{"id":21885,"date":"2018-03-11T21:26:07","date_gmt":"2018-03-11T11:26:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=21885"},"modified":"2018-04-25T22:50:58","modified_gmt":"2018-04-25T12:50:58","slug":"parenthood-the-first-fortnight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=21885","title":{"rendered":"Parenthood: The First Three Weeks"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"playlistforpenny\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Delivery
\n<\/strong>Having Penelope delivered by c-section was the sort of organized, clinical, down-to-the-minute arrival that I never realized was possible with babies.\u00a0 We were scheduled to come into the hospital on a Friday morning at 6am, we went into the theatre at 7am, and we had little Penelope with us by 7.55am.<\/p>\n

Of course its easy for me to say this when I’m not the one under the knife but it was a quick and\u00a0efficient<\/em> process and I was pleased at how Jen was looked after by the hospital staff during the whole process.\u00a0 Her overwhelming emotion after the birth wasn’t pain, but sleepiness.<\/p>\n

There was a really calming, almost jovial mood to the proceedings in the delivery room.\u00a0 We had our Spotify Playlist For Penny<\/em> providing a soothing accompaniment to the proceedings and while I was holding Jen’s hand and waiting for the big moment, the white noise in the background was a mixture of hospital equipment beeps and chit chat from the operating team discussing their favourite crooners (there was quite a few oldies on our playlist).<\/p>\n

\"tfw\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It’s A Girl!
\n<\/strong>We chose not to find out the gender before Penelope’s arrival.\u00a0 She was just known as Littlefoot to us.\u00a0 If I was to do it all again, I’d definitely do it the same way again.\u00a0 We’re thrilled to have a girl too!\u00a0 Penelope has lots of awesome role models to look up to in her family.<\/p>\n

The Name
\n<\/strong>Before the birth, we had a shortlist of four names for a girl and two for a boy.\u00a0 I can’t really articulate why, but I found it much harder to find boy’s names that I liked compared to girl’s names.\u00a0 It took us a couple of hours after Littlefoot’s arrival before we settled on Penelope Jean.\u00a0 We already have a lot of nicknames – Penny, Pajamas, PJ.<\/p>\n

\"penny\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Eat.\u00a0 Sleep.\u00a0 Poop.\u00a0 Repeat.
\n<\/strong>I quickly learned that in the early days of parenthood, there’s a small list of tasks that you do over and over with great repetition.\u00a0 Nappy changing, swaddling, feeding and occasionally bathing.\u00a0 Rinse and repeat a million times over.<\/p>\n

Nappy changing wasn’t as bad as I thought.\u00a0 I’ve only been wee’d on a couple of times.<\/p>\n

Bottle feeding is one of my favourite ways to bond with Penny in the early days.\u00a0 As a Dad, its a great way to be involved, whereas\u00a0a breast-fed newborn would leave you sidelined.<\/p>\n

My swaddle game needs work.\u00a0 We were shown a few different techniques by the midwives.\u00a0 Jen quickly mastered her own way to bundle Penelope into a compact baby burrito.\u00a0 Try as I might, most of my swaddles are undone by Tiny Houdini who has her arms free in minutes.<\/p>\n

Sleep Deprivation
\n<\/strong>The toughest part of being a new parent.\u00a0 Penelope has three feeds most nights.\u00a0 Jen and I share the load on this so we both can get a few hours of sleep each.\u00a0 It’s a lottery though.\u00a0 Some of the feeds take a matter of minutes, she gets burped and then settles in minutes.\u00a0 Other nights she’s restless and it takes forever and those feeds are\u00a0energy sapping<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"oneweekpenny\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Baby Dinosaur
\n<\/strong>Those first few days you are in this weird state of paranoia where\u00a0any<\/em> noise you hear coming out of the cot sends you charging at her to find out whats wrong.\u00a0 Over time you find out that baby’s just make super weird noises a lot of the time.\u00a0 Some nights Penny is like a tiny baby velociraptor with the noises she comes out with.<\/p>\n

Spotify Is Our Saviour
\n<\/strong>We like singing lullabies to Penny and settling her with music.\u00a0 Our favourite lullabies to sing are\u00a0I’ll Take You Dreaming\u00a0<\/em>by Danny Kaye and\u00a0Dear Theodosia<\/em> by Leslie Odom Jr.<\/p>\n

