I've started reading a few, but there's a mountain of choice and so far, these books are about 80% fluff. They pontificate like recipe websites, despite having no ads in the pages. I'd ideally like to find a book that goes over:
1. What I need to do
2. When I need to do it
3. Why it's important
4. Absolutely nothing else
I'd especially like to avoid pseudo-science / instructions backed up by no data, paragraphs congratulating me on being a modern participatory dad, and anecdotes.
Other than that, the single most useful advice someone once gave me was whenever baby is throwing tantrums, won't stop crying and you feel like it's stressing you out, maybe making you a little angry, always remember that baby is not giving you a hard time. It is _having_ a hard time and there's nothing baby can do. No ability to deal with that whatsoever, it needs your help. It's a mindset that helped me take the edge off many times in the beginning and became natural later on.
Emily Oster is the one author I'm familiar with who comes close to countering this trend, but even she gets too prescriptive sometimes.
The basics of parenting are very simple in theory and pretty hard in practice - stay available, stay patient, stay positive, divide and conquer tasks with your partner, take enough care of yourself to enable the above, adjust as needed. There's not much that's universal beyond that. Your kid's experience will be highly personal to your kid and you'll want to look at the tools and resources available to you (ranging from nannies and food service to bottles/bibs/furniture) and keep evaluating what's working and what's not.
(Also second the other comments referring to miscarriages. They are much more common than you might imagine, and of course incredibly challenging in part because they're so hard to discuss.)
The Birth Partner by Penny Simkin - a handbook for all things labor and delivery, wonderful reference, and very cheap to get secondhand
Cribsheet by Emily Oster - data driven early childhood decisions. Super helpful from one month to 18 months.
Bringing Up Bébé by Pamela Druckerman - skip the book and read the 100 point appendix for max bang for least time invested (though I found it an enjoyable read)
Things no book told me:
* infants have no circadian rhythms for the first month or two, so you and your partner are largely in survival mode. Do what you can to help your partner get some sleep. We’ve found shift sleeping to be very helpful.
* Consider cooking and freezing a bunch of food a few weeks before your due date. Being able to heat up some pasta sauce or a burrito when you’re insane from sleep dep is a godsend.
Good luck. Everyone will want to tell you about the hard parts. No one can tell you about the rewards, and they are fabulous. I love being a dad and I hope you do too.
Edit: if it’s within your means, and you’re at all antsy about labor and delivery, a doula is a wonderful resource for you during delivery. Helps get the laboring partner through, and a good support for the other partner.
The internet is generally a terrible place to get parenting advice/support/etc from. For some reason it's a topic that brings out the most judgemental in people.
Parents of one child are often the worst to talk to. They have figured out what works for their one kid, and are quite unaware that it doesn't generalize at all.
Mothers will (usually) feel instant love for their new baby. Fathers will often not, and it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking there must be something wrong with you for that. There isn't, it's all just hormones. Wait, and those feelings will come over time.
I think that's all I've got. Good luck!
You need patience. You need to learn to read their signs (hungry, full, tired, angry, etc) and be aware of the signs that will warrant escalating medical attention. You need to try and get on a schedule. You need to keep your relationship with your spouse alive (need? no, but it's best for the kid if you do).
You don't need to worry about actually fatherhood stuff for the first year, they're just digestive machines. Sure, it's good to be pleasant around them and invest time to bond with them. But, most of what you're doing is caring for an invalid.
Kids are incredibly adaptable and pretty easy to keep alive. So, "need" in a literal term is quite a low bar. Also, don't overthink it, it just happens and you react and adapt in usually an obvious way to situations you never could have dreamed you'd be in prior to being a parent.
This weekend my toddler came up to me and said "Dada, [pause], my wee wee got big?" I said "what?" and he pulled it out and showed me he got an erection and said "my wee wee is big now?" No book is going to tell you how to react to that and how to parent in the moment. FWIW, I said, "yeah you're a big boy and it will grow with you just like your feet" - completely ignored the erection part.
I became a dad 17 months ago. I would do both 1 & 2 if possible, and 3 if you feel like it. Total time cost is less than a weekend.
1. The Birth Partner - https://www.pennysimkin.com/shop/the-birth-partner-5th-editi...
You can get by just skipping to the yellow-highlighted pages. They're 1-2 page How To's or summaries. Like a checklist of the stuff to put in your Go Bag.
