5 Things I Wish My Friends Knew Now That I Have a Kid

 

By: Chris Steib, Guest Blogger

Hi, I’m a dad -- three months in the making. Or maybe 12 months, or even 38 years, depending on how you look at it. By any measure, I’m the proud (and often sleep-deprived) father of a bouncing baby bundle of conundrums and contradictions.  

So when I read Olivia’s “5 Secrets Your Single Friends Wish You Knew,” (and, the subsequent, “5 Secrets Your Married Friends Wish You Knew,” by guest blogger Jordan Keefe) I thought I’d take it a step further and tack on a few things that have been on my mind for the past three exciting, emotional, tumultuous months since my son, Theo, was born.

Disclaimer: I’m not speaking for every dad -- I know not everyone thinks about fatherhood the way I do. I also know that I'm very, very fortunate: my son and my wife are healthy, feeding and sleeping have gone smoothly, and we've had a great support group.  

So please consider this an open letter to my friends -- and to those readers I don’t know, think of it as an alternate perspective on the whole “holy-shit-my-friend-made-a-baby” thing.

First, and most important...

1: Look, it’s not that big of a deal.

Wait -- before you call Child Protective Services, lemme explain.

I’ve heard people say, “Life starts when you have kids,” but I think that’s malarkey. My life started years ago. Maybe not right away -- I had some false starts, some missteps. It might have been when I moved out to L.A., or maybe when I decided that was absurd and fled back East. Maybe it was when I got my first real, grown-up job or when I met my wife not long after that.

But it definitely didn’t just start three months ago.

Though by no means perfect, my life before Theo was pretty rad. I have tons of fun with my wife, I adore my friends, I live in a great place (HELLO, Brooklyn!), and I enjoy my work. In the past few years, I’ve labored to remove a lot of noise from my life; I’ve settled into great hobbies and habits, and really zeroed in on the people and things that make me happy.

But then...WHAM! A baby. And with him came a tectonic shift in my perspective, my attitude, my lifestyle, the whole works, right?

Wrong: I’m really the same old idiot you knew before.

My kid’s awesome and I’m gonna love the shit out of him, but it’s really just logistics. I’ve got this cool little dude who needs my wife and me to feed him, bathe him, swap out his dirty ass-hats and all that, but this guy right here -- yes, the one up to his wrists in baby poop --  hasn’t suddenly started listening to Yanni and seeing the beauty in modern French cinema.

I still love punk rock, video games, and speculative fiction. I design apps and climb rocks and play music. My tattoos haven’t gone anywhere, and (despite my friends’ objections) I’m still inclined to go off the rails about heat death or conspiracy theories when I’m a few whiskeys deep.

I’m still all those things -- I’ve just got a kid now.

So please, remember to talk to me about the stuff that makes me me, and not just the diapers and the naps and the spit-up. Because I’d like for us to still be the same great friends as before.

Which brings me to my next observation.

2: I’m no more qualified to do this than you.

I remember looking at my friends who’d had kids as though they’d suddenly transcended into a new realm of being. They weren’t Dan and Melissa and Clay and Anthony anymore -- they were parents. They had been touched by some spirit that made them mystical and magical and otherworldly. They sang children to sleep and sprouted milk from their boobs -- they were practically science fiction!

But the whole time I was marveling at them, they were probably in the same place that I am now: grinding my teeth into dust to try to block the sound of my baby screaming inconsolably while I mutter to myself, “I don’t know if I can do this.”

To the point: just making a baby doesn’t make me somehow qualified to raise a baby. Sure, I’ve read the books, but not all that closely. Honestly, I’m just kinda making it up as I go along.

So if you feel like you can’t hold, play with, babysit, change, feed, or entertain a baby, let me assure you: if I can figure it out, you definitely can.

That said, there are two small favors I have to ask:

3: Be on time.

I know, I know. Trust me: I know. It’s ridiculous, coming from me. I’ve never boarded a train without being completely out of breath from running to catch it. One time, my wife and I slept through three trains and two buses, only to arrive at my brother’s house on Long Island 14 hours late.

But now, I’ve got this little ticking time bomb of fury around which I need to schedule my days. And it’s not just a new-parent OCD: I’m laying the groundwork that decides whether Theo sleeps and eats well for pretty much the rest of his childhood.

So while “dinner at 7pm” used to mean “Sure, whatever, any time between six and eight,” it now means, “If you’re even a minute late I’ll be vibrating with anxiety over the slightest disruption to my son’s meticulously coordinated and scientifically based bedtime routine.”

I don’t want to be a jerk about it, but, well, I definitely will be. Apologies abound and thank you for your cooperation.

And when you do come over….

4: Ask us what you can bring.

My friends are an extremely thoughtful bunch. I’ve always felt that their generosity was limitless, but it’s all the more apparent and true today. They each want to contribute meaningfully to Theo’s wardrobe, toybox, and nursery decor -- and I’m extremely fortunate and grateful for that.

But I’m also inundated with a veritable zoo of Jellycat stuffed animals and about a dozen babies’ worth of 0-3 T-shirts that are now relegated to a box sadly labeled “REGIFT.”

It sounds insanely selfish to ask this, but it’s something I wish I’d known when my friends started having kids. I showed up with every clever onesie I could find -- “No Sleep ‘Til Brooklyn” and “My Dad’s a Metalhead,” “Hey! I Just Pooped” etc. -- but didn’t even know to look at the age/size on the label. My new-dad friends all smiled graciously and said, “Aw, look honey,” but now I recognize that face: it means, “Thank you for the dishrag; next time please bring whiskey.”

So if you’re ever so thoughtfully inclined as to bring something, maybe just text us the day before, “What do you guys need?” One of those stuffed T-Rex’s cost like $50 -- I’d rather you bring us some takeout and a cheap pack of baby socks.  We’d go through both in a heartbeat, I assure you.  And we’d appreciate them even more.

But, really, you don’t have to bring anything at all -- just you being here is all we need. Which brings me to my final observation...

5: It takes a village.

Though this may seem like a very personal time for my family, one during which we want a lot of alone time to focus on ourselves and each other, it’s not. We want you here. Like, always.

Especially as a freelancer, I get minimal interaction with grown-up humans (and my dog is tired of hearing about UX design problems). We can’t always get out of the house (though we’re not nearly as constrained as you might think), so it’s great to have people over.

And not just for the social component, either. More than anything -- more than a clever onesie, more than babysitting, more than alone time, and even (slightly) more than a case of red wine -- we really want you to be in Theo’s life.  I know I am a better person because of my friends: they are generous, intelligent, compassionate, and incredibly funny.   And what a thing it would be if Theo got the benefit of all that from the very beginning, so that he wouldn’t have to fumble through 25 years or so without their extraordinary influence.

So come on by, we’d love to see you -- even empty-handed is fine!

Just be on time.