Early Connections

As I was approaching becoming a father, I was told that it would change my life, that I would know love as I had never known, that my daughter would be the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. What I saw was a noisy, demanding, smelly thing that interfered with all aspects of life. While I loved the concept of my daughter, in the event, I wasn't a huge fan of the actual baby.

Then, she started to smile, and I started to see that there was the beginnings of a person in there. In the last few weeks, the Koalid has begun to engage. Not in dramatic ways. She still mostly just flails, but now she smiles when she sees someone she recognizes. She makes cooing and adorable gurgling sounds. She makes happy sounds when she gets attention and is clearly experimenting with communication.

You see, I have no experience with children. I have seen them now and then, but I have never watched a child grow up, so when I look at a squalling baby, I just see a squalling baby. Of course, it also did not help that at the same time as I was dealing with said squalling baby, I faced some of the worst financial stress of my life.

But, now, the finances are coming together, the baby is starting to become more of a person, and I'm starting to see a bit of what all the fuss is about.

Words Are Delicious - Changing the Plan

In previous posts, I have alluded to the fact that I was well aware that I was making some presumptions and that I knew I would have to eat some of those words when the rubber hit the road.

I do not understand work. I understand attention.
Pay attention to me. Do it now!

One of the my assertions was that it was a good idea to work from home and take care of the Koalid. This makes sense in an idealized world where a baby needs stuff, then goes back to sleep and a prolonged state of not needing stuff.

This is not how babies are in the real world. First, sometimes they need stuff more often than one might expect. Second, as they age, they discover more stuff that they need. At first, they just need to be fed and changed, but as the Koalid is coming up on three months, she is discovering the desire to be held, looked at, and to otherwise have my attention. Of course, I do not mind giving her my attention, but when that attention comes at the cost of being able to do the work I need to do, she will soon have my attention in a tent in which we live in the woods because we cannot afford to pay rent.

We are also finding that, surprisingly, Amy is more maternal than I. I love the Koalid, but I don't feel the sense of longing when I am away from her that Amy does. I also find that I am highly deficient in the discipline of breast feeding. My man boobs produce no milk. So, a plan that involves me staying home with the Koalid and trying (and mostly failing) to do consulting work while Amy works full time makes less and less sense.

You thought it would be a good idea to watch me and work?
I can't differentiate my hands from my feet, and I can tell
that's a sketchy proposition.

So, we are changing course in our plans to take care of the Koalid. It is not as important to avoid
being wrong as to recognize when one is wrong and to take all immediate steps to correct it. Through a combination of good luck and talent, I have been recruited for a new job which I expect will work out quite well for me. Of course, the Koalid will be in day care, as both Amy and I work, but if all goes well, Amy might be able to go to part time in the future and spend more time with the Koalid.

This all goes into action on Monday, and everyone is quite excited about it.

Praise

A friend of mine shared this link in which Alfie Kohn discusses the idea that verbal praise replaces the satisfaction of task completed for a child. While interesting, it does not ring true for me as a parent. It does, however get me thinking about the concept of praise.

There are a few different ways to praise. One way is to praise only for success. The downside to this is that the child may come to believe that she is only loved when she is successful and that her parent's love is conditional.

In a game in which no one can
win, everyone loses.

Another concept is to praise effort, but that the idea of "good job trying really hard" smacks of "you're not good enough to succeed, but you gave it your best, and that's good," so that doesn't seem like a great strategy either.

Let's go back to what the goal is. There are two goals as I see it here: one goal is that the Koalid will grow up happy. The other is the that the Koalid will grow up to be successful in her chosen field of endeavor.

Knowing that she is loved unconditionally and that we, her parents, will always be here for her as long as we draw breath is very important to being happy. But love and esteem are different concepts. If the Koalid turns out to be a failure at everything she tries and becomes a lazy bum, I will still love her, but I will not respect her. I want her never to doubt my love and support, but I feel that there is nothing wrong with her feeling that she needs to earn my esteem.

Not necessary for love, but would
earn esteem.

This does not mean that I expect her to win a Nobel Prize before she is old enough to drink. I will be proud at every achievement. When she learns to walk, she will earn my esteem. When she learns to multiply, she will earn my esteem. When she scores the winning touchdown before heading home to work on her award winning science fair project in which she reveals the cure for cancer, she will earn my esteem.

There will be times when I may say to her "You know I love you, I will always love you, and I will always be here for you, but you really blew it this time." And this brings me to the strategy I believe I will employ: explicitly telling her often that I love her and will be there for her so long as I can, but also letting her know that while my love is unconditional, my praise is not.

This may seem a bit harsh, but one thing I have seen has a theme in biographies is that many successful people have done so seeking the esteem of a parent, usually a father. I have no intention of being a harsh or distant figure, but I also do not want to lead her to believe that life is so simple that all she has to do is show up.

Life is hard, success takes work, and teaching her anything different is doing a great disservice.

Late Night Koalid

Every night between midnight and 1 AM or so, I get up. Newborns don't sleep more than 3 hours or so, and when they wake up they need to be changed and fed. When I first envisioned this, I assumed this meant getting up, taking care of things, then going back to sleep.

The Koalid being cute and awake,
which she has been doing much
of tonight.

In fact, the Koalid is never done with her ablutions in less than an hour, and two hours is not unreasonable. So, I quickly gave up the idea of trying to feed her and get back to bed. Instead, I now go to bed earlier so that when it is time to take the night shift, I get up, take the Koalid in the other room, put something on Netflix (for a while it was Voyager, but I'm quite enjoying The West Wing lately) and maybe get some work done on the computer. The trick is that Amy goes to work for 9 AM, so if the Koalid gets back to sleep early enough, then she'll wake up before Amy leaves for work and Amy can take care of her. If I miss that window, which I likely will tonight, then she'll wake up too late for Amy to take care of her, and I'll get the three hours that she sleeps before I have to get up.

As I was looking at her adorable, fussy face tonight it got me thinking. Within the next few months, she'll start sleeping through the night, but I'm sure this won't be the last time she needs me at 4 AM. Maybe she'll have a bad dream and I'll have to reassure her that there are no monsters in her closet. Maybe some night we'll be up late discussing the mysteries of life... or maybe just some topic of geeky interest. And, I'm sure there will be late night talks about boys (or girls) and why they are so stupid.

Perhaps she will need me in other ways in the wee hours of the morning. Maybe one day I'll get a call at 4 AM saying she needs me to pick her up. Maybe she's at a party she doesn't want to be at, or her ride is drunk. Then, as now, Dad will be on duty and will rush to the aid of my Koalid, because no matter how big she gets, her father will always be ready to get up in the wee hours to help her... just hopefully less often as time goes on.

Can't Wait to Meet Her

During the last few weeks of pregnancy, Amy would say that she could not wait to meet the Koalid. She looked forward to seeing what she looked like and getting to hold her. Naturally, I felt this same excitement.

The Koalid next to our smallest cat.

However, as we have gone through our first month of parenthood, I feel that I am still saying "I can't wait to meet her." What do I mean by this? Of course, I have met her. She's right here, all the time. But I do not feel I have met my daughter. I have met the newborn which will grow to become my daughter. The first month of life of a newborn could be thought of as the 10th month of gestation. She does not respond to external stimuli. She does not interact. She simply gives cues of hunger and other needs so that we may fulfill them in order for her to continue her growth and development. It is like incubating a particularly demanding egg.

Of course, most people would never say such a thing. First, to say anything about ones child other than "she's perfect" and the like is considered uncouth. Additionally, most people are quite taken with the cuteness of the baby and don't notice the complete lack of interaction. Since the part of my brain that is overcome by baby cuteness appear not to function properly, I notice that this process is like getting a computer loaded with installation files but no functioning software... if the computer required a few months to get everything loaded... and occasionally pooped on you.

I know that she will be an amazing, beautiful, funny, kind, lovely girl and woman. She's not there yet, but she will be soon, and I can't wait to meet her.

The Seige

As I prepared for the arrival of the Koalid, I was ready for many things. I learned the basics of diapering, feeding, burping, and as individual challenges I was quite up to them. However, like many things we do in life, the difficulty is not in the individual elements once or twice. Running a marathon is just putting one foot in front of another. What makes it hard is doing so 34,000 times.

Being up all night once, watching Star Trek: Voyager, and periodically feeding and changing a baby is exciting and not overly taxing. But then there is the second night, the third, the tenth. After two weeks of sleeping no more than 4 hours at a time, being awakened by screaming baby, it starts to wear.

This is what the Koalid looked like
for about 12 seconds last night.

Eventually, one gets to learn the rhythm of the baby. She is sleeping less and less each night, but sleeps quite a bit in the morning. The challenge is not that it's difficult to figure out the rhythm, it's that it's difficult to solve simple problems when running on little sleep, with a baby crying, and all the rest. It gets to be like juggling while tightrope walking in a windstorm.

I am also learning a bit about sleep and the lack thereof. Staying up all night is not nearly as hard as trying to sleep four times and being woken within 15 minutes each time. Each time you start to sleep and are awoken, you wake up a little groggier until simple tasks become complicated and difficult. So, the solution appears to be not to try to sleep until the baby is securely asleep and will be sleeping for a while. It's a very challenging game of endurance and fortitude.

As I write this, I have gotten a good chunk of sleep in the morning and the Koalid is asleep, so I'm feeling pretty solid, which is good because there are other things I have to do besides watch a baby, like create a non-profit book store.

A Lesson From A Baby: Pause to Look Around

There is something that I noticed the Koalid doing which I realized many people could take a lesson from. As you know, babies tend to overreact to everything. A little hungry? Scream. A little cold? Scream. Wet diaper? Scream.

This baby is clearly up to no good.

However, babies are also distractable. In the middle of a great barrage of crying and screaming, the baby may suddenly notice something: a sound, a sight, being moved. For a moment, the baby will stop crying and investigate, as much as her baby senses allow. Of course, she will determine that the new thing is not as interesting as whatever is distracting her, and return to crying.

This is an effective thing to know with a baby. When mom is getting the bottle ready, I can do some things to distract her for a moment. I think she does this because, if for example she is hungry, she needs to stop crying to eat.

There is also a valuable lesson for adults. How often have you seen someone be so busy complaining about what upsets them that they do not notice something good happening? Even worse, sometimes a person will be so busy complaining about a problem that they don't notice that the solution to that very problem is being presented to them.

The next time that you find yourself focused on a problem and how bad it is, take a lesson from a newborn. Pause to be distracted by what is around you. You never know when the solution might be there if you stop focusing on the problem long enough to notice it.