When it comes to relaxing tunes for settling babies, Spotify is a godsend.\u00a0 On heavy rotation is The Beatles, Danny Kaye, Bing Crosby, Beverley Kenny and Howard Keel.\u00a0 There are also some pretty good instrumental playlists on Spotify like Sleep Baby Sleep and Lullaby Baby.<\/p>\n

\"spotifybaby\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Bite-sized Entertainment
\n<\/strong>Somewhere in\u00a0the whirlwind of parenthood, you have these occasional moments where your kid will\u00a0actually sleep<\/em> and holy cow, you actually have this tiny window of time to entertain yourself (if you’re on top of the laundry, groceries, house cleaning, mowing the lawn etc).\u00a0 That’s when you have to figure out what new forms of entertainment will work for you.\u00a0 Things that can be enjoyed in small bite-sized chunks of time that can be quickly stopped at the whims of a baby’s feeding cycle.<\/p>\n

For watching shows, Netflix is obviously a great outlet since you can be logged in on multiple devices at once and it remembers your spot if you turn it off abruptly.\u00a0 Seth Myers and Stephen Colbert are great to watch on Youtube since most of their clips run for the same length of time as a feed.<\/p>\n

I want to keep playing\u00a0video games but I’m having to adapt the types of games I play and which device I use.\u00a0 The handiest system to game on by far is the Nintendo Switch for its portability and pick-up-and-play nature.\u00a0 But the Playstation is also great since it runs Netflix as well.<\/p>\n

I’m hopeful to keep up my twice-weekly indoor soccer as its my primary outlet for exercise.\u00a0 And if everything is going\u00a0really well<\/em>, then hopefully I can maintain reading a book every month too.<\/p>\n

It Takes A Village
\n<\/strong>Raising a baby is hard as hell and can feel pretty daunting but Jen and I have been blown away by the generosity and helping hand we’ve received from family and friends.<\/p>\n

In the last few weeks, we’ve had heaps of family members come by the house and help prepare it for Penny’s arrival, putting in hours of their free time on weekends etc.\u00a0 And we can barely keep track of all our friends who have handed down clothes, toys and other essential baby products to us, some of which is worth\u00a0hundreds of dollars<\/em>.\u00a0 It all helps.<\/p>\n

When I think of all the people who have already had a hand in helping raise Penelope, it gives me a warm glow.<\/p>\n

\"grandparents\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Late Night Snacking
\n<\/strong>On some of those restless nights when you end up awake for hours, I find myself getting super hungry and drawn to midnight snacking.\u00a0 It’s not been great so far – I’ve mostly been demolishing chocolate – but on advice of some friends I’m going to try and switch to water and apples.\u00a0 Fingers crossed this works otherwise I’m going to be the size of a house by the time Penelope is six.<\/p>\n

Fur Brothers
\n<\/strong>I wasn’t really sure how Shadowfax and Hagar would take to Penelope.\u00a0 I kind of suspected they would just run a mile away.\u00a0 But instead they’ve both shown a lot of curiosity towards Penelope and both like to sleep outside our bedroom door, like a couple of tiny little bouncers, watching over her.\u00a0 Shadowfax and Hagar are both very young so I look forward to Penelope growing up with them as her Fur Brother companions well into her teenage years.<\/p>\n

Warming The Heart
\n<\/strong>Babies don’t smile until they’re about six weeks old.\u00a0 They barely respond or react to your presence.\u00a0 They’re exhausting to look after and at the end of a long day, sometimes they’ll pee on you.\u00a0\u00a0And yet here we are, three weeks in, and Jen and I are absolutely smitten with Penelope.\u00a0 She couldn’t be more perfect to us.<\/p>\n

I like making eye contact with her when she feeds.\u00a0 I love the quiet coo-ing noise she makes when we bathe her.\u00a0 She looks positively angelic when she sleeps.\u00a0 And I’m even warming to the weird grizzly velociraptor noise she makes in her sleep.<\/p>\n

We’re only just getting started.\u00a0 We learn something new with her every day.\u00a0 But it’s already been a hell of a ride.\u00a0 She’s changed our lives.<\/p>\n

\"mumandbub\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Notes from the crib<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":21848,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[2707],"class_list":["post-21885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-parenthood"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21885"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21885\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21894,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21885\/revisions\/21894"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}