September 19th, 2006 | 2 Comments
Top 5 Tips For New Dads
With Kate having reached her 1st birthday, I’ve been looking back over the year and thinking about what I have learned from the experience of becoming a father for the first time.
As for all new parents, your baby does not come with an instruction manual (who reads those anyway?), so you have to pick up a lot of new skills very quickly. And you often have to learn it under sleep-deprived conditions.
So I’ve come up with my 5 top tips for new dads (and mums, of course):
- Sleep when your baby sleeps - even if, like me, you think you are used to going to bed late and getting up early, when a baby comes along, your levels of tiredness will reach new
heightsdepths. The temptation is to stick to your normal routine, but you should ideally try to get some sleep when the baby sleeps (if that’s possible, given other things going on around you). - Learn to do things one handed - when they’re first born, babies tend to either eat or sleep (shock horror). And that’s it. You’ll find yourslef spending a fair bit of time holding a bottle to their mouth, but this doesn’t mean that you can’t do other things at the same time. I learned that it is possible to feed a baby and browse the web at the same time - it’s possible to do a bit of typing, but moving the mouse can be a bit of a problem - so learn those keyboard shortcuts for your favourite programmes. (What’s that I hear you say? - You’re a master at one-handed typing already? I’d keep that to yourself).
- Create “No Go” zones - as your child gets older, you’ll find them getting more and more interested in things they find around them, some of them dangerous, others just everyday items you’d prefer they didn’t get their perfect little fingers on - mugs of coffee, remote controls, magazines etc. We’ve managed to construct a “baby no-go zone” in our lounge, where we can safely place drinks etc, safe in the knowledge that they can’t be reached by tiny hands. We only had to push our sofas together to create this “DMZ“, you might have to be a little more constructive.
- Learn to scan a room for dangers - as I mentioned above, it doesn’t take long for your baby to turn from a largely inanimate sleeping machine into an all-grabbing nuisance. When they go from room to room, especially in relatives’ or friends’ houses, you’ll need to develop an eye for possible dangers lurking - things hanging off tables that could be grabbed, small items that might end up in their mouth, or expensive items such as cameras and phones that they’d love to dribble over or drop.
- Take lots of photos - it’s a terrible cliche, but they do grow up fast, and before you know it they’ll be 18 and off spending your money at University or backpacking around the world, so make sure you take plenty of photos of them. What better excuse to fork out for a Flickr Pro account? The photos will also come in handy for embarrassing your kids in front of their future boyfriends/girlfriends, as any good parent should.
Finally, it will be hard work, but make sure you enjoy the whole experience.
Have any further tips? If so, leave them in the comments below.
WV4 is the online home of Rob Lewis, featuring a blog covering a variety of subjects, mainly web design, CSS and PHP, as well as featuring useful links to other websites.
love this posting - so true! Typing and feeding at the same time is nigh-on impossible! Is there a support group for ‘web designers in fatherhood’?
This is so true. It feels like only five minutes ago that my first daughter was born and now she is 9 (going on 13!). Enjoy them while you can; they will soon be wanting their independence.