Escare IncFatherhood: New Fathers
Have you just become a dad? By conception, adoption, or marrying into a single parent family?
Whatever your situation, a period of adjustment will occur for new fathers.
Experiences with your own father will tend to form the basis for your relationship with your children. Of course, experiences differ dramatically. Some dads were great; some were not even there at all, most were somewhere in between.
Years ago, fathers were excluded from the delivery room, waited a week to take mum and baby home, and rarely changed a nappy. Many fathers did not get the opportunity to be the dad they would have liked to have been.
Today in many circumstances, societal changes provide opportunities for stronger relationships between fathers and children.
So get involved as much as possible from the beginning , be patient with your baby, your partner, and yourself and enjoy.
Tips for new fathers
- Trust your instincts. A little experience will quickly turn you into the world's leading expert on your own baby
- Learn from the best. Ask staff at the hospital, Community Health Nurses, your best mate(who's had children) or mother to show you how to change, swaddle and bathe your baby. Ask other dads for suggestions.
- When it comes to your partner, remember to be patient and positive. Communication and support are the key. She'll love you for it.
- Stand your ground. Let no one push you away from your baby. Not your mother-in-law, your mate, your boss, no one.
- Learn as a family, just the three of you. Keep "help" in the first weeks down to what is needed lest it becomes interference.
- Your baby is portable. You can take your baby anywhere. Don't get caught up in fretting about what you can't do.
- You will get frustrated. Step back. Think. Count to some high number. Think again, and so forth.
- Make eye contact. Babies talk with their eyes. You will see!
- Relax and enjoy the ride. Make it a daily habit to play with your new baby, check out her tiny little feet, have him fall asleep on your chest, etc. It's the little things that count the most.
- When times are trying, remember they too will pass. Before you know it, you will have a teenager on your hands.