Balancing School, Work, and Family

I remember back in high school thinking " I have so much to do between school, friends, and work", little did I know that high school time was getting me ready for the real world, and those concerns have transformed into college, career, and family. I currently go to school full time, and work a part time job. Luckily the nature of my part time job allows me to get some schoolwork done while I'm there, so I'm really lucky in that aspect. Family unfortunately seems to always be last in the pecking order, the demands of the boss and professors seem to take precedance. Even when I'm home I seem to be distracted by additional schoolwork, and wrapping up some paperwork from work. Anyone else have this problem, how do you spend quality time with your family amidst the obligations on daily life?

Post partum Depression

When my wife and I first conceived our little boy, we were excited and terrified at the same time. We had no idea how to raise a child, and frankly having children wasn't on our agenda for a few years. Our family has a saying though, "God laughs when we make plans", not to get overly religious, but I believe that God has certain things in store for us, and sometimes our personal plans get in the way of his, and in that tug of war, my money is definitely on God. So during the 9 months that we were waiting for our little way, we diligently prepared the only way new parents know how - frantically! During this time we had  heard of some of the things to watch out for before and after birth, and one of those was postpartum depression. I personally had dismissed this and thought " that won't happen to us", but therein lies that old family saying again, I think God gave a chuckle and thought "sorry, but its another hurdle for you to jump". A few months after Liam came to this  world, my wife and I were having arguments more frequently than usual, and  finally in culminated into a big fight, but from the ashes of that argument we agreed that my wife needed to go see the doctor to see if she may have postpartum depression.

I should explain a few things, my wife was very excited to start breast feeding our new born baby to have that connection with him, and I supported her no matter what she wanted to do with him, I was just happy to have a healthy baby boy. That first night he was wisked off to the NICU, my wife was also going through a hard time after birth, she had been in labor for 37 hours, she had planned on doing all this naturally, but after 30 hours they told her that she needed medicine to take the pain away, because they were already starting to talk about having a c-section. Our OBGYN insisted that they wait and her have the baby naturally. At 37 hours she pushed and Liam came out with the cord around his neck. This didn't allow my wife and I to have that very first bonding moment with our son, but we were just glad that he was safe. I went with our son while my mother-in-law stayed with my wife in her room. I didn't know it, but the birth took a lot out of my wife, she lost a lot of blood, and it was stressful on her body, she essentially blacked out, and wasn't able to feed Liam that first time either. After all that though, things went pretty normally, my wife started breast feeding and pumping on a regualr basis, and little Liam was very healthy and very happy! Unfortunately that little thing called life got in the way, and we had to start going back to school and work. So we made the decision that my wife would try to pump as much as possible, and we would make up the rest with formula, I personally thought that as long as he had a full belly and was a happy boy, I was a happy dad. I didn't realize how important it is  to some women to have that experience with their children to breast feed them, and it made my wife very depressed not being able to breast feed all the time. She tried to hide it, and tried to push it away, but her postpartum depression had manifested, and its something that we have to work through.

Our son is on formula now fulltime, my wife's supply diminished pretty quickly, but he is in the 70% percentile for his weight and 60%  for his height, so he is a very healthy little boy, and my wife does such a good job taking care of him and working with him. But  those negative feelings are still there, and its at times like this that I wish I could understand and cope with my wifes feelings more, so I  could help her through this tough time in her life. I above all always reassure her of my love for her, and reassure her that she is a wonderful mother to our baby boy. I hope that she knows  I really do mean those things, and think the world of her. But those negative thoughts and feelings permeate, and she sometimes feels like she isn't as good as she can be. I wish I could adequately express how much I love and appreciate my wife, and what a great mother she is to our son. She is just so caring and loving towards him, and he really is such a lucky little boy to have her. I'm sure that most every father thinks that way about their baby's mamma! While this time has been trying, I just try my best to be there for her, and reassure her how much she is appreciated! To those fathers who have experience with their partner having postpartum depression please share your experience!

Here is my wifes version of her story:

http://jonandbrittneyann.blogspot.com/2012/12/my-battle.html

Night Terrors

When I was a wee lad I used to have very terrible nightmares. My dad to remedy this gave me an Indian dream catcher. He told me that it would capture all of my bad dreams and leave me only with good dreams. Now seeing as how I was 5 or 6, I believed him completely, and quite frankly it's worked wonders! I never had a problem with nightmares again, and was able to sleep peacefully. Even though  I know there is nothing magical about that dream catcher, I've always had it hanging above my bed, just to remember that experience with my own dad. Now that I'm a father I look towards some of the things that my father did for us, and how I can apply them to my own child.

Lately our son has been having night terrors, or at least what we can assume is night terrors. He usually is such a good sleeper, he goes to sleep easy, and sleeps all night long much to the relief of his parents. But in more recent weeks, he has been waking up an hour after going to sleep absolutely hysterical. He usually sits up and just cries and cries, and when we get him he acts more relieved to be out of his room, than not having to go to sleep. We know and have heard that children around his age can start experiencing night terrrors, and we don't know how to help him, aside from picking him up, comforting him, and putting him back to bed. Some nights its gotten to the point where he's had to come into bed with us, and anyone who has had a 6 month old in bed with them knows that it isn't a pleasant experience.

So that leaves us with what to do? We don't know what to do for him for night terrors, we are most likely going to keep doing what we're doing and hope that he grows out of it eventually. One thing I know for sure is that when he gets old enough to talk and understand certain concepts, I'm going to pass on that old dream catcher and let him know that as long as he has it, no bad dreams will come. It makes me happy to know that I can start that tradition, and pass on that dream catcher that I've treasured so much. To anyone thats reading, let me know what experiences you've had with children and night terrors, and what solutions you have come up with.

Pregnant Wife's Birthday

We're a family that likes their celebrations, from Halloween to Christmas, we always have something fun on the schedule. As you can imagine this includes birthdays, we usually go all out for birthday parties. One year, when we were dating, my wife had set up a zombie obstacle course in our basement as a surprise party. There was a Nerf gun sitting outside the entrance to our house, and I heard Left 4 Dead music blaring inside, that was an adrenaline rush, especially for a zombie nerd like me. I remember last year we had a BBQ pool party for my wife's 21st birthday party, it was loads of fun, and there was ice cream cake.

My wife, her cat, and her "Momma Poncho" taking a nap!

Fast forward to this year, and she's 8 months pregnant and walking is a struggle at this point for her. I kept on trying to think of fun things to do, but all of them would be hard for a very pregnant girl. So I gave up and asked her what she wanted to do, and she simply said "I want to sleep for my birthday". I laughed and let her do almost exactly that all day (I even snuck off to work for a few hours). I got her some new music books (music nerds can't get enough of them), and then took her to get a premium pedicure (sugar scrub, massage, the works), which I think was pure ecstasy for her! Then we were going to go see "What to Expect When you're Expecting", but she was too tired at that point. So we settled on coming home for a quick nap (which ended up being 4 hours long), and watching "Ever After" followed by more sleeping, and of course nachos.
 I've since told my wife that since we didn't do anything spectacular for my birthday, that we weren't allowed to do anything fun for mine! She just giggled and gave me that knowing eye that she has something sneaky planned, well as sneaky as you can get considering we are going to be having a new little screaming addition to our family by then! Has anyone else celebrated a partners birthday during pregnancy? What did you guys do? Tell us in the comments below!

Big Kid Dads

Ya know, I thought after marriage I would do some "growing up", this was one of several things I was wrong about. If anything I became more of a kid, suddenly we were the ones calling the shots in our lives, and suddenly we could do anything we wanted, granted if we had the money (poor newlyweds). But one things for sure, I kept my love of toys. Now I'm not talking about the good ol' speak and spell, or that cool rainbow piano I played as a kid, I mean gadgets and gizmos (a plenty). If there was a new piece of technology on the market, I wanted it, I had to have and play with it! Much to the shagrin of my wife. You should have seen how my eyes lit up when we got these cool baby monitors that look like walkie talkies, my friend and I had a field day with those.

Awesome fort my friend and I made recently!

It makes me wonder1. How I am going to be as a father, and 2. What my child is going to be like. I remember as a child my mother always had the newest and best of computers of the time (which weren't very impressive by any standards) but I remember playing games for hours on that thing with my whole family. It's in my blood I guess you could say. Whereas my wife is very conservative when it comes to technology, she's a singer, actress, piano player, and I must say - a future awesome mother! So I have to ask to some older dads who may be reading, what was your first experience with your child's personality when those started shining through? Did you find that they had personalities of both the mother and father, or was it more of a 20/80 thing? I'll be sure to share my experiences when our little Liam comes out. But I know one thing, I'm going to be a very big kid new daddy, and play with all the new little gadgets and gizmos that come out, and turn my little boy into a technophiles! Any other Big Kid Dad's out there? Have any of you new fathers "grown out" of your big kid stage?
As always thanks for reading, and don't forget to post your own experiences in the comments below!

New Daddy Instincts

I read on an app on my phone the other day, that much like a women, the new dad also has some "fatherly" instincts that start kicking in. I dismissed this thinking "I'm to manly for such girly sounding instincts to clean, and organize the house", boy was I sorely mistaken. My wife had a baby shower the other day at my parents were gone, and seeing as she's pregnant and due any day, the house has fallen into a less desirable state of cleanliness (I'm not blaming you for anything sweetheart[she reads this blog and I have to cover my tracks]). So in an odd flurry of desire to clean, I set to work, thinking "this house needs a lot of work before a baby can reside here". So first thing I did was check something off my "honey-do" list (I'm sure that list needs no explanation), which was to change the air filter in the air conditioning. After that was done I moved the refrigerator that had been hanging out in our laundry room, to the place my wife wanted it, then re-organized the laundry room, again as she had specified (sure they ask our opinion, but in the end we all know its her opinion that counts).

The re-organized laundry room!

Then I picked up all the laundry in the house and did a couple of loads, men can do laundry too! It's not so hard guys, the machines practically run themselves! I sat down for a short breather, then vacuumed the entire house, as my father-in-law and I replaced some doors over the weekend and had left sawdust all over. Then in a real frenzy of "fatherly instincts" I folded all the clean clothes in our room and put them away. At that point I was too tired to attempt something else, but made a list of things that still needed to be done to the house before baby came. That's when it hit me men, the instincts had kicked in, and mother nature was giving me the energy to get it done. I laughed out loud, and realized I'm not above the "girly" instincts that other men get. Bonus for me though, my wife came home and saw all the work I had done, and I was her hero for the day! A happy pregnant wife, makes for an even happier man/daddy to be!
So men, let that be a good experience for you, the instincts will come, and you'll have a whole slew of energy to get these little projects that have been on your "honey-do" list for ages, but have yet to get done. This will also make your wife very pleased with you! Please share your similar experiences in the comment section below, and let us know when your fatherly instincts" kicked in!

Hello's and such, and a pregnant women's self percetpion

Where to begin? The beginning is always a good place! Hello everyone, my name is Jon, and I'm a dad to be. I wanted to start a little blog to share some of my experiences with a pregnant wife (who is as lovely as ever, even at 8 months pregnant) and my first little boy. It's been a crazy ride so far, and I've learned some interesting things, and I've also learned some things I didn't particularly care to know about the female anatomy (my fellow new dads to be will know what I'm talking about). It's my hope that in this blog I can impart some of the things I have learned, and will continue to learn, so that no one repeats my mistakes, and that we can share some laughs at my expense. I also hope to learn some new things from my fellow dad's to be. 

My beautiful wife and I in one of our maternity pictures

Let me start by pointing out one of the obvious things I've learned with a pregnant wife: DO NOT AGREE WITH HER WHEN SHE SAYS SHE IS GETTING FAT! This is a trap, and the proper way to sidestep this trap is to simply say "No dear, you're not getting fat, you're just as lovely as ever". This was a painful lesson to learn. Don't even try to justify the weight by saying "Sweety, its just because you have a baby in your belly", women in general seem to not accept this as an excuse. They see extra weight as just that, extra weight. I've brought my wife to tears (I'm sorry!) by making this mistake. So let that be the first experience to christen this new blog. Dad's to be, women will find any reason to call themselves fat, don't fall into this trap, just re-assure them that they are as beautiful as ever, and bonus points by proving it in bed! you'll be happier for it, and your wife will definitely appreciate it!

Thanks for taking the time to read, and I hope that this is the first of many new dad experiences. Please feel free to post some of your own experiences with this in the comments below!