Baby life – Routines and Rituals Pt 1 – Newborn

Everything is pure excitement prior to your little nugget being born. You have tons of time to decorate rooms, buy baby toys and clothes, it is awesome. You even have time to take silly photos of your dog.

Then you hold that little nugget in your arms and everything changes. It’s a feeling you can’t even imagine until it’s your own bundle of joy.

As of writing this article, our daughter Siena is approaching 7 months old. She is nothing but smiles and baby rolls at this stage in her development and can sit on her own since about 6 months. Which is great, because they can entertain themselves, but not run off or run downstairs yet!

Baby life, let the greatest adventure begin. I thought I’d share my shallow perspective of raising a tiny human. No one is the same but for me it was quite a culture shock and being a project manager I like as much routine as possible! So I’ll highlight some of my life over the first few weeks.

Weeks 1-4 – lots of awesome B movies. The first few weeks you get home you take shifts watching the baby. This is to make sure baby gets her sleep and keeps breathing. As a parent you are terrified of SIDS, so any quiet moment you have with your (first) child you find yourself quietly listening for little baby breaths. I’m sure you’re not nearly as concerned with your second child. The plus side of this is your up at all hours of the night and day and your locked to the couch. So we invested in a nice upgraded TV prior to Siena arriving and I got to catch up on all the Van Damme, Stallone, and Arnold movies.

Ultimately my wife shouldered all the burden, so be prepared to dust off your best manners like it’s your first week dating. Your wife is dealing with life’s greatest challenges. Her body is recovering, which puts her at an immediate disadvantage at even the simplest things. In addition she is trying to learn breastfeed, which for many moms is one of the biggest challenges.

So do everything in your power to reduce the burden on your wife. Do the dishes, twice. Take out the trash every day, clean all the counter tops. It doesnt matter if it’s clean, just do it. Find a way keep busy any moment you’re not sleeping.

Once everything is clean, organized, put away, and baby is napping-

– then you get to do even more. You get to meal prep, batch cook meals, and find some thing else to clean and vacuum. Fortunate for us I’m still a big fan of Costco, and their variety of ready made meals, so if I wasn’t up to cooking we always had something in reserve.

The best part is when your wife is up watching the baby or breastfeeding you get a break! Which means you get to go out in PUBLIC! Don’t get too excited because what this means is you’re going shopping for food, diapers, and Graeters ice cream. Dont ever, ever forget the Graeters (you can even have some). If all else fails, use Amazon’s “prime now” to buy what you need and squeeze in a power nap.

Remember…. You’re lucky…. You didn’t give birth…