Howefitz Blog

This post is a part of the glorious event that is FatherHood Friday. That’s where Dad and Mom bloggers come together on Friday and discuss what FatherHood is all about. Be sure to click the link on the left for more fabulous contributions. Isn’t this header thing like the top of the first page of an old comic? “Bitten by a radioactive spider, young Peter Parker….”

So I got my new landline telephone and super-fast internet connection, and I decided to once and for all completely stop using my cell phone for internet. I then decided to spend the evening vegging out with Hulu and free video podcasts. Then it hit me: Crap! I should be writing a FatherHood Friday post! All this vegging out has melted my brain. I didn’t think ahead! What will I write about?

Leave it to the guys over at Dad-Blogs to solve the issue for me. They are now trying to theme the FatherHood Friday posts, and the next two weeks we will be discussing ‘Back to School’.

Well, my two youngest are still too young for school, and the teenager is too old to take the big-toothy-grin-clutching-a-lunchbox-with-the-heaviest-backpack-ever-strapped-to-her-back first day of school picture, so I’ll go at this from a different angle: i.e. my return to school. (The School of living with an infant, that is.) Since the theme runs for two weeks, maybe I’ll have a more traditional Back To School post next Friday.

I have essentially been a father for eleven years. Kat was four when I met her, she is now fifteen. I used to joke that I got to be a father and miss all the dirty diapers.

She's gonna be a star!

Fast forward eight years, and the birth of my daughter, Calli. I didn’t get out of diapers after all. Three years later, she’s still in them. (We just moved and had another kid, so we’re waiting for things to normalize. But when the dust settles, that kid’s using the potty if I have to duct tape her there myself!  ;)

Wait, did I just mention a third kid? Why, yes I did, which brings us to the meat and potatoes of this post.

So I’ve been changing diapers for three years now. No big deal. Stinky diaper? This looks like a job for Super-Dad. Robin Williams once joked that Super-Dad’s weakness was baby ca-ca. Well, I’m the new and improved version. So bring it!

With Tristin? Whole. New. Experience. (See last week’s post, ‘Boys. Are. Gross.’ … if you dare!)

Calli can't get enough Baby brother!

So life with baby has gone on now for (at the time of this writing) thirteen days. I have a three year old, so the whole baby thing’s still fairly fresh in my mind. No worries, right? I should be an old pro. Not even close. Not only does your brain quickly forget how tiny and helpless these little guys start out as, but in three years a whole heck of a lot can change…

1. You don’t have to swab the gross black umbilical anymore. I remember with Calli it was recommended that we swab her umbilical cord with alcohol in order to ward off bacteria. They now say leave it alone! Turns out the alcohol kills off the good bacteria as well as the bad…
2. Get that kid vitamin D! They didn’t say this when Calli was born, but now they recommend that you give your kid vitamin D drops because breast milk tends to not have enough. You also get vitamin D from the sun, but you wouldn’t want to accidentally give your baby a sunburn, so the drops are much safer.
3. A baby screaming at you at two in the morning is neither cute nor fun. Actually, I’m lying. It would be against Tristin’s nature to not be cute. As for fun, I actually do look forward to baby tantrums because I…
4. Remember the 5 S’s. Coolest thing ever. The pediatrician came in to check on Tristin while we were still in the hospital. He asked us if we knew the 5 S’s. No, we didn’t so he picked up Tristin and went through them:

• Swaddling Make sure your baby is swaddled good and tight, just like his old womb.
• Side/Stomach Hold him so that he’s on his side and stomach. (It’s still best when he sleeps to lay him on his back.)
• Swing them This one you probably have to see in action. Obviously, this doesn’t include shaking the baby (that’s bad), but it does include  a slight swinging/jiggling of the head. This simulates the motion in the womb as Mommy walks around or goes upstairs.
• Shushing This isn’t a quiet shush, this is a loud shush. You want to shush them as loud as they are crying. The baby has lived next to his mother’s aorta for nine months, so the sound of blood rushing by is a lot like this loud shush. You can also use white noise such as a TV or radio tuned to static, a hair dryer, or vacuum cleaner.
• Sucking Let the kid suck on something. A pacifier, your finger, etc., can calm them very quickly.

Before my doctor even got to the last S, Tristin was quiet and looking around like, Wow! This guy really gets me! The doctor laid Tristin down in his little clear bassinet, and said, ‘Yeah, they should have a video of that somewhere…’

As soon as the doctor left, I called a nurse and asked for that video!

The video is called ‘The Happiest Baby on the Block’, and it was created by Harvey Karp, MD. You can see some clips of Dr. Karp in action at thehappiestbaby.com.

Dr. Karp claims that he’s found the cure for colic, and it seems like this is true. It is truly magical to watch the babies in the video, and then your own baby, turn from a screaming little monster back into your sweet angel within minutes.

This time around, Daddy is schooling the infant!

So I guess the bottom line is, no matter how many kids you have, things change. As much as you think you know, there’s always something else you can learn. Keep an open mind, and enjoy your new baby!

Popularity: 4% [?]

Feed for this entry. Leave a response, or trackback from your own site.