Hi guys, my name is Anthony, pleased to meet you! This is the first post of my new blog on advice for new parents, especially baby stuff for dads. In this blog I will cover tons of tips for new dads (as well as tips for new moms) as I go through my own journey as a new father.
Just a bit about myself: I live in Toronto with my lovely wife Yuri and beautiful baby girl Victoria. My wife and I are totally ordinary people. We wash our own dishes, take care of our own lawn, we have no nanny or housekeeper. I am pretty productive: I have a full time job in health care and I am always working on various writing projects.
Life really changed once our little Victoria came along.
Becoming a father has been the most rewarding and transformative experience of my life.
When I first held my blue-gray, shriveled, hairy, cross-eyed newborn daughter in my arms I was the happiest guy on Earth. I also did not totally know what I was doing right off the bat.
From then to the present day, I have learned a colossal amount about how to be a great dad to a newborn baby.
Before Victoria was born, I found that there is so much advice for new parents out there to prepare for taking care of the baby when she arrives—all great stuff that any new parent should know.
Even with all this knowledge out there, I found that there is extremely little material geared towards how a man should prepare himself before the birth of his child and how to comport himself as a new father.
My wife and I were lucky in that we both hit the learning curve hard and figured things out quickly. I am proud to say that we became a happy and functional family.
Many people commented on how unusually well-rested and happy I was after my baby was born. I feel like I have been doing things the right way because I felt great, my wife was happy, and my baby was thriving.
I am not sure that my positive new fatherhood experience is shared by a lot of new dads. Before and after my daughter’s birth, the majority of comments I heard from guys was about how bloody difficult it was to raise a newborn baby. Nearly all that I heard was about how the sleep deprivation, cranky wives, and loss of freedom was completely awful.
I often heard parents swear off having another child solely because they had so much difficulty with the first—I think this is rather tragic. There are lots of undesirable consequences from an inability to deal with having a newborn baby—marital strife, financial difficulties, stress, and sleep deprivation. If this continues past the baby stage, then an inability for parents to cope leads to poorly socialized and mopey children.
As a new dad, I felt that I had the power and responsibility to guide my family smoothly through the transition period after our baby was born. I felt like I was learning a ton of cool baby stuff for dads that I wanted to share with others. I figured out a thing or two about this whole baby thing and wanted to build this website to tell others about it.
There are lots of advice for new parents that you can employ to make the job of taking care of a baby a thousand times easier.
It is important to minimize the challenges and optimize your systems so that you can fully enjoy the rather awesome experience of being a new dad.
I built this blog because I felt that I could offer some advice for new dads on how to smooth the transition to fatherhood. I hope that the contents of this blog really helps you out!
I hope that we can all learn from each other’s experiences, so that we all become the great dads that our kids deserve.
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If you enjoyed this post (or looking for expectant father gifts) check out my latest book, A Man’s Guide to Newborn Babies. In this new dad survival kit is all the info you need to become an ace new father. Go beyond merely surviving the newborn baby stage—aim for a thriving new life when baby arrives!
