Fatherhood III: Learning to Deal with the Little Monsters
For the first few months, I was responsible for more general day-to-day child care than my wife. She was working full time, and since I was teaching only one course per week, I had a reasonable amount of time to spare. We were also fortunate enough to be able to hire a couple of nannies, one for three nights a week and one for three days. Both nannies were fantastic, and we do our best to stay in touch. Nevertheless, I theoretically had responsibility for four nights and four days a week, although in practice we were able to farm out the girls to relatives often enough that I didn’t usually work that much. This arrangement allowed me to feel as if I were doing my part in contributing to childcare; I was still quite mindful of the difficulty that Davida had endured during the pregnancy. Of course, I didn’t have to affix the screechy little parasites to my body, or take the breast pump to work.
During the days, my favorite part of the job was taking the girls for a walk. They normally went right to sleep as soon as the stroller started moving, so we’d explore the parts of downtown/Inner Harbor Baltimore that were within our radius of action. The walks were nice because they broke up the tedium, but also because people tended to be really friendly to a guy walking around with newborn twins in a stroller. You tend to see fewer men pushing strollers, and you don’t tend to see a lot of double strollers. It soon became clear that people were willing to cut me a lot of slack simply because I was a guy with two babies in a stroller. Of course, anyone with two babies gets some sympathy, but I was a guy with two babies in a stroller.
This exposed the soft bigotry of low expectations problem. If I pop wheelies with the stroller, I get credit for at least being willing to take care of my kids. If I deliver the babies to day care with mushed-carrot-stained clothes, nobody thinks I’m a bad dad; at least I care enough to deliver them. If I do tricep extensions with a baby at 1pm in a sports bar while drinking a beer with my other hand, people just think it’s cool and funny. While there’s a certain degree of genuine admiration for the guy who contributes to taking care of the kid, there’s also a fair amount of implicit judgment of the women who’s not doing them. People judge my wife because she’s not the one changing the poopy diaper, while they think that I’m doing someone a favor by cleaning up after my own offspring. It’s a facet of the old “I’m a fuck up, and it was your fault because you trusted me” problem; my parental inadequacies became her responsibility, because of course what sensible mother would leave the father with such latitude?
The night was far less social, and much more challenging. Managing newborn twins at night is, I suspect, a difficult proposition at the best of times. Because the girls didn’t always sleep at the same time, it was difficult to sneak naps longer than a few minutes. Our situation was complicated by the fact that Elisha was small and initially reluctant to gain weight. We were told to feed her every 2.5 hours, which made it very difficult indeed to schedule any kind of sleep. Miriam could probably have operated on a slightly longer schedule; she was a bit bigger and generally drank a bit more, but I don’t think that she could have made it to five hours without waking up hungry. And so we pretty much had to go through the process of feeding every 2.5 hours, for both babies. With the inevitable diaper change and the difficulty of getting back to sleep, this routine meant that effectively the night time caretaker got zero sleep.
I only got really angry once. They were about three weeks old, and Elisha had just fallen asleep for the first time in several hours. Miriam, however, wouldn’t stop screaming. It was probably 3am, and I’d been awake for quite a while. I became, quite suddenly, furious with Miriam. Nothing happened; I managed eventually to get Miriam to quiet down, and at 6am handed her off to Davida with a curt “Take this baby.” It’s fair to say, though, that it’s impossible for me to view stories of horrific violence against children in quite the same way as I did before that moment. I don’t mean serial abuse; I think that there’s a big difference between a prolonged campaign of violence and a sudden act brought about by feelings of desperation. When you’re in one of those moments, anything seems possible. I should also note that the lack of sleep, the stress, and the general aggravation led me to be angrier in general. This was the only time I can remember, however, in which the anger was directed at one of the girls rather than (unfairly) at Davida, or the TV, or some blog commenter, or whomever else crossed my path.
And so I had lots of time on my hands. I watched Dexter, pretty much the entire series. I also watched a fair number of old movies, and played some Wii. I did some blogging, and found that my capacity to do decent work at 3am without sleep was considerably less that I’d hoped. Mostly I played Civ IV, which is a pursuit uniquely suited to wasting time while difficult infants try to fall asleep next to you. It requires enough engagement to keep your head working, but not so much that sleep deprivation prevents you from playing. Most of all, it uses up time; if you’re lucky, you can sufficiently lose yourself in the pursuit to capture one more city that you don’t mind overmuch the fact that you have to feed the babies in 15 minutes.
Now it’s a lot easier. They sleep eleven hours a night (certain difficult nights excepted), and nap on a fairly regular schedule. They’re both still small, but I don’t constantly worry about the number of calories that Elisha is taking in. They can also entertain themselves to a certain extent. I don’t know if it’s yet quite right to say that they play with each other, but they do seem more interactive than the “play around each other” construction. One thing I’ve noticed is that they when they start crawling toward each other, they invariably overlap; each has aimed at where her sister used to be, and hasn’t bothered to course correct along the way.
I was told by several people that you don’t really remember those first few months. That’s not quite true, as I remember them quite well. What I have difficulty remembering is the milestones; I don’t quite remember when Elisha started smiling, or when Miriam first slept through the night, or the variety of other moments that herald a transformation in the relationship between a parent and child. Oddly enough, though, I’m not really bothered that I don’t remember those things. Maybe because I’m still in the middle of it, I still prefer to think about it in terms of transitions rather than in terms of endpoints.
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You are my hero.
Wow. They sleep 11 hours a night? One of my twins didn’t sleep through any night until he was SIX YEARS OLD! The memory thing is weird — I remember quite a lot about the kids, but nothing about anything else — other family occasions, current affairs, politics, what have you, for the first two years after the twins were born (which is a bit hard on my daughter who went to school during that period). But the twins turn 20 next week, so we all survived.
