Thursday, September 27, 2012

Fatherhood

Jennifer has posted about ten times since my last post so it's about time for another one. Fatherhood is a little bit different than I expected. Every parent has his or her observations, adventures, and advice on their experiences with parenthood, but I've found mine to be a little different from the mean. I've been surprised at how natural everything feels. There are a myriad different challenges and stresses so far with raising our little one, but he's our little one. I have a sense of peace, even at the stressful baby-barely-breathing-midnight-cry/scream. It's nice to be able to synthesize everyone's advice, value judgements, and neuroses and then throw them out the window.

My wife has been an amazing mother so far. I feel like I'm a slacker compared to her. She has a little less than one month left of her maternity leave. It's going to be hard to have our little one go to day care and not spend every day at home with mommy. There is a clear distinction between my experience with the baby, and my wife's. There have been times where there has been a suspicion of jealousy in my mind regarding the roles. As a man with my career I'm not able to take 3 months of time off to spend with my baby, while Jennifer with her amazing work environment, has been allowed to take a significant chunk of time off to start raising our child. As a man I can't lactate without taking an absurd cocktail of hormones and frequent nipple stimulation (disclaimer: I have no idea if this is true) so I don't have that deep bond that develops through nursing.

Mothers are the nurturers, and men are the bread winners. This is the role that biology and society has given us. Of course with my college and prep school upbringing, I've been taught that this is a very old fashioned point of view. To a certain degree it is, but there is a definite truth to it. The biggest place where this notion falls apart is that Jennifer is listed as the head of household on our W-9, and we both contribute to our financial well-being. So much for being a manly bread winner. However, I've been amazed out how much more naturally Jennifer has fallen into the role of nurturer than I have. I occasionally get gentle nudges from my family that I need to cuddle Guy more when I hold him, talk to him while I'm feeding him, or as the hippy hospital people told me–have skin to skin time.

Despite those nudges, I feel like I have a comfortable understanding between son and father. I enjoy our time together. He's starting to become more and more responsive to his environment. Last night after I spent some time putting some fall plantings into the garden beds, I played with Guy outside outside on the lawn. Guy's little legs are starting to really work, and he's developing some real head control. I had him "walking" with his legs pushing against the ground. I think it was his first time to touch some grass. Tonks actually interacted with him as I made him "kick" her and fly through the air. She got really excited and pushed on him with her snout.

I really enjoy having Guy as my little play toy. Jennifer gets "mad" at me because I'm always turning Guy into some kind of deadly weapon–a machine gun, unmanned drone fighter, nuclear warhead, or poop dive-bomber. I made him "play the piano" at the table at Brownie's the other day. He seems to enjoy these little interactions even if he has no idea what is going on. I love having him just sit in my lap and look out at all of the stimuli of the world. He's slowly learning how to process what is going on in the world around him, and I find that extremely exciting.

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