This is about how you can handle the new responsibilities and challenges of being a father of a newborn child. After about 9 months of emotionally supporting your wife through pregnancy, you will soon (or already) have a new member of your family. Or, as my father used to say (half-joking), “You now have a new boss.”
OK enough preamble here (and I'm going to use a bullet point format with bold because I realize that anybody who has a newborn in their family doesn't have a lot of time to read a lot of fancy prose about how people might feel and what kind of a story there might be behind all of these pieces of advice. Just read the bold text if you are in a great hurry.
1. Assume that you are no longer the number one person in the life of everybody in your family. You may not have assumed this before, but your wife now has a #1 focus that may be upsetting to you if she was idolizing you at every turn in your newlywed days. If you had a relationship where her number one focus was to serve you and make sure that you are absolutely happy in every situation, you will now find that you are #2.
a. I hate to break this to you, but this is the case. We could all pretend that it's not but, if we do pretend that it's not, we will quickly be sorely disappointed. This doesn't mean that there isn't enough love to go around. It just means that somebody has now entered the picture who is totally dependent on you as their parents and, as a result, the mom is now intensely (and somewhat obsessively?) focused on the baby since he/she can’t do anything for themselves (and are very loveable most of the time).
b. If being an indispensable part of a championship team is more important to you being the MVP or GOAT, you should be OK with this. I hope you are.
2. If you take care of the mom and try to eliminate some of the burden on her, everyone will be a whole lot happier.
a. There are many things that she was doing before, even when she was pregnant, that she now doesn't have time to do and may not have the energy to do. There are simple off-loading tasks like vacuuming, putting away the dishes, washing clothes, or making sure that the bed is made that don't require too much of you but will be greatly appreciated. I am trying to tell you that the “homemaker” responsibilities list should be adjusted – if you want to be successful.
b. This may be a big blow to you if you are “macho man” or have a lot of your self-worth tied up with being the “head of the house” -- and don’t help much around the house. I believe that you will be much happier if you heed my advice here and get back to a “team first” focus.
c. You can adjust some things as time passes, but there is an especially critical need at the beginning.
3. Your contribution to the family from the standpoint of economic contribution and making sure that there is economic security and a financial safety net has just increased considerably.
a. Before, you may have had an environment where each of you were equal breadwinners. However, even if your wife makes more money than you do and is very successful in her career, you may find that she now is considering moving out of the work environment and moving into a role as a full-time mom! Being a mom is, for many women, infinitely more fulfilling than practically any money-paying job that they could have. So, even if she loves her job, she might be very tempted to at least consider staying home with the baby. As a result, your economic contribution to the financial picture is going to be much greater.
b. Even if she plans to continue in her career, though, this is not the time for you to also start throwing curve balls about major job changes you are thinking about that might put all of your finances at risk. If you have a lot of problems at work, you now need to work on how to solve those problems with very minimal disruption. You need to rethink how you can cope/succeed and find a way to minimize the stress that you put on the new mom.
4. Your wife is going through some major physiological and psychological issues that she did not have to face before.
a. In the pregnancy, when she was obviously going through physical/physiological problems challenges, it was obvious to everyone that she was carrying a new life. It was somewhat easier for her to accept the physical changes in her body because there was such a huge positive life-giving activity going on within. Now that she has had the baby, she is possibly going to be overweight, showing stretch marks, and feeling what they call postpartum depression. Supposedly well-meaning friends and “society” are going to be asking about losing her weight, getting back in shape, and how wonderful it is to have a baby (despite the huge issues associated with each).
b. You need to be exceptionally aware of these particular impacts and make sure that you are more encouraging and accepting than ever before. You need to make sure that she is valued as a human being and a soul and not just as a sex object.
c. If you are in the habit of “kiddingly” criticizing or looking at other women, you need to stop it now and become the best encourager your wife has ever imagined. You may have gotten away with being a subtle “put down artist” before but now is a good time to stop. I hope that this isn't the first time someone has told you this relative to your marriage and your partnership with your spouse, but please heed this advice at this point even if you have never heard it before. You need to quickly “man up” and make the values, maturity, and emotional adjustments at this point in your life to accept what I’m saying here.
5. If you happen to be a person who has tendencies toward sporadic and instantaneous gratification expenses and risky investments this is not the time to use up all of your financial resources and income reserves.
a. You need to create, and stick to, a budget that allows you to provide for contingencies -- and not surprise the mom of the family with things like a new large car payment or fancy golf clubs (or anything else along those lines) that causes an increase in financial stress and anxiety. There is enough stress without adding to the monetary stress associated with having someone in the family (you) who decides on the spur of the moment that large expenditures are necessary in order to satisfy their cravings.
b. Similarly, your investment choices need to become more conservative than they might have been in the past. Investment gambles that involve margin sales, derivatives, large lottery purchases, and betting on individual stock tips from your friends may have been acceptable in the past. Now, however, you are now in a situation where the family is dependent on your financial stability.
c. Wild expenditure and “investment” surprises are not going to be looked upon as positive by your spouse with a new baby to protect. In fact, surprises of any kind aren’t going to be looked upon with the same “laugh-it-off” attitude that may have allowed you to survive pre-baby.
6. Your relationship with the baby is going to be secondary to the baby's relationship with their mom in many respects. This continues, despite what anybody says about fatherhood, well into the next five-to-eighteen years for most kids. Especially when the baby is nursing and they have just exited the womb, these attachments are very strong relative to the attachments that the baby might have to their father. These are just facts of life and not meant to diminish your role by any stretch of the imagination. However, you need to be aware that this is going to be the case -- and you don't need to compete with that relationship. You should be the number one supporter of that mom-child relationship and things will turn out very well for you if you accept this and turn it into a positive for the whole family.
7. If you don't take the time to be with your family after the birth and think that you now can get back to work as usual, you will be missing an opportunity to see the growth of your child and be involved with the formation of a strong bond that will go forward many years.
a. Unfortunately, it seems that opportunities to travel more in your job or get promoted to a job function that takes even more of your time seem to pop up at the exact time that you have these new family responsibilities. I don't know if corporate America does this on purpose but there are a whole lot of people that I know who have this happen to them just at the wrong time. Regardless of these “opportunities”, you need to make sure that you give the family enough face time and quality time during the crucial early years.
b. Travel or work hour requirements may be such in your new position or your current position that you are gone from home a lot. If this is the case, you need to make sure that all of your activity with regard to doing e-mail, analyzing things with the computer, responding to voicemails, and a variety of other paperwork functions are all done at home as much as humanly possible. And , when you are at home working, you need to make sure that you are interruptible. You need to disengage yourself from the computer-focused work activities of your job and take a break to help out if someone is craving attention, an important milestone is happening, or help is needed.
8. Sleep when they sleep. Make sure that anytime you have an opportunity to rest that you take that opportunity. It is very important to keep your health at a peak.
a. Sleep is extremely important to health, and you will have to learn to become a “napper” even if that's not the kind of sleep schedule that you currently prefer. In addition, when the baby wakes up at night, try as hard as you possibly can to supplement the burden that is normally put on the mom. Get up and do the kinds of things that you can do.
b. At the same time, you don't have to be up all of the time when the mom is up. You two parents need to tag-team to balance the burden on each of you. Take advantage of the fact that there are two of you and one of them. So, if you're smart and not just succumbing to guilt, you need to make sure that you are taking care of things that you can take care of rest when the mom is taking care of things that only she can take care of.
c. It is very tempting to try to be up whenever the mom is up. This works for a few days and may make you feel better in the short run, but it is not a long-term successful arrangement. You can stay up with the mom some of the time when she needs emotional support, but you need to work together as a team to trade off when things can be traded off. This will be especially important when one of you has a set of key responsibilities coming up in the next day and needs to be well rested.
9. Insurance was possibly optional before you had a baby. While I realize that it's very expensive I think you need to work a budget such that you have health care and life insurance.
a. You may choose highly deductible health care insurance, but you at least have to have something that is going to help you get through the toughest of times. If you have an income that's low enough that you can take advantage of Medicaid, then you at least need to make sure that you understand all of the ins- and-outs of that program and what you can and cannot rely upon. If you can't afford a healthcare insurance program that covers everything, make sure that at least you cover catastrophic kinds of conditions.
b. Along the same lines, this is not a bad time for you to look into life insurance. I am not a life insurance salesperson and have no connection whatsoever with any kind of life insurance company. (I don't have any connection with the health insurance company either, by the way.) The thing about life insurance is that you don't have to get the most expensive possible insurance program or the greatest dollar amount. You can get an emergency-level of term life insurance now. It’s cheapest when you are youngest. When your income is greater down the road, and your kids are more independent, you can then give up your term life insurance program. (In fact, there now are companies that will buy your insurance from you now -- so you don't just give up your insurance by letting it “lapse”. You might be able to get some of your money back.) The key here with life insurance, however, is that if you are the provider and something happens to you then you have done something good for your spouse and for the new baby. It's not so important when you don't have a baby because the spouse is probably capable of finding another job or marrying someone who has another job. This all changes when you have a new baby, several new babies, or several young children.