2. Talk to different types of people about parenting and make notes about what's most important to you.
Don't leave out older people. Despite the mass amount of new literature about how to raise kids, being a parent hasn't changed that much in 2 generations.
3. Expecting Better - https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/310896/expecting-be...
Easy to skip to just the chapters you want to learn about. E.g. if you end up needing/wanting genetic testing, you could read that chapter and nothing else.
That pretty much sums up all the advice, I think. Good luck, kids are fun.
edit: You have time to get a puppy, now; and learn to deal with all the shit on easy mode. When the baby happens the puppy will be the perfect age to be an actual help watching the baby, and help raise the kid.
(1) Feed baby.
(2) Change baby.
(3) Clothe and bathe baby.
(4) Baby needs sleep.
(5) Transport baby.
(6) Troubleshooting
"Feed baby" typically boils down to breastfeeding or formula only. Breastfeeding is a whole field unto itself. But for formula, get some bottles and some formula, and follow the directions on the formula container.
"Clothe baby" - get some baby outfits, keep them clean. Give the baby a bath with a sponge and baby shampoo when the baby seems dirty. Get new outfits as they grow out of them.
"Change baby" means get some diapers, wipes, and diaper cream. Put the diaper on, flaps out, and change it when it's soiled. Use the cream if they have diaper rash.
"Baby needs sleep" - get some baby swaddlers that let you tie their arms up (ideally velcro). Follow the directions, and put the baby on their back on a flat dry surface in a bassinet or crib to sleep. When they are newborn, they sleep frequently. Listen for when the baby wakes up.
"Transport baby" - get a car seat and use it according to the directions.
"Troubleshooting" - our pediatrician gave us a little pamphlet that covers everything health wise (i.e., call them when fever exceeds x or if y or z occur) - I've heard that most pediatricians do. Other than health issues, mostly the issue is the baby crying or not sleeping. When those things happen, just google it and try things until something works. Pacifiers are great for some babies for both crying and sleeping, others not so much.
Newborns mostly just sleep and eat. Older babies sleep, eat, and get bored. Older still, they sleep, eat, and play/crawl. Soon thereafter you have a toddler.
1) no amount of books or articles will prep you for what to come 2) find a good pediatrician, listen to them 3) use your common sense, avoid comparing your baby behaviour with others
As for recommendations, the one that I found useful is https://parentingscience.com/ that usually has links to studies / science papers in their articles
The closest I have to a regret is that I wish I had somehow made even more time to spend with them. It goes so fast. So. Fast.
We found Harvey Karp's Happiest Baby on the Block really helpful with our newborn. It contains a lot of fluff. Reading it ahead of time will have little value - you need to see/understand your baby's temperament to understand how to apply the approaches in the book.
Best of luck! Kids are awesome!
It covers the absolute basics with diagrams. Lovely little intro book.
The Montessori Baby
Covers the theory of what babies need and presents a good minimum of what they need without making you buy a ton. You won't and shoukd not 100% follow this book but adapt it for yourself.
Expecting Better and Crib Sheets
Oster does an excellent job at listing research, evaluating studies and drawing conclusions. Her substack is also worth while.
- It’ll be fine, don’t stress every detail
- Take care of yourself
- Get enough sleep
- Get enough sleep
- Get enough sleep
They are a few weeks long, e.g. an evening a week. They cover the basics you mentioned, including practical stuff for the parents and the baby around pregnancy, birth and infancy. Being part of a cohort was valuable for discussing and socialising the ideas, and it was far more valuable to me than e.g. reading from a book. They were also a great support group in those early days.
Having a baby is like stepping onto a speeding escalator with no end in sight. It's amazing but incredibly draining. You can't be prepared for that, but getting habituated to the idea is useful, I think.
And if there was something you wanted to do or experience (movie, holiday, etc), do it before the baby comes.
And finally, you can't cuddle a baby too much. Give it as much love and attention as you can possibly spare.
[0] https://www.nct.org.uk/courses-workshops/nct-antenatal-cours...
http://www.mybabysleepguide.com/2010/02/sleep-problems-by-ag...
http://www.mybabysleepguide.com/2013/02/average-sleep-charts...
That said, the most helpful resources for me have been:
1. Happiest Baby on the Block. Chapter 1 is an outline of the full book and is pretty close to what you ask for. I had never cared for a child before, and reading it before my daughter was born made me “baby whisperer” for the first week.
2. Everything from Emily Oster.
3. A standard text on pregnancy. “What to expect…” and “Bumpin” are actually not bad from your perspective. They tend to do a good job of outlining the essentials and spectra of choices without being too opinionated.
And finally: get set up with a good peds office before baby is born. Look for 7 day/week office hours and a 24 hour call line. We needed to contact ours the night we came home — don’t put this off till the kid is born!
On the data driven side, Emily Oster and her prenatal (Expecting Better) and postpartum (Cribsheet) books are great resources, but they hardly prepare you for parenting. Those books can help you make some macro decisions for sure, but overall parenting is an experience which will likely be the most mentally challenging thing you've done, barring any exceedingly traumatizing events.
It's coauthored by a pediatrician, so the recommendations are evidence-based, but it's also practical and relatively concise.
[Disclaimer: The edition I read was published over a decade ago, but the latest edition doesn't appear to be radically different.]
As per a list of 'to-dos', yeah, sorry mate, that's not how babies really work. I really wish it was, but it's not.
As the Dad, you're mostly just going to be supporting Mom through all this. Just remember, it's not about you, it's about supporting Mom and the baby for the next ~18 months. Mom's hormones are going to be real wacky until the due data and then ~3 months afterwards. She'll need support and calm strength. Just breathe, y'all will make it through it.
Honestly, you're going to spend those next ~18 months just cooking and cleaning for them (a LOT of cleaning).
Baby will tell you (hopefully) when it needs changing and feeding and whatnot. Your 'instincts' will kick in and help out there.
No two babies are the same. All the advice is mostly bupkiss. However, it is important to read it all. You never know when one of those bits of advice will come in handy. "No plan survives contact with the enemy, but planning is everything".
One VERY important thing though: Get on the daycare lists right now.
I don't know where you are, but the post-covid daycare landscape is really bad. I've have friends on lists for ~22 months. We were on a list for ~14 months. Your local area may be totally chill, or a disaster. You also may not think you're going to use daycare now, but change your mind in when the baby comes. Get on those lists now to have the option. And yes, daycare is crazy expensive, but personal home care is much much more so.
If you live in the Southeast of the US, you can get it for free at any Publix supermarket store.
https://shop.aap.org/caring-for-your-baby-and-young-child-pa...
I know that one of the public health orgs in Australia has something similar. You should be able to google for it. It was a mostly no nonsense PDF with bullet points outlining the what and when, divided by an age range the milestone expected to happen during.
And take good pictures and video and write down the funny things they say, I still enjoy looking back at them after all these years.
--------------------- Fortune Begin ------------------------
They're basically very smelly houseplants until they get to the crawling age. You're constantly terrified that they're going to randomly die on you, but the rules for preventing that outcome are straightforward and hard to forget. -- Thomas Ptacek, giving advice to a new father
---------------------- Fortune End -------------------------
I don't think anything like that could exist anyway seeing as how every child and their circumstances would be different.
The only thing you really need to do is try.
Just keep being there, keep watching your baby and doing your best to decide how to be your best.
The worst thing you can do is stop putting in the energy and just let time pass. Other than that, this is one of those things where simply making the effort is all that is really needed.
Breastfeeding is exhausting and the emotional load of the newborn plus the massive hormone shifts is no walk in the park.
And follow the schedules. It will work. This book is insanely popular among friend group which has probably had about 30 babies in the past two years.
Every one of them that follows it is insanely pleased.
If the baby does not have colic and cries:
1) Needs milk 2) Needs changed 3) Needs sleep
If baby does have colic and cries
1) Lol probably needs nothing, but try all 3 above for good measure. 2) Endure for months on end until every woman in your extended family and your own marriage nearly self destructs because it turns out a baby that cries every waking hour for months on end is basically kryptonite for women. Treat it like you're going to be waterboarded for the better part of a year to see how devout you are for your marriage.
sorry you are completely wrong here, this new life episode has no pragmatic cheatsheet, forget everything from your career, enjoy it and be patient!
https://www.amazon.com/Achtung-Baby-American-Self-Reliant-Ch...
thought it was a really great book on something i'm completely oblivious to.
It’ll give some insight into small things that if you get them wrong can have really negative impacts.
Here are some notes on "gear":
1) Get a really nice headlamp that can do a candle mode. This is going to be really helpful at 2:00am when you need to see where diapers are.
2) Get multiple bassinets so that you have a place to set the baby down.
3) Spending more money is worth it on gear. We have both the Nuna Mixx and the Uppababy Vista (uppa does two seats). Get the Nuna. It's definitely a case of buy once cry once. We made the mistake of buying a graco carseat at target for our second carseat and hate it.
4) We bought a harbor freight toolchest as a diaper changing station (https://www.harborfreight.com/30-in-5-drawer-mechanics-cart-...) and it's been hugely useful.
5) We bought an owlet SpO2 monitor and absolutely LOVE this.
6) We use this bottle warmer: https://www.amazon.com/Munchkin-Speed-Bottle-Warmer-Orange/d.... 3D print a measuring cup that meters the exact amount of water you need for whatever bottles you are using.
On emotional stuff:
1) I cannot stress how much things you used to find meaningful are going to seem pointless. Just lean into it. Kids are the most meaningful thing you will ever do. I cannot repeat this enough times. I hate to be this blunt, but you cannot understand this until you have kids.
2) Lean into the relationship with your wife. Your children are very literally a manifestation of your love for one another. Nurture that feeling, and think about it a lot.
3) Family is going to want to spend time with your kids, and sometimes this is going to feel like work. Don't be afraid to tell them no.
Here's some practical stuff:
1) You need to feed the baby FREQUENTLY. While it's possible for you to help with this, nothing is going to beat breastfeeding, so try to be as supportive of your wife as possible.
2) Remind your wife how beautiful she is frequently. Childbirth is stressful for women, and can be hard on a woman's body. Support your wife. I think the entire process of childbirth, the various hormonal changes to do things like switch from colostrum to milk, oxytocin bonding with the baby by looking at it while breastfeeding, etc. are all profoundly beautiful.
3) Don't stress yourself out about milestones. Your baby is fine. Your pediatrician will tell you if there is a problem. Don't stress these things.
4) I said above but I'll say again: buy once cry once on baby gear. A nice stroller is going to be a big deal. Nuna makes the best of everything.
5) If you family has some hand me down baby clothes: take them.
6) Your baby is going to get various butt rashes. This doesn't mean you are a failure as a parent. Babies get butt rashes.
7) Miss Rachel is a freaking god send when your baby gets older. It's a youtube channel called "Ms Rachel Songs for Littles", and its' really good, educational content.
8) Your gut is actually a million years long biological computer/classifier. Trust it. Call your mom a lot and ask her opinion on stuff.
You are already a father. You are already a parent, even though the baby has not been born. You're already at the deep-end, even if you are not yet directly involved in the care of the baby growing in your wife's womb.
It's from this perspective, I offer this:
1. Being "data-driven", while helpful, is not complete. Raising your child is not a mission. You cannot push buttons and expect results to follow, or define objectives, and then somehow expect your child to also go along with it. They will grow with or without you, and are most vulnerable in the early stages of life. If you have ever grown a plant, it is more like that -- no matter what kind of ideal conditions you can create for the plant or child, ultimately, the power of growth does not lie within you. It lies within what you are nurturing.
2. You're going to have to sacrifice your time, energy, and sleep. There are going to be other missions you might go after ... and you're going to have to sacrifice some of them.
3. Accept all the help from family, friends, and community that you can get.
4. There are defined milestones, and they start before birth.
5. The first major milestone is viability. That's when, if the fetus is born prematurely, it has a chance of surviving in the NICU.
6. Minor milestones are the organ scan (to check if there are any severe deformities in the developing organ, also affecting viability), and the glucose test -- for gestational diabetes, and preeclampsia, which can potentially not only affect the child's health, but also your wife's.
7. Labor and birth, and recovery for your wife
8. You cannot directly impact anything for 5 - 7. Your best course of action is to support your wife
9. Watch out for post-partum depression in your wife.
What follows after are:
1. Development of the blood brain barrier.
2. Development of the immune system
3. Watching out for Sudden Infant Death syndrome in the first months (or year?) There are some advances in understanding this, but right now, unfortunately, this is mostly luck.
4. Being able to roll from back to front, and front to back. That allows the infant to be able to adjust posture without suffocating
5. Being able to hold the head steady. Until then, you have to make sure you are supporting the child's head yourself.
A good pediatrician or family nurse practitioner will remind you of all of this during the checkups. Checkups happen more frequently at the early age and get less frequent as the child grows.
Immunization matters a lot. When the child starts going to child care or school, that will start a cycle of the whole family (including parents) getting sick, even with immunization. Fall of 2022, we saw an epidemic of RSV, Flu, and Covid among families with small children.
The rest goes on with physical, mental and social development. They don't go in any specific order. Sometimes, children are mildly delayed in some things and not in others, and sometimes the delay is symptomatic of say, Autism Spectrum Disorder (which is currently diagnosed in 1 in 44 children now). This can get fairly complicated, but there are usually state services that help families with this.
Lastly, my wife is connected to support groups online for moms. There's a Facebook group involving tens of thousands of members that, smaller subgroups break off for that. If there's a similar one for dads, I suggest joining it.
Show up. Talk to other dads.
This is not glib. If you show up, you'll know what to do most of the time, and if you're nervous or stumped, talk to the other dads.
A few examples of showing up in my daughter's first week after being born:
My daughter experienced decels during labor. That's the heart rate varying. Meconium was expelled, so they assumed without confirming she had suffered meconium aspiration. APGAR 2 at birth, 7 at the next check. She was born blue and floppy.
First show up: the NICU team took my daughter away to intubate her. My wife looked at me, puzzled, I smiled and gave her a thumbs up. I knew my wife still had to deliver the placenta and that was another hazard she had to navigate. Point is, I was there and I knew what to do. I later apologized to my wife for lying to her in that moment; she understood.
Next show up: we finally can see our daughter in the NICU. The doctors are all talking about brain damage and meconium aspiration. My wife and I standing on either side of the warming bed, I sang my daughter's 'womb song', You are my Sunshine. Daughter looked in my direction. My wife read some lines from Hand Hand Fingers Thumb, her chosen womb book. Daughter looked at my wife. We knew she was ok. Of course my daughter could barely see at that point, but we knew that confirmed hearing and motor function, and assumed cognitive function was also ok.
Next show up: The NICU was not set up to support breast feeding. My wife was set on doing this. The bullies with Dr. badges threatened to contact CPS if my wife was unable to feed our child, and also, provided not one single form of breast feeding assistance. I say "bullies" because they actually were hostile in their presentation, not politely spelling out boundaries like a professional. (Key info on breast feeding, compress the breast into an oval shape that matches the child's mouth) So I ran to whole foods to get some formula my wife found marginally acceptable as a backstop to keep the doctor's at bay.
Next show up: NICU doctors said my wife could attempt breast feeding for 30 minutes every 2 hours because the activity threatened my daughter's life. Yes, attempting to provide nourishment is somehow life-threatening. I rented a hotel room across the street and did this cycle of showing up at the NICU every 2 hours with my wife, and we slept for about 45 minutes in between. We did that for 2 days straight, at which point my wife had finally been able to get daughter to latch and was feeding her on a more regular schedule.
Next show up: After daughter improving for 5 days in the NICU I'm at work and get the call she is on the decline due to reduced urine output. I contact our social worker at the hospital and told her I thought it was a load of crap and my daughter was fine. She suggested a meeting with the Attending Physician and the Charge Nurse. In the meeting, I waste no time, I ask how they determined her urine output was insufficient. They said they charted the weight of her diapers. I asked how big her variance was. About 60g too low. The Charge Nurse steps out of the meeting at that point. I ask, how much does a wet diaper weigh on average? About 60g. The Charge Nurse returns and says there was a gap in the chart, and one of her nurses had failed to record one of the diapers at a particular interval, and the nurse said her recollection was it was within spec.
So yeah, you may ask, how did I know how to navigate the adverse first week of my daughter's life? I just knew what to do. But the only reason I had a chance to know what to do was because I was there in the first place. I know we were lucky to get my daughter out of there in a short period of time and there were parents who had their child in the NICU for months who had a much harder road. They continued to show up too.
What you need to do:
Mom says, “Will you…?”
You say, “Yes of course.”
Always and forever.
The new human being requires
a mother.
The new human being is
priority one.
Mom is priority two.
You are priority three.
Unless you have a dog.