Week eight, I caught myself in the bathroom mirror at 5am. I had a burp cloth on one shoulder and an expression I did not recognise. Something between 'flat' and 'far away'. I did twenty push-ups on the bathroom floor and went back to bed. It is the smallest thing I have ever done that mattered.
The first three months will eat you if you let them. Not because the baby is hard, but because the rest of your life goes on and you keep deferring yourself. Six weeks of deferring is fine. Six months of deferring leaves a man you do not want to be.
Here is the bare minimum.
Sleep
Sleep is the foundation. Without it, nothing else holds.
The minimum:
- Six hours total in any 24, even if it is broken into three blocks.
- One stretch of three uninterrupted hours, ideally between 11pm and 3am.
- One nap on the weekend, even if it is twenty minutes.
What helps:
- A blackout blind in the room you sleep in.
- Earplugs (foam, cheap, change them weekly).
- No screens in the thirty minutes before sleep.
- One coffee a day, before noon, no exceptions.
What does not help:
- More than two beers in the evening (the sleep quality drops sharply).
- Doomscrolling at 4am during a feed.
- 'Catching up' on a Sunday by sleeping till lunchtime (it makes Monday worse).
If you are sleeping less than five hours total in 24, repeatedly, that is a system that needs fixing, not toughness. Talk to your partner. Adjust the rotation. Bring in a grandparent for a night. Do not power through.
Training
Gym attendance will collapse. Accept this. The pre-baby version of training is gone for now.
What replaces it:
- Twenty push-ups on the bathroom floor.
- A pram walk that includes a hill.
- One set of squats while the kettle boils.
- A ten-minute kettlebell session in the lounge.
- A swim, alone, on a weekend morning while she sleeps.
The rule: any movement is better than none, and the bar is on the floor.
If you can manage three thirty-minute sessions a week, you are doing well. If you can manage two twenty-minute sessions, you are still doing well. If you can manage twenty push-ups and a walk, you are still doing well.
Do not try to come back hard at week six. Your sleep is wrecked. Your nervous system is fried. A heavy session will leave you sick. Build back slowly. The strength will return.
Work
If you are taking parental leave, take it. Do not check email. Do not 'just answer this one thing'. The slope is greasy and you will be back to forty hours a week in a fortnight.
If you are not taking leave, or only taking a short stretch, the rule is the opposite. At work, work. At home, home. Do not bring the laptop to the kitchen table. Do not take calls during dinner. The boundary holds your sanity.
Things to communicate to work in the first month:
- That you are unavailable after 5pm and on weekends.
- That if there is a real emergency, the way to reach you is X (one channel, not three).
- That you will be slower to reply for the next two months and that is okay.
Most workplaces will be fine if you set the expectation clearly and do the work well in your hours. The ones that will not be fine were going to be a problem regardless.
Headspace
The inner life takes the biggest hit. You will lose access to your own thoughts for a while. The brain has no idle time. Every quiet moment is filled with baby-related processing, even when the baby is not in the room.
What helps:
- A walk, alone, twice a week. Forty minutes minimum. No podcast.
- A journal entry once a week. Three lines, not three pages.
- A book in the evening, paper not screen.
- A friend who knows the real version (see the relationships module).
- Meditation if it is your thing. The headspace app, Calm, or just ten minutes of breathing.
What hurts:
- Endless content consumption (TikTok, YouTube, Netflix as a way to numb out).
- Drinking to take the edge off, every night.
- Pretending you are fine when you are not.
- Not telling your partner you are struggling.
Watch for the warning signs:
- A flat, grey feeling that lasts more than a week.
- Loss of interest in things you usually love.
- Snapping at small things.
- Thoughts you would not normally have.
- Withdrawing from friends entirely.
If any of these last more than a week, talk to your GP. Paternal postnatal depression is more common than men talk about. About one in ten new fathers. The Australian helplines (PANDA, Beyond Blue, Lifeline) are free and confidential.
The bare minimum, in one list
If you do nothing else, do these:
- Six hours of sleep in 24.
- One forty-minute walk a week, alone.
- Twenty push-ups, three times a week.
- One real conversation with a friend a fortnight.
- One thing you used to enjoy, once a month (a movie, a meal, a long shower).
Nothing on this list takes more than an hour a week. All of it together fits inside the cracks of your day. None of it is selfish. All of it makes you a better father and a better partner.
You are no good to anyone if you disappear. Stay yourself. Just enough to come back, when this stretch is over.
Further watching
- 01Six hours of sleep in 24, one stretch of three. Below that, fix the system.
- 02Any movement is better than none. The bar is on the bathroom floor.
- 03At work, work. At home, home. The laptop does not come to the kitchen table.
- 04One forty-minute walk a week, alone, no podcast. The brain needs idle time.
- 05Paternal postnatal depression is real. A flat week is normal. A flat month is not.
The sleep floor to defend is: