Staying yourself
Sleep, training, work, headspace. The bare minimum to stay recognisable to yourself.
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§ Journey
Sleep, training, work, headspace. The bare minimum to stay recognisable to yourself.
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 is the foundation. Without it, nothing else holds.
The minimum:
What helps:
What does not help:
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.
Gym attendance will collapse. Accept this. The pre-baby version of training is gone for now.
What replaces it:
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.
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:
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.
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:
What hurts:
Watch for the warning signs:
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.
If you do nothing else, do these:
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.
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