Tomorrow I Officially Start My New Job – Full Time Stay-At-Home-Dad
Tomorrow, my wife, Amy, goes back to work, completing her maternity leave. Nate and I have been very lucky to have her home with us over these past 10 weeks – and we will miss her dearly. I’ve never spent this much devoted (and intense!) time with her before because we have always been working independently. And, I must say, that I love her even more for both growing and delivering a perfect baby boy, and also for experiencing every detail of Nate’s new world with me during her maternity leave. She’s amazing.
While I have been at home pretty much full-time over these first weeks of Nate’s life, I haven’t really considered myself a true “Stay-At-Home-Dad”. I guess, mainly because Amy and I have been double-teaming Nate constantly. Nate has always seen two parent’s faces. Amy has taken most of the night shifts (because she is breastfeeding), and I take most of the “morning to early afternoon” shifts, to let her catch up on sleep.
However, starting tomorrow, it’s all up to me as we transition to me taking (more of) the night shift and, naturally, all of the day shift while Amy is at work.
And, yeah. Right now, I’m not exactly sure how I will pull it off, even though I secretly know that I will be fine.
Even though Amy and I have been double-teaming him, the last 10 weeks have still been extremely difficult and exhausting (due mostly to lack of sleep). Now, with Amy gone back to work I do fully expect things to be harder for me. I also hope that Nate and I will form some new routines that will make it all work somehow. I look forward to working it out with him.
Things will also be harder on Amy, too.
We continue to breastfeed, so Amy is lugging the pump and gazillion accessories to work tomorrow. And dealing with all the ramifications of that in the workplace (packaging the milk, cleaning the parts, bringing a change of clothes just in case, finding privacy, etc) and transporting the goods home safely.
Amy will certainly miss her new boy while she is at work, and this first week will be a very tough transition for her. Role reversal is tough, but in the end, I know that we will both end up stronger and better people for doing it and making it work well for our little man.
My Stay-At-Home-Dad status is a conscious decision for us.
And it all starts now.
For real.
I am very excited. I truly do believe that this is the most important job that I have ever had. I’m super proud to be a Stay-At-Home-Father!
So, I better get to bed.
Encouraging words for Amy (and I) certainly welcome in the comments!
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2 comments:
I look forward to your insights. I stayed home with our daughter the first year, but now my hubby has been doing it a year and a half. It has been working well, not without hiccups, but better and better all the time. Good luck!
Hi IRJessica,
Thank for the comment - I appreciate your readership! Glad to hear things have been working out for you two.
First day went pretty well, though I ended up not sleeping for most of the night worrying about him and his "new" sleeping position (for the last month he had been sleeping in a vibrator chair because he wouldn't sleep on his back, but I got him down on his back last month, then I couldn't sleep because he was sleeping... ugh!).
Great first day, but tired now. First nighttime feeding starting in a moment (it's midnight).
Good night.
-Brian
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