What, wait, babies breast feed 5-8 hours a day… A DAY!

I am realizing that my baby-knowledge learning curve has barely got my wheels turning! Time to fasten my seatbelt because it’s about to get real……and real soon. We’re five weeks away from our due date, and like that, POOF, eight months just passed us on by….

Being a first time dad awaiting his first newborn has been exciting, fun, emotional, inspiring, motivating, hilarious, but until just recently it’s becoming fearful and the nerves are settling in. I thought I knew everything I needed to know and was walking tall with an “I got this” attitude, who was I kidding! This last month it has finally set in that the human, who has been renting space in my wife’s uterus for the past eight months, will be moving out into the real world and depending on us 24-7…..365….for the rest of his/her life.

Thanks to my wonderful wife (yes, she still reads my posts), we are signed up for semester-like schedule of classes, such as childbirth preparation workshops, a breastfeeding preparation class, infant CPR class, and newborn care classes. I’ve also turned my night stand into a mini fatherhood-for-dummies library of books from friends and family.

In one particular class, our breastfeeding preparation class, I spent the entire class with the “my mind is blown face.” Are you kidding me, babies’ breastfeed five to eight hours a day, not a week? If I had any semblance of a poker face during that class, they caught, called, and double downed on my bluff that I knew what I was doing as a first time dad. A DAY! In that same class, I learned so much more about the first week of our baby’s life that I thought I would share some of the interesting facts about babies. I only listed a few of the fun and interesting facts I’ve collected on my journey. I made it a point to steer away from giving opinions on how to raise your newborn, since those are all up to you and your partner and not my business. So remember, these are just the fun facts, the whole fun facts, and nothing but the fun facts.

1) As you already know, babies breast feed five to eight times a day, and should breast feed for the first year of their life.
2) During breast feeding, breast milk is not produced from the food the mothers eat but rather from the blood of the mom. So if mom eats asparagus you won’t have to worry about the baby’s pee smelling bad, just moms.
3) Moms can have alcohol during breastfeeding as long as it metabolizes out of the system, in the same way if you were to drive car. Takes one hour to metabolize one drink. All the women in our breast feeding class loved hearing that, so did the husbands.
4) Babies will use an average of 10 diapers per day. I am preparing myself for this one. 300 diapers per month, we may have to upgrade our garbage service.
5) The newborn’s brain still grows after it’s born which is why the skull is made up of several interlocking pieces. So don’t be alarmed if the baby looks like a member of the Conehead family, she is just setting up her super computer.
6) Babies sleep about 16-17 hours per day, about 2-4 hours at a time, roughly. So start practicing napping. I am entirely confident in my napping skills.
7) Babies are born without kneecaps, but rather have cartilage that supports the leg. So if the mob comes looking to knock your baby knee caps out, good luck, capisce!
8) Couvade, aka sympathetic pregnancy, is a real thing! I used to tell me wife that I feel pregnant as well, until she gave me that “I could be a single mom” foreshadowing look, never again will I say those words again. But weight gain, food cravings, exhaustion, etc. for partners is real. But never, ever, ever, ever, say to your partner “I know how you feel.” That couch will be entirely too familiar to you if you do.
9) There’s an important second stage to child birth, the birthing of the placenta and fetal membranes that occurs right after the baby comes out, and sometimes they have to go in there to get it. So you’re not done yet!

And for my last fun fact……………

10) A male fetus can get erections in the womb. Enough said, mind….blown.

We really don’t know what we are doing in life but like many things in life, almost everything, we figure it out. So I’ve told myself not to worry, everyone is going to have an opinion on what’s wrong and what’s right, but to do what my wife and I think is right and the best for the baby. I feel like I’ve learned more about babies in the past couple weeks compared to the past eight months, in fact, add my entire life into that. But the most important lesson that I’ve learned over the past 8 months is that I don’t know anything and that there is nothing that can prepare you in advance to being a first time dad except for being a first time dad.

-D

PS—check back soon to see how the delivery went and what other interesting facts I learned along the way.