c. Try to make sure, if you have an option, that these insurance programs are somewhat decoupled from your job situation. Corporations aren't as loyal to you as you might be to them. Even if you're working for the government, you may find that the job conditions are such that you may want to move into the private sector in the future. Try to have some of your insurance that you can take with you.
10. If you think that you can live the same way that you were with regard to your entertainment and eating out and parties and your social connections you're going to be sadly mistaken. I hope that you have thought about this before you actually have the new baby there at home. If you haven't thought about it, you need to think about it now. These are, of course, just a few of the many things that you need to change when you have to worry about the new baby being taken care of. Friends who may have loved to dine or party with you as a couple may not be as close.
a. Also, you need to understand that you cannot just hand the baby over to anybody you find on the Internet who is advertising babysitting services. We used to use the term “networking” to mean finding help via trusted connections. This kind of networking is extremely important when you're talking about finding a babysitter to take care of your precious new child. You may not feel this way as strongly as the mom, however. In fact, there is about a 95% chance that you do not feel as strongly about this issue as the mom does. So, you will find the mom very reticent to go out to dinner or to a play or a party without assurance that the babysitter is capable and trusted and responsible and is a good communicator and reliable. Some of you will have a wife who is very good at finding new connections and can easily find these trusted babysitters. Some of your spouses will not be good at this at all and, in fact, may become even more introverted and less outreaching in this regard than they are in almost any other area of their lives. They simply do not want to turn that baby over to some random person and they also aren't that great at finding all these people who might be able to help them. You are going to have to be very careful regarding being the person who finds the trusted babysitter if your spouse is not one of the kinds of people who are just outgoing and networking for help as a second nature skill. The people that you find are not going to be as trusted by your spouse as the people that she finds. You are going to have to work through this and that's just a fact of life.
b. The good news about less socializing is that it also can save you some of the money that you should be investing in things like healthcare insurance, life insurance, or increased savings for a rainy day situation.
11. Speaking of savings, make sure that you have some access to cash for emergencies.
a. The budget that you come up with is putting aside some into a checking account or savings account safety net that doesn't require a great delay for liquidation. Don't expect to get great returns on your investment in these, but you need to have that kind of backup available to you because babies just don't seem to operate on a schedule with regard to the crises that come up.
b. While I am a huge believer that you need to pay off all credit cards down to a balance of $0 at the end of each pay period, I highly recommend that you do get some credit cards that have the ability for you to draw down on them when you do come up with unexpected baby and/or mom doctor or food expenses. The time to apply is before you need it. Please refer to some of the comments that I've made above regarding spontaneous and unnecessary purchases and budgeting. Do not use these credit cards as a loan for anything but the shortest possible term payback and only for situations that allow you to pay for things that truly are necessities.
c. Do not get into the habit of carrying a balance forward or you will regret it greatly due to the extra pressure of growing debt and your ability to accumulate any wealth with this handicap. Loan sharks are not looked upon highly in our society, but we all have a loan shark relationship with credit card companies that are charging 26% and up. Nobody ever calls them on being a loan shark or calls them consumer abusers. However, their loan percentage numbers are completely out of line and you should avoid being in debt to them.
12. Please make sure that you take care of your own health and the health of the mom.
a. I referenced sleep above, but I also need to mention that you or the mom (probably not both at the same time) may be more tempted by excessive drug use, excessive sleeping pill use, or excessive alcohol use than ever before in your lives. Extreme stress and anxiety caused by not knowing how to handle the baby are all scenarios that need to be avoided. If you and your spouse were getting along just fine before the baby came into the picture, you still need to have a heads up that the increased stress, anxiety, and possible depression can be overwhelming and lead you to situation that you have been able to avoid for all of your life previously. If you or your spouse were already susceptible to arguments, panic attacks, anxiety, temper outbursts, stress, and depression you need to be well aware of the potential for increased levels in all of these areas. You need to make sure that you are getting early and good psychological help that you might anticipate needing. You need to make sure that you don't turn to any kind of substance abuse in order to handle the issues that I've talked about here.
