Work-at-Home Dad's Dilemma

I knew it would happen. I started working full time at home a little after I heard my daughter was on the way. At first I was worried about how to keep a future toddler out of Dad's "office" when he was working, but then later began to fear the problem may prove to be just the opposite. How in the world do I keep Dad in his "office" when a toddler is charming her way through life in the next room?

Even though she's still a long way from a toddler, I'm beginning to feel it. I began writing this entry because I couldn't make myself start working. When she was born, I was occasionally glad to get a break from her, as newborn babies can be frustrating at times. Now that she's beginning to show signs of comprehension and has started to smile back at us, the task of actually getting any work done is becoming more and more difficult. I wasn't blessed with much self-discipline to begin with, and now the situation seems utterly hopeless. Luckily she still sleeps about 15 of any given 24 hours, so I do get something done. Sadly, I'm pretty sure kids don't sleep more as they age. See? I do know something about children.

I, Father - A Brave New Identity?

Sometimes it feels I'm not me anymore. Well, at least not the same me I used to be for the first 27 and a half years of my life. As I looked at myself, I used to be so many different things. I used to be a musician, a singer. I used to be an athlete, a martial artist. I used to be a linguistics student and then a linguist, a translator. I could define myself with a whole bunch of different things.

Now it seems that I've become a dad. More and more often, as I look at myself, I see a dad, who used to do some other stuff at some points of his earlier life. Not that it's a bad thing, but how do I stand out from all the other dads? Is it even possible? If my main defining characteristic at the moment is "dad", where did all the other stuff go? Just popped out for a beer or something? Are they coming back or will I still be mainly "dad" on my deathbed?

Adjusting to a whole new role is difficult, but to shamelessly quote the tiny bit of text right below the page title, I'm learning as I go. And, after all, there are a lot of things that are difficult to learn, but people learn them anyway despite the fact that said things are next to useless. The language of the Klingon, gazillions of decimals of pi and what have you. At least I can actually hope to get something in return for my endeavours.

Bringing the New Kid Home

After a few days in the maternity ward we were allowed to try and get by on our own at home. I guess for most people the novelty of having a new person living under their roof wears off more or less without incident. In our case, it wasn't all smooth and painless.

The biggest reason for this was that we didn't need to worry about whether our milk supply would be sufficient for the baby's needs. In fact, her mother began to produce the stuff in such quantities, that expecting the girl to eat her way through it all was like expecting a French poodle to happily devour a buffalo each day. So basically, it was a good thing. No nutrition shortage and no need to buy baby formula. The downside, of course, was that during the first night home Mom was at a point of explosion and immediately developed mastitis, which raised her temperature through the roof. So it was back to the hospital for us at about 4 am. Which was nice.

Now this was the moment it really hit me. I almost fainted for worrying about my newborn daughter and her mother. And what's weird is that I think I might have worried a bit more about the former than the latter, although the baby was just fine. Funny how your mind works in a crisis. From that point on I realised I was officially living rather more for the baby than even myself, at least when something was even remotely considering thinking about beginning planning to threaten her. Which, in a way, brings me to the topic of my next entry, i.e. something along the lines of "What the devil happened to me and my identity after becoming a father?" and "Why didn't anyone tell me it was going to be like this?" Stay tuned for more.