@Morning_Star 12 December 2020

The Diary Of A First Time Dad

***The Anticipation*** Right from when my daughter was still a seed in her mother's womb, I had always wondered what she was going to look like. I bet this is the same with all first time parents, the wait, the anticipation and the ultimate satisfaction from their arrival.  I remember the joy that filled my heart as we were looking at the ultrasound monitor as the doctor presented what appeared to be the first picture of our baby girl. It was a weird sweet feeling that is hard to explain, I mean I was seeing my baby for the first time, I was going to be a dad for the first time and it was all very beautiful.  I just knew from then that it was going to be an eventful ride into parenthood. Everything I did from then onward was in preparation and anticipation of her coming. I treated her mum like the queen she is, I didn’t want anything happening to either of my babies.  We had picked names for her, had wished our way to what she could possibly look like, whose gene would dominate her physical attributes.  Aside from the obvious strains of pregnancy; having to carry about another human being in and within her, laying only on her side during bed times, and the accompanying cramps, my wife handled it all pretty well for a first timer. We avoided whatever the Doc said she shouldn’t eat, although we had enrolled for antenatal but we did lots of research too, watched lots of follow ups videos on YouTube, month by month.   ***She Came Unannounced*** Finally, on the day of delivery, what started like a pretty normal day gave me one of my biggest scares in life and ultimately presented me with my first challenge as a new and first time dad. My baby arrived 2 weeks earlier than scan had earlier revealed, which made my wife's labor that day a lot confusing, because we weren’t expecting her just yet - our inexperience laid bare. She was here and we had to welcome her. First time I saw a woman in labor, the craziness I witnessed cannot be written down properly. As she lay in bed waiting for the doctor to come taker her to the labor room, she angrily commanded me to massage her legs and her waist, I obliged immediately, she shouted me down, "take it easy gaddamit!" She was barking two opposing orders at every turn and reeling in pain. I was scared and worried for her. I felt the pain consuming her and there was nothing I could do, first time I heard her shout so loud. Damn!  She drew me closer and told me she couldn’t take the pain anymore and she wasn’t sure she could push the baby out naturally, said she was feeling enclosed, like she was being choked. I became officially worried (CS was never in our plans). I called her sister immediately, told her what was happening, she asked if the doctor had checked her, I answered in the affirmative. The doctor had checked her minutes before and said everything was ok and she was good to go.  I guess she was just scared, her sister concurred too and assured me all was going to be well. I needed that assurance, although I had already gotten it from the professionals, I needed to hear it from family.  Few moments later, she was helped into the labor room by the nurses, now the pushing starts for her and the pacing and worrying started for me in the hallway. I was pacing like a mad man as my wife's voice was blaring in the dead of the night, she was lamenting, mouthing off lots of gibberish and my heart was racing, she was in a great deal of pain and it was torturous to me outside...

***My Joy Was Complete*** Not long now, her voice lowered a bit and a tiny baby voice pierced through the relative silence; she was here finally. I rushed into the labor room, dashed straight towards my wife, first point of call was making sure she was okay, and a huge sense of relief swept through me, they were both OK, both my girls were fine and nothing else mattered in the world, excitement slowly crept in when it dawned on me that the 9 months worth workload had finally being eased off and it ended in lots of joy and laughter. It was dawn, new day, I had a chance now to gaze into my daughter's face and see what she really looked like. She was small and beautiful and the first picture I shot her with my phone, she wore a smile, she was just barely a day old and she was already smiling for daddy. Hahaha..  The doc said wify and our new baby were strong enough to be discharged, so we paid our bills and he cut us loose and my journey into parenthood began. We had planned on 6 months exclusive breastfeeding, we had been regaled on the many benefits of it on the child's immune system, so we went ahead with it...Although breast milk didn’t flow immediately but we got suggestions on foods and drinks that would help, I provided them, wify took them and voila.. Since we were pretty much inexperienced in all things 'newborn' my mum was there to lend a hand. She bathed and groomed my daughter, while I bathed wify and massaged her tummy with hot water (gotta send that pregnancy tummy back in). At nights, I watched and gave moral support as wify pacified her. The night times were the toughest, we hardly slept, when we did, the intervals were hardly longer than 2 hours at a time. Our routine around the house changed, everything  was different now and I kinda lost some weight during this period, matter of fact, I fell ill shortly after my daughter's birth, must be a new daddy thing. LOL  During the first 3 months, my baby was doing alright, bar the occasional pains and wincing that comes from her yet to fall off umbilical cord (we were told that she'd stop experiencing the stomach pains once the umbilical cord falls off, and it was right on the money).   ***Food & Hyperactivity*** I had always assumed that all infants within the ages of 1-5 months were usually dormant and slept a lot, but my baby kicked that assumption to the curb. She was hyperactive, hardly slept during the day, when she did, 1 hr tops, she was awake all the time. She seemed to loved been held, she doesn’t like staying on her own on the bed, once she is awake, she’d cry till you pick her up and you dare not sit with her on your body, she needs you to stand while carrying her (Boss Lady). This was really challenging, when is her mum supposed to get the rest she needs? Remember in the night, it’s basically night shifts - no sleeping. We thought it might be food, you know overfeeding makes people lousy and make them sleep a lot, but my baby wasn’t ever overfed, because its breast milk, she always suckled enough to keep her awake and agile. My mum and other old heads suggested we introduced some heavy meals to her diet and cut short the 6 months exclusive we had planned for her. It took a lot of thinking but we finally gave it a try.  We started with some cereals and other baby food, but just like breast milk, she ate just enough, she never overfed, thus she was never out, always at alert and hyper. Realizing it might just be in her nature, we gave up trying to knock her out with food (LOL) and just tried to figure out a ways to deal with her hyper.  SpongeBob came in handy. We noticed she loved cartoons, especially SpongeBob and she wouldn’t eat unless there was some kind of cartoon sound playing in the background. LOL.  At 4 months, my baby had started crawling and teething, I kinda missed how she'd smile at me with nothing but just her gum, now she has two sets of teeth and her smile looked a lot different. The teething made her poo often and it wasn’t pleasant at all, but she didn’t linger in that level for long...she flew past it and arrived at the standing stage. She was a pro at standing on our bed but she had a tough time standing on the hard surface of the floor, she was scared of the floor. LOL. Very funny.   ***Weaning Little Miss Sunshine*** I had run into a family friend of ours, she gave birth 2 weeks after my wife did and she told me she had just weaned her baby, at a year and one month, and my baby was roughly a year and two months at the time. I went home and broke the news to my wife, told her we had to wean her so she could finally enjoy some good night sleep (Kiddo was sucking more at night now, that’s the only way she would sleep). Well, we tried it out that night and it was war, she cried so loud, that we answered some very annoying questions from neighbors the next day. The cries didn’t help her case, we had made up our minds, she was grown now, her incisors basking in their glory. It took about 7 days of night crying for her to forget about suckling, but we substituted it with night meal...anyone of her many diets was okay.   ***Lockdown Memories*** Right now, little miss sunshine is 1 year and 3 months, she is walking and kinda running now, says dada, runs little errands like 'give it to mama' 'give it to dada'. She understands simple things...'give it to mumy/dada' inclusive, she understands 'clap for yourself' and 'bye bye', she even knows how to load the nursery rhymes app on our tab (She thinks the tab is hers).  It has been a roller-coaster but it has been mostly fun and one thing the Covid lock-down afforded me, was time to create memories for her. I want to give her one of the best gifts she could get as an adult. I am currently making video and picture compilations of her. I snap or video her at least once every week and upload them in the cloud. I also have a dedicated journal of her for her...I write down her everyday life, important stuff, funny stuff. I document her growth in writing, pictures and videos and I make sure I include dates and sometimes time stamps. For potential first time dads/moms out there, imagine handing your daughter a journal of herself from 3 month old to 10 years old, a compilation of her infancy in pictures and videos for her 18th birthday.  How much would you pay to see a 10 year period of your life from Year 1 to 10?