3.

    4. We're having our 4th any day now, and that was our plan (we can be done by 30, too!) It'll be interesting to see what God has planned for us...

      Congrats on #6!

  6. I felt the same way. Never had a desire for kids other than conceptually. Even when my wife was pregnant it didn't hit me. And now I can't imagine my life without him. And I love other people's kids now. They're just all so darn cute.

    Mags, I have no doubt it will click for you. The only people I worry about are those with drug issues and antisocial traits.

  7. Was thinking some about this conversation today, and about the way parenthood can just click, even where there was not much before. And then thinking about the numbers of kids thing we kind of got into. I'm curious if this is true for others, but I would say both with my first kid (like Nibs describes), and with my third kid, something clicked. That is, I had the same fatherhood makes sense experience with #1. #2 was cool. But something about #3, and being outnumbered by our kids (and this didn't happen until #3 became mobile probably?)... something else just clicked. Like my identity shifted again, and I've somehow come into my parent identity in such a way that it's not just about raising individual kids, it's about raising a family. I don't have any sense if that's a more universal feeling with 3 kids, or it was just me because I always wanted more kids, or what... So I'd love to hear from others with more than 2.

    1. Something definitely clicked with our third. I was the same way with kids in general. I didn't have much experience with them growing up, and I was certainly a bit apprehensive. When the first was born, it was amazing, and she was an insanely easy kid. Our second was more challenging, but nothing too terrible. When our third came along, though, something definitely clicked with me. Before, I had always been a bit hesitant to take the girls out on my own or do bedtime solo. Something about 3, though, made me abandon the illusion of control and just role with it a bit more. Now, my key is to make sure that they are safe, but otherwise step back a bit, and it makes life so much easier.

      I recently told my boss, who is expecting his third, that for me, the third child was by far the easiest.

      1. Same for us, #3 was a breeze, but our oldest 2 were also much older and independent (compared to #1 when we had #2). #4 was somewhat rough, but still not too bad. #5 was great because our oldest were much more helpful. #6... too early to tell yet.

        1. Same for us, #3 was a breeze, but our oldest 2 were also much older and independent (compared to #1 when we had #2).
          I don't know about "breeze" but otherwise this matches our experience. CER is now babysitting her younger sisters for decent lengths of time (sometimes for pay, sometimes not), with HPR as her assisstant.

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