b. In addition, the kind of social exposure that you might have had in the past (possibly a great deal of hugging or ignoring the fact that one of your friends has some sort of communicable airborne disease) need to be kept in perspective relative to keeping the baby safe. You might have been able to attend a party or stay at a party in the past when there were lots of people who had lots of different kinds of ailments. Now if there's a possibility of bringing sickness home to the new baby you need to do the extra things involved with trying to stay safe and away from colds and viruses et cetera. You may need to wash your hands more often. You may need to distance yourself from sick people who feel obligated to show up at work “sicker than a dog”. You may need to use things like hypochlorous acid and other kinds of disinfectants et cetera to avoid the spread of things that might bring some sort of disease into the household.
c. You also need to make sure that you're doing your part to get yourself and your spouse checkups and regular exercise -- and make sure that you're getting the kind of physical health advice that are going to keep you in business. Also, beware of your spouse triggering a setback by trying to get back into full swing or get back in shape too fast.
d. A lot of the responsibilities that I've mentioned above with regard to your job and trying to tag team with your partner are predicated on the ability to keep yourself healthy. Similarly you need to make sure that your spouse is looking out after herself and not sacrificing her health for taking care of the baby at all costs. She needs to make sure she's not getting worn down physically such that she ends up contracting some sort of otherwise avoidable virus or disease. This is especially important if your spouse is physically fragile.
OK, so these are some of the major points that I would like to have you aware of. I could write much more about this, but you have already spent so much time looking at this that I really feel you may need to get back to some of the things that I've already pointed out in this article. Just print this to look at it once-in-a-while or make notes if you think it might help.
I wish you all the best and I think that you should be much more successful if you listen to some of the advice above and heed it. You are not going to do all of this perfectly – and you will never be a perfect parent. Be aware that if you had tendencies before like losing your temper, for example, the stress of having the newborn in the family is possibly going to bring out some of your worst. This might happen with your spouse as well. You need to be aware that any tendencies toward disagreements and arguments are possibly going to be exacerbated when you have so many decisions to be made with the new baby at the house. Just be aware of all of this up front and, hopefully, you will realize that you're not the only one who has these kinds of issues. These kinds of things are normal and you need to give yourself a break regarding any kind of perfect spouse, perfect parent, or perfect person ideal.
One last point -- and I am leaving this to the last because many people these days seem to have a major problem with regard to the spiritual side of things. This is mentioned last but it is by no means the least important. You need to make sure that, from a psychological and spiritual standpoint, you are taking care of yourself , your spouse, and the baby. You should do what you need to do to make sure that your prayer life and your spiritual life are kept on solid ground and you keep growing in maturity as much as possible in this environment. You are going to need support from other people who have your best interest in mind and who have a loving, forgiving, hopeful, positive, and grace-oriented worldview. Make sure you take advantage of the kinds of environments that offer exposure and connection to these kinds of people and worldviews. I have my own philosophy and worldview regarding a life sustaining and supporting Christian faith but I'm not going to go into that right now. What I am saying, and highly recommending, is that you find a worldview or belief system that is life supporting and life sustaining. Don't try to get through this whole thing with the new baby and the new relationship with your spouse without having some sort of a connection to these kinds of ideas, philosophies, and the people who will encourage you.
As usual these articles are written to see if I can help you in some way. You always have to use your own judgment and your own experiences to judge what I say, of course. I don't pretend to be the most knowledgeable relative to this subject -- and you should use AI as well to try to get some additional insight. These are my own ideas, and they come from my own experience as I can recall them from several years ago. The only thing I have to say in my defense here is that I have stayed married for almost 50 years and I have 3 incredibly successful children -- so we didn't do too much damage in trying to raise them. Thank you for your time here. I hope that this has proven to be a useful investment in this very busy time of your life.
While these inputs that I have provided here might seem to stress the downside of having a new baby in the house, the joy, love, relationships, and fulfillment that you will get out of this kind of family experience are unequalled in life. This whole experience with children is one of the best things that could possibly happen to you. It can provide you with the kind of reward that is truly of worth the sacrifice and which cannot possibly be provided by any sort of job, wealth, success, or popularity you might get from other aspects of your life. Your challenge here is to recognize this and turn the challenges into opportunities and positives.
I wish you all the best and I know that you will be very successful with this -- and hopefully have the strongest possible loving and fulfilling relationship with your spouse and your children.