There are a few jobs I think everyone should do for a day: the service industry is one of them. It will give you empathy the next time you go out for a meal. I served for a number of years and learned a lot. Another is roofing: it will give you respect for the hard work these people do. I spent a weekend re-shingling my roof in the summer heat, and it was some of the most tiring work I’ve ever done.
Another is a stay-at-home parent. I’m in the middle of my year as a stay-at-home dad, and it is way more work than my actual job ever was. Don’t get me wrong, I love every minute of this new role and am building an amazing bond with my daughter, but it’s exhausting as hell!
I never understood how much physical and mental effort went into caring for a newborn day in and day out. Respect to all the stay-at-home moms and dads out there. Respect to my mom who raised six kids. Respect to my 99 year old grandma, who raised eight. Respect to my amazing wife who is a great mom while also running a successful business. Respect to all kindergarten teachers!
Caring for children is hard work, plain and simple!
I’ve been called Uncle Jesse for a long time. Not because I look like John Stamos (I wish), but because I’m literally an uncle named Jesse. After adventures in Unclehood for many years, I’ve recently taken the head-first dive into Dadhood. I am still Uncle Jesse but now I’m also Dad Jesse.
Since my wife is self-employed, I took the parental leave with my employer for the full 37 weeks, and while it’s been challenging for a first-time parent, it has allowed me to gain insight into what caring for a newborn really entails. And man is it a trip! I love my daughter with all my heart (it’s true what they say about not really knowing love until you have a child), but there are days I wish she would just go to sleep! Or pull on my beard with a little less intensity than a lion attacking an elk (she may just rip the thing off one of these days).
After my seven months of parental care, I’ve compiled a few signs that you might also be a dad or a parent or a guardian of a small human who loves you but is also bent on destroying you some days.
You might be a parent if:
- Your pockets are full of Kleenex – sometimes they’re freshly placed in anticipation of upcoming spit-ups and sometimes they’re day-old balls of stinky-milk crusted Scotties. But always, the laundry is full of forgotten pocket Kleenex that are now hardened little pebbles in your laundry basket.
- You are saying things like ‘nappy-wappy’ and ‘poopy-woopy’ – the things you never thought you’d say as a grown man are now leaving your lips regularly and you’re starting to like it. Who even are you? But you sense that your little one likes it so you just keep saying it to see them smile and coo at you.
- You haven’t finished a hot coffee in six months – you have good intentions. You make that coffee or tea with the expectation that you’ll drink it down while it’s hot while because think you have a solid 15 mins to yourself. But that never happens. You always return to it an hour later when it’s cold and decide you’ll drink it anyway. If it wasn’t for cold coffee and tea, you’d never drink anything at all. Don’t get me started on eating a full meal.
- Getting up at 7am constitutes sleeping in – when we used to wake up every two hours through the night, I remember thinking at the 4:30 am feeding, ‘I might as well just get up’ and so that started my early morning work shift that ends whenever our daughter wakes up. Whenever I see I’ve slept until 7am I think ‘what is this – Sunday?’ but of course it just might be Sunday because I no longer know what day of the week it is anymore.
- You get a dad cut – my daughter loves my ball cap more than me. It’s true. She gets so excited when she sees it, and tries to pull it off my head. I’ve taken to not wearing it in her presence, so she’ll look at me with that adoration instead. Without a hat on, my long hair falls in my eyes constantly. And she pulls it, of course. So I got a dad cut – short enough to stay out of my eyes, but long enough that she can still grab onto it (I can’t take that pleasure away from her).
- You know where each and every creak in your floor is – every parent knows the feeling of spending thirty minutes getting their little one to sleep, tip-toeing away slowly, but stepping on a creak in the floor waking them up. I’ve done it. You’ve done it. But we learn where these creaks are and to avoid them. I have a pathway down my steps that has me tiptoeing like a Canadian Armed Forces soldier avoiding little landmines of noise.
- Nothing else matters – just like Metallica said. The things you used to think were important, no longer are. You don’t care about your hygiene, the politics of your social group, your wardrobe, or your hopes