The Dad Post,
Part III
Nobody tells you this, but being a father is mostly about
being a coach. You’re not only a coach for your kid, but for mom too. I
definitely felt like an assistant coach during the whole birth process. You may
even call me an offensive coordinator, mostly because half the stuff I did was
offensive to my pregnant wife. Sometimes though, the head coach looks to the
offensive coordinator to call the play. This definitely came into effect when
our whole natural birth didn’t go as planned, but also when we got home.
I took a week off to help with our transition to parenthood.
We had a tough ordeal with the emergency C-section, and I was home to help make
sure momma was getting enough rest. Kelli and I made a pact when we got married
that we would do everything 50-50, so I was just trying to hold up my part of
the deal. Our game plan was to breast feed. Kelli had a breast reduction years
before, so we were both happy to see her milk come in after the birth. We went
home with a confident latch and a good pump. Everything was going fine so we
thought, but something didn’t seem right. Our little nugget was getting fussier
and fussier on the tit and we were still seeing meconium after a week. We made
an appointment with the lactation consultant at Oschner and went to see her on
a Sunday morning. We talked and it seemed to her that we were doing everything
like we should. However, when she weighed Keegan out of curiosity, he had lost
almost 15% of his birth weight. The pediatrician on call asked us to check him
back into the NICU.
This was one of those opportunities when the assistant coach
is asked to make the motivational speech. Kelli was devastated and she felt
like she was letting “the team” down. I had to be there for her and help
formulate a new game plan with the doctor. We started our little tough man on
formula while Kelli kept pumping to see if we could get her milk production up
to where it was needed. Sometimes you just have to scrap a plan if it isn’t
working, and eventually that was the decision we made. Keegan made a comeback
victory after all and we went home after a day and a new expense we weren’t
planning to spend.
Dang formula’s expensive! Diapers too! It’s a good thing that
we were given a bunch of diapers at our baby shower, so don’t knock that as a good
gift instead of a tutu. The other thing we found out is that all diapers are
not equal. We quickly had to figure out which brand of disposables didn’t leak
or had the fewest blowouts. It’s bad news when you’re sitting on the couch
goo-goo’ing your little angel when a big fart and a squirt of poo shoots out of
his bloomers onto your shirt. My poor old father-in-law had that exact thing
happen to him. None of my friends ever warned me about that kind of nonsense.
Or how to remove onesies full of crap over the head of your baby without
smearing it all upside the head. They need to put that kind of stuff on the
label. Kelli would get upset with me when I would change Nugget’s clothes
because they weren’t cute enough. I wasn’t going for cute. I was going for quickness.
I’d set a stopwatch when I started changing a diaper and would put it up
against any NASCAR pit crew.
We were blessed with a great sleeper of a son. We ran into
the problem of him sleeping too long if there’s such a thing. He would wet
through his diaper every night. One of Kelli’s mommy friends suggested trying
cloth diapers, which I thought was going to work opposite of what we were
trying to accomplish. She borrowed a couple for us to try and bought a shower
head bidet that I attached to our toilet. To my amazement they worked
wonderfully. My skepticism about having to shake out a turd wasn’t near as bad
as I thought either with the help of the bidet and some liner sheets. Next
thing you know, we were full cloth diaper converts. I would get weird looks
when I’d tell people we cloth diapered, but I would sell it so well that you
would have thought I was a lobbyist for the cloth diaper industry. Kelli even
talked our daycare into cloth diapering for us too. Away went all the extra
change of clothes and the wet sheets.
I also became the baby whisperer. I would come home from work
and Kelli would almost be in tears after spending the whole day with a cranky
gassy baby. She would hand over the baby to the swaddle master, and Keegan
would just melt away in my arms. I think I’ll call that my special teams play.
I got that move down pat by practicing on our poor dog Murfy. Keeping with our
50-50 philosophy, I took turns with Kelli on diapers, feedings, baths, and
everything. The assistant coach is supposed to support the head coach after
all. I had a knack for calming down old Tuffy. Not always though. Sometimes I
wouldn’t be able to do it during a midnight feeding, or when we were sleep-training
him, and I would have to call momma in from the bench. She would show me her
tricks that she in her bag too.
One of the best gifts we got from our baby shower was a
monitor with video. Kelli was anxious to say the least when we decided to move
Tuff into his big baby bed in his own room. I’m not a psychologist, but I’d say
it was separation anxiety. She loves him so much that she just wants to see him
all the time. It helped with the monitor though. That first week she just about
kept it in her pocket everywhere she went, and every little whimper she would
turn on the screen to see if he was ok. This was a lot better than going into
the room and checking on him every few minutes and possibly waking up. You’d be
amazed how long a baby will sleep if: 1. you leave them alone, 2. they don’t
wet through the diaper, and 3. you invest in a good sound machine. Kelli got
this book from the Sleep Lady, and we were able to coach him to sleep all night…
which meant we were able to sleep all night. People are amazed when we tell
them that after 3 months, Keegan slept from 10pm to 5:30am, and after 6 months from
7:30pm to 6am.
I don’t know if it was all the free time I didn’t expect from
taking off work, but that first week we were home from the hospital, I decided
to make a garden. Tuff was born in March so the timing worked out just right
too. I planted a garden of tomatoes, squash, zucchini and snap beans. It worked
out just right that when we started trying solids out on Tuff, we just pureed
what was ready from the garden. We started pureeing fresh fruits and vegetables
for and he loved it. He’s definitely a chow hound. We only tried cereal once,
and that was a huge mistake. He loved all of the foods that I would have never
have eaten as a kid, and he has yet to have a jar of store bought baby food to
this day. He became a foodie chow hound and would eat anything you put in front
of him, except white potatoes. How could our kid not eat mashed potatoes. No
matter, better that he doesn’t actually. We would make and freeze all of his
food in ice trays and thaw out what we needed for each day. Once again, Kelli
talked our daycare into our hippie ways, and we would show up Mondays with
gallon zip lock bags of assorted frozen fruits and vegetables.
This is the majority of year one. I don’t have enough time or
paper to describe every single giggle, fart, or crawl that our little man made,
but it’s definitely been fun. There’s
not enough film or memory in your camera or phone to capture everything. I even
get accused by my wife for not taking enough pictures of her with our son. I
don’t think that a camera truly does my memories justice, nor could I properly
explain the feelings that I have when my son smiles at me with those big
eyelashes and dimples. I just hope that my recall will hold up on me through
the years.
There were ups and downs throughout the year, but to all you
coaches out there, make sure your assistant coaches are using the same game-plan.
You may second guess your decisions sometimes, but parents need to support each
other. Try to make a good plan, but remember to be flexible. You only learn how
to be a good parent from others, but adjust if someone else’s parenting style
doesn’t work for you. You know what’s best for your own child, even if you don’t
know it yet.
Everybody is winner in life if you’re looking down at the
flowers instead of up at the roots, but if you’re not enjoying your life, are
you really winning? Do your best to teach your children how to live right, have
fun, and enjoy everything. Every day is not going to seem fun, but you can
smile and find enjoyment in any situation, even blowout diapers. Some people
would rather have your blowout diaper than no diaper at all. Hold your babies
close and tell them you love them every day. Same thing goes for your coach.
If you like, I’ll check in with a random post every now and
then to give you the dad’s point of view. Let me see your comments to know how
many fans I have out there.
The Eeb
