The first night home from hospital

I drove home at thirty kilometres an hour with my hazards off because turning them on felt theatrical. My partner sat in the back with one hand resting on the capsule, not touching the baby, just hovering. We took the long way to avoid the speed bumps on Glenferrie Road. When we pulled into the driveway I sat in the car with the engine off for a full minute before I opened the door. The house looked smaller than it did three days ago.

That first night home is a particular kind of quiet. It's not the quiet of a hospital ward, which has machines and footsteps and somebody behind a desk who knows what they're doing. It's the quiet of nobody coming. The midwife isn't going to walk in. The button next to the bed doesn't exist. The person who knew how to swaddle properly is now a phone number you're not going to call at 11pm.

I want to tell you what I wish someone had told me the week before, in plain Australian, without any of the soft-focus stuff.

The drive home is the first test you'll fail

You will drive like a learner. This is correct. Other drivers will tailgate you and you will not care, which is a new feeling for most men. The capsule will be installed wrong (it usually is; the hospital will check it badly, and the manual is written for somebody who already knows). At some point in the first week, somebody from Maternal & Child Health or a baby-shop fitter will redo the straps and you'll feel both grateful and stupid.

Things to actually do that day:

• Bottle of water in the front passenger door
• Snacks for her, not for you, because she's been bleeding for two days and the hospital food was beige
• Phone on a cradle, not in your hand, because if you get pulled over with a newborn in the back you'll cry on the side of the road
• A second key for the house in your wallet, because she will lock hers in the car at some point this fortnight

The garage door closes behind you. The car ticks as it cools. The baby is asleep. You will sit there for longer than you meant to.

The first feed that doesn't go right

It's around 9pm. The hospital sent you home with a printed feeding schedule that assumed the baby read the same pamphlet. The latch was fine on the ward. It is not fine now. She tries the football hold, the cradle, the side-lying. The baby cries with the specific frequency that bypasses your prefrontal cortex and goes straight into your spinal cord, like somebody scraping a fork along a tile.

You stand there with a glass of water and a burp cloth and you feel useless. You are not useless. Your job in this moment is small and exact:

• Fresh glass of water within arm's reach (she's dehydrated and won't ask)
• Pillow under her elbow
• Phone OUT of her hand (the lactation forums at 9pm are a knife)
• Lamp on, overhead light off
• You sit, you don't pace

If it still isn't working at the thirty-minute mark, the answer is not "try harder". The answer is: take the baby, walk a slow lap of the lounge with him on your forearm (head in your palm, body along your wrist, the "tiger in the tree" hold), let her have ten minutes off, and then try again. Babies and mothers both reset. Persistence past exhaustion is how cracked nipples and a fortnight of grief begin.

The 3am waking convinced something is wrong

You will wake up at 3am because the baby has not cried. This is the first taste of the new operating system. Your body now scans for a sound that, in its absence, is more terrifying than the sound itself. You'll stand over the bassinet in the dark and put your hand on his chest to feel it move. It will move. You'll go back to bed and not sleep.

This happens to everybody. Nobody talks about it because it sounds insane in daylight.

What helps:

• Bassinet in your room, not the nursery (six months minimum per Red Nose guidelines)
• Firm flat mattress, no blanket, no bumper, sleeping bag if cold
• Feet at the foot of the bassinet ("feet-to-foot")
• Room temperature 18-20°C, single-layer sleep suit, you adjust by feel on the back of his neck
• A nightlight you can navigate by, not a lamp you have to switch on

If the worry is louder than the evidence, that's normal for the first month. If the worry is loud at week six and louder at week ten, that's a different conversation, and we'll have it in another note.

The "we now run this person" realisation

It hits in the kitchen, usually. You're standing there with the kettle on, and you look at the bassinet, and you understand with full body weight that nobody is coming to take over. There is no shift change. There is no senior nurse. The two of you, sleep-deprived, learning on the job, are now the entire operating system for this small person's life.

I had this thought at 4am with a cup of tea I'd forgotten to drink. The baby was asleep. My partner was asleep. The house was holding its breath. And I realised, in the small hard way these things land, that we were it. Not the hospital. Not our parents. Us.

This is the moment most men either step up or check out. The checking out doesn't look like leaving. It looks like working late, picking up your phone, agreeing to "help" but waiting to be asked, treating yourself as the second-string parent. Don't do that. The first month is when the patterns set, and they set fast.

DECIDE NOW that you are a primary parent, not a support act.

What helps in the first week

Concrete, not motivational:

• One person on the door (no visitors past forty minutes, and only between 10am and 2pm)
• Meals in the freezer (lasagne, dahl, soup; nothing that requires assembly)
• A whiteboard on the fridge with feed times, nappy outputs, who slept when
• The Maternal & Child Health home visit booked for day five (free, statewide in Victoria; equivalents in every state)
• GP appointment for the six-week check booked in advance, because you'll forget
• One walk a day, even if it's around the block, even if it's drizzling
• Phone on Do Not Disturb after 7pm with a whitelist (her, your mum, the hospital)
• Sleep when she sleeps is rubbish advice for fathers; better is "go to bed at 9pm and take the 4am shift"

The first night will end. The sun comes up over the corrugated iron next door, the bin truck does its rounds, and you'll be standing in the kitchen with a baby on your shoulder, watching the kettle, and you'll have done it. One night. The first one is the hardest of the easy ones, and the easy ones haven't started yet.

Be useful. Be present. Stay close.