Guest Blog: On Fatherhood, Father’s Day, and New Adventures
In honor of Fathers Day and the incredible importance of dad’s, I asked my husband to do a blog takeover today to discuss fatherhood and some of his advice. I am honored and so proud to introduce you to Rick through his words below.
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As Father’s Day 2020 approaches, it is one that is going to be different than all the others. This may be your first Father’s Day, your second - third - fourth, or even your fiftieth, but we can all agree, this one is going to be very unique.
If you are a father, I hope some of what I am about to share rings true with your experience and that it may even help discover things you could not quite put a finger on. If you are soon to be a father or dream to be a father one day, take these three things I am about to share as the cornerstones for what I have found to be a stable foundation of my fatherhood experience.
Take the Classes
The author Charles R. Swindoll has the well-known quote “I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it.” Well, that’s my perspective with our delivery story and everything we’ve done since then. In this instance, it’s not about knowing all the answers going into it, rather it’s about knowing how you’re going to react in the situations you’ve never been in before. We were lucky enough to live close to the hospital we were delivering at, so it was pretty easy to take all the classes they offered at the hospital - childbirth, breastfeeding, partner support, etc. Do the work upfront and it will make the experience at the hospital go that much more smoothly. Note that I did not say easier, since your partner is still going to be undergoing considerable physical trauma to bring your child into the world. If you already know what’s in your hospital bag, what’s in your partner’s hospital bag, what’s in your baby’s hospital bag; you’re going to be able to be two steps ahead once the momentum picks up.
Similarly, if you are able to take classes at your delivery hospital, or if you are able to access your hospital separately, I would advise you to take the tour of the delivery and recovery floors if possible. We had the unintended benefit of being intimately familiar with hospital stays already, but understanding the difference of how this hospital stay is now going to be for (at least) three people instead of just one is going to be very, very important. Knowing what resources will be available to you and your partner in the admission and triage phase versus the laboring phase versus the recovery room and the postpartum floor will make your time in the hospital as relaxed as it could possibly be. Understanding the process of what an epidural entails when you’re good and awake at 7pm is going to be paramount to not freaking out when it takes the doctors a little longer than expected to administer the epidural to your partner at 3:30am.
The other side effect of taking these classes with your partner is the ability to become closer while you are working towards bringing your child into the world. As an example, Amanda and I took all the classes our hospital offered together, while I also attended the new fathers class as well. However, our favorite class did not necessarily come down to anything topically related. It was the breathing techniques for delivery class, where we were quoting standup comedy to each other in between passing breaths and laughing so hard that we were very close to being asked to leave the class entirely. But at the end of the day, if you can’t laugh with your partner through this, what else can you laugh at...
Communicate, communicate, communicate
There is going to be a lot that happens during pregnancy, at the hospital, once you are home, and afterwards that will need to be said over and over again. Your family is going to be forever changed, so you will need to understand that your interaction patterns with your partner will now be changed as well. Your partner’s body is not going to be their own (as I’ll touch on more in a bit), so sometimes their words are all they are going to have. You are not going to be needed to be the HERO, you are just going to be needed to be HERE.
This isn’t to say this is all about your partner and nothing about you. You’re going to need to use your words, too. Knowing what you can do to provide for your family in this chaotic period is going to be important, but also communicating the importance of doing that work to your partner is going to be just as important. Otherwise, best intentions can often be misconstrued as avoidance if not communicated properly and you’re setting yourself up for a lot of emotional turmoil that can be prevented by putting everything out on Front Street.
In addition to communicating openly, there are going to be conversations you have which you may never have anticipated. Depending upon how your bundle of joy was conceived, be it naturally or with some assistance through infertility specialists, you are going to hear the word “vagina” A LOT. If this is something that is going to be a problem going forward, you’re going to want to work on that well before the baby arrives. Similarly, whether you end up with a boy or girl, there are going to be plenty of surprises around activities that previously only happened in the bathroom. We thought we were in the clear for any needs for a peepee teepee with our daughter, but we got peed on more times than we can remember in the first few months after bringing her home.
Self-care
As mental health advocates, Amanda and I are both huge proponents of self-care. This can vary from person to person, week to week, and even day to day. But now there are multiple forms of self-care that come into play with your new family unit - self-care for you, self-care for your partner, and self-care for your new family. Some of those things will come easily, some will take time to discover -- but all of them are valid and you deserve the space to advocate for them.
Starting off, you will need to understand what self-care means for you, with your world now in all sorts of lovely chaos. You may have been a master multitasker before, but now that can seem more overwhelming than climbing a mountain. All of the things you found joy in sinking your time into before just seem so daunting… throw all the books, podcasts, video games, and streaming series out the window… you probably just want to close your eyes and put your head on the largest pillow you can find. And that is all 100% fine. You will need to understand what works for you in your new routine and once you understand what works, give yourself space to grieve what you expected versus what came to be. I had all sorts of plans lined up for the arrival of the baby and the time home afterwards, however, it all boiled down to simply watching Psych on repeat, all eight seasons, any time I could pay attention and most times I couldn’t
Secondly, you will need to advocate for the self-care of your partner, possibly even more so than for yourself, as they are now giving so much of themselves to the new arrival. They are not going to feel like themselves, especially if they are breastfeeding or pumping, they may simply feel like a dairy farm for the baby that is often fighting them at every step of the way. Keep in mind, they’re doing all this while recovering from a major surgical procedure that affects over half the body. Do yourself a favor and go follow @fridamom on Instagram now. And while you’re doing that, go ahead and buy their Labor and Delivery + Postpartum Recovery Kit now. Your entire family will be grateful.
In addition to the physical aspect of recovery, your partner will be feeling emotional and mental strain as well. From the sleep deprivation that you’ll both have, your partner will most likely also feel a loss of identity with the focus now mainly on the baby. You will want to be open and honest about giving your partner a place to release these emotions, but also have frank conversations about the potential for any postpartum mood disorders, including postpartum anxiety, postpartum depression, or postpartum psychosis. These are all common and should not be looked upon negatively and the more you talk about them openly with your partner, the more compelled they will be to share any symptoms that they may experience with you.
Finally, advocating for your new family unit is going to be something that is definitely a learned skill rather than something inherently known going into the arrival of your child. Some days visitors will be welcome, some days they won’t - with that changing by the hour. When a friend or family member asks “do you need anything?”... that can now become the most daunting question in the world. It is perfectly okay to stand up and say “yes, but I can’t think of anything specific right now, so anything you think would be helpful would be greatly appreciated.” You are raising a tiny human, you don’t need more work from the larger humans.
Wrapping up
In my 13 months as a father, these are the things I learned that have been the utmost important to understand and practice continually and repeatedly. As I hope this blog post captures, these are all new aspects of your daily life that will need to be integrated, but at the end of the day, it is all worth it. More than anything I’ve ever known.
— Rick Osowski
Anthologies of Hope (Founder)
