Tuesday, October 11, 2022

Dad Files 5 Month Insights: Daycare, Carseats, Overnight Solo Parenting

Handing over your most precious person in the whole world for the first time to essentially a stranger at daycare and hoping they take care of him is challenging emotionally. Over time, you and baby will get to know the daycare workers and develop a relationship with them as they partner with you in his development. 

While you'd love for baby to never get sick, entering the halls of this institute of care is also germ central and will almost definitely result in a cough and cold within a few days of starting. There's nothing quite like seeing a booger encrusted classmate crawl towards your baby and reach out a slobber and snot filled hand to welcome him to the cold crew. Baby will subsequently have essentially a continuous cold and cough for the next few months. 

Listening to your baby coughing and sneezing while you can't do anything about it is hard. Boogie Wipes will become your new friend in the next weeks and months. You too may share in the new colds passed along from baby as he coughs or sneezes in your face. On the bright side, baby should have a rock solid immune system by the time he starts kindergarten.

As you take on the responsibility of drop off and pick up from daycare, time should be allotted to get baby dressed, bottles prepped and labeled, extra clothing changes, and a well stocked diaper bag plus some extra margin as baby requires. Don't be late for pick up; they're strict about that cutoff time and charge by the minute if you're late. 

If you're heading to the office following drop off, you'll want to be especially careful to dodge any spit up that may occur between home and hand off and it wouldn't hurt to keep a change of clothes in the car just in case. This can easily occur on the pick up side as well especially if they've fed baby immediately prior to pick up. Also possible is a blow out that you realize when you first smell then feel the sticky wetness on your own clothing as the transmission from baby to you occurs while walking to the car.

Sometimes you may split drop off and pickup responsibilities with your spouse. If you only have one car seat, you'll want to coordinate in advance to not get caught without the seat. It's a surprise if your wife leaves before you with the car seat but you are dropping baby off at daycare. Hope that you can get some work done at home because you're not going anywhere till she returns to trade off the car seat. Alternatively, if you leave with car seat but not baby and she is in charge of baby, you may get a call shortly into the work day resulting in a return home to trade off car seat. 

The first multi night solo parenting experience will make you appreciate single parents and the challenges they go through even more with the weight of all responsibilities and care taking falling fully on you. You will be very thankful when your wife returns home.

Baby will increasingly smile, laugh, babble, and explore introductory motions towards crawling as he gets stronger with lots of tummy time sessions. You can have fun baby sound conversations with him even if neither of you use a distinguishable language. Laughing with him is also a joyful experience for all involved. 

He will begin watching you from across the room and pay close attention to things of interest like the milk bottle or favorite toys. You may attempt feeding baby rice cereal or other foods like sweet potatoes. It's an experience as baby learns about spoons and how to get food down the hatch rather than spiting it out on clothing and generally all over his face.

In pursuit of His best,

Andrew

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