{"id":48035,"date":"2021-08-10T08:19:09","date_gmt":"2021-08-10T13:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=48035"},"modified":"2021-08-23T08:23:27","modified_gmt":"2021-08-23T13:23:27","slug":"2-under-2-you-know-nothing-jon-snow-054","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=48035","title":{"rendered":"2 Under 2: You know nothing, Jon Snow (#054)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"When it was revealed that I would be having a second child just 16 months after my first child, I tried to mentally prepare myself to treat everything as one, really really long child raising experience, and to not get too complacent in the time between children, so that I wouldn\u2019t be blindsided by when everything inevitably goes tits up once the #2 arrives.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yeah, telling myself all this stuff for nine months is easy, but trying to not let it affect life in general is a completely different ballgame.\u00a0 Needless to say, no matter how much I tried to mentally prepare myself, few things can really physically prepare you for the rigors of newborn babies, even more so when you\u2019ve there\u2019s additionally a toddler that commands a tremendous amount of time, energy and attention on top of it.<\/span><\/p>\n

I wanted to believe that mythical wife and I were better prepared as second-time parents, but we\u2019ve learned that there are already many circumstances that are different now that have completely de-pantsed us, and rendered us as helpless and defeated as brand new parents probably feel, no matter how much advice they get, books they read, or any other means of preparation they embark on.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mainly, the difference between #2 and #1 is the full-term versus a premature birth, and the fact that there was no NICU stay needed for #2, and we were really able to start being parents from day 1, unlike the first time, where we basically had to relinquish care of our child for 15 days, while she strengthened in intensive care.<\/span><\/p>\n

So, in spite of all the pep-talks, preparation and thinking we\u2019d be ready, mythical wife and I found ourselves mostly unprepared and not ready, to deal with a newborn child from day 1 and not day 15.\u00a0 Not to mention that no two babies are ever going to be alike, and the disposition and behavior of #2 is vastly different than #1, leading to some challenges and inevitable comparisons, no matter how much parents say they try not to make.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mainly, I feel like the thing that we were the least prepared for was dealing with a starving newborn because mom\u2019s milk hadn\u2019t come in yet, and we were left struggling with a baby that was probably not getting enough to eat early on, compounded with hospital procedure that doesn\u2019t seem to feed mothers nearly enough food to have the fuel necessary to feed their babies, which resulted in an extremely fussy and endlessly crying baby at all hours of the night, leading mythical wife and I to end up completely burned out and fried from day one.<\/span><\/p>\n

Obviously, this is all be written in hindsight, as I\u2019m taking my sparing opportunities to write actually writing, and things have improved nominally since then, but it\u2019s worth documenting the struggles and emotions that occurred at the hospital, and the feelings and opinions that formulated from the experience.\u00a0 That is, after all what my brog is all about, in spite of how wonky of a writing timeline things can get.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, this isn\u2019t to say that we were completely useless and didn\u2019t learn a thing or two from our own experience as parents before.\u00a0 Where we really seemed to shine was being prepared for the at-hospital experience itself; as in knowing what to ask for as soon as we got to our room, as well as preparing ourselves with lots of snacks and supplemental food, because in spite of the common sense that moms need to eat in order to have fuel to feed their babies with, the hospital treats them like patience from My 600 Lb. Life<\/em>, giving them very strict and limited calorie meals three times a day at sporadic intervals.\u00a0 Our child was already not getting enough to eat from the onset, but probably would\u2019ve famished to death if we didn\u2019t know what we knew going into it this time.<\/span><\/p>\n

And one other of the few unsolicited pieces of advice that I\u2019d give to any dad or parents for that matter: no matter if you think your parenting problems are unique and can\u2019t possibly have been experienced by another parents \u2013 I bet you money they have, as long as you Google your issues.\u00a0 You will<\/em> find other parents who have experienced what you\u2019re going through, and you\u2019d be a fool to not leverage their experiences to try and quell your own anxieties.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When it was revealed that I would be having a second child just 16 months after my first child, I tried to mentally prepare myself to treat everything as one, really really long child raising experience, and to not get too complacent in the time between children, so that I wouldn\u2019t be blindsided by when … Continue reading 2 Under 2: You know nothing, Jon Snow (#054)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[36,193,192,83,105],"class_list":["post-48035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-angst","tag-dad","tag-kids","tag-observations","tag-rage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48035"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48035\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48037,"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48035\/revisions\/48037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}