Major second on the unbelievable gender dynamics involved. Even as a young couple for who the inverse relationship seems to make perfectly obvious sense (I’m still working on degrees, and my wife is older and can make higher wages on top of having an easier time getting a job) the implicit judgment you get when people find out that she works and I do the child-care flabbergasts me.
Also, you’re in Baltimore?
You’re really selling me on this whole fatherhood thing….
Ha! I’m about 7 weeks away and he’s got me looking for the
rewindfast-forward button.Seriously. This is why I have cats. It doesn’t take nearly as long to get to the point where, if they don’t let you sleep, you can shut them in the basement.
Raising kids is definitely a lot of work and societal expectations play into it in a big way. When I more or less suddenly became a single father in the early 70s (in Oklahoma of all places), I was regarded as rather a freak and people did not know whether to applaud or run away screaming. Even the judge would not grant me custody unless I got a letter from my mother (I was 24 and had just been admitted to graduate school) saying that she would help me care for my son.
I just love these posts, Rob. What a service your candor does for exploding the myths of parenting.
The three-week anecdote. You are so totally not alone. For each of my kids, the three-week mark was that point where the sleep deprivation nearly drove me insane. After that somehow my body adapted. The three-week rule is now how I now time my helping visits to new parents’ homes.
I promise, you will “forget” all thi stuff. I mean you’ll remember but in sort of a haze.
“Oh yes, it was tough” while smiling.
Even with only one baby, the three week sleep-deprivation is hard to manage.
On the other hand, when your kids are learning to drive and indicating that they’re never going to take stop signs seriously, you’ll wish that they were still only three weeks old.
Oh, Rob. Children aren’t monsters. Monsters can be reasoned with.
It took me about 18 months to get over those first 3 weeks, but I still have no plans to do it again. And I only have 1 little
monsterangel.Thanks for the thoughts on fatherhood versus motherhood, I really got a lot out of it.
Personally, I loved meeting the girls. Of course, it was just an afternoon gig but fun all the same. Who knew beans could be so fascinating (and delicious) for babies?
Hugs and kisses to Davida and the girls from Aunt Kelley and an early happy first Birthday? Any gift suggestions?
Kelley,
We — I mean, the girls — do have an Amazon wish list: http://www.amazon.com/wishlist/3GTFGFM1A2ANB
The list has They Might Be Giants’ children’s CDs, and fire-women puppets!
As to your point about desperation, anger, and child abuse. I am a twin, and I am told that for the first couple of weeks I was a terror. Crying all the time, never sleeping, and just generally being an absolute nightmare. One summer night I was making such a racket, and was likely to wake my brother, that my father carried me around the block a few dozen times in the hopes that I would stop screaming and go to sleep.
He returned, thrust me into my mothers arms, and curtly announced that he now understood people who abused their children.
Re the way that fathers get treated in public with their kids, especially small kids:
I live in NYC, a 40-year-old dad of a 3-year-old son. When riding the subway, I’ve often observed subway commuters avert their eyes rather than give up a seat to pregnant, elderly, and disabled subway riders. However, pretty much every time I rode the subway with my son strapped to me in a carrier, I was offered a seat. The niceness of being treated like a hero just for being with my son gets quickly overwhelmed by the creepiness of the dynamic.
P.S. On the plus side, I often see strangers help women carry strollers up and down subway stairs, so NYC subway riders aren’t all bad.
It’s true, men with babies and young children are treated differently and better, not least by women (although a few, often but not always mothers, are standing by thinking “Humph”). A woman taking care of a child is doing what’s expected of her, no more and no less. A man is either carrying on gallantly alone without his wife’s aid or being a swell guy by “helping out.”
As a new father of twins (1 month olds) I was wondering what stroller you have in the picture? I haven’t found one I really like yet.
sounds like you had some fun as well as worked hard in those first few months.
The stroller is a Kolcraft Contours. For the price, it is a great stroller. (Other friends with twin have it, and agree.) The seats easily detach, so that you can have them front-facing, rear-facing, or (my favorite) facing each other. The only disadvantage is that it’s not particularly easy to put in the car. You have to take the seats off, and put them in separately, and then fold the frame. Honestly, we use this one for walking around the neighborhood (which we do a lot), and have a passed-down Peg Perego to leave in the car. The Peg Perego doesn’t hold nearly as much, or move as comfortably, but it’s very easy to fold.
My dad reported essentially the same story re: child abuse – that he didn’t understand how anyone could shake a child to death until I had colic for several months straight. I don’t recall hitting that point with my daughter – she didn’t sleep and she had trouble nursing, but she tended to calm down if I rocked her and watched TV. (MST3K) Maybe the whole experience is clouded in a haze of sleep-dep.
Hell, yes. Nothing teaches you self-control like parenthood. Or it doesn’t. But many children will never know what it took for them NOT to become a statistic…
My proudest accomplishment is that my son and I both survived until his 18th birthday. He is now 37 with teenagers of his own.
the child just turned 6 a week ago, and believe me, i have no memory at all of the first month (other, of course, than total anxiety that we were doing everything wrong: that i remember!).
My alcohol drinking rate spiked way up when my ONE, non-colicky boy was under a year. And my style of drinking changed. I went from slowly nursing a dark beer or IPA to taking full advantage of my cheap drunkenness to get drunk fast on a few fast gulps of scotch or rum. Now that he’s three, I’m finally getting back to my old drinking habits.
Killing^h^h^h^hCivilizing lots of virtual things also, I find, helps me be alot less violent in life.
In my ‘hood in Austin, I don’t feel people are deferring to ME so much as the boy – some days, I feel like he owns a quarter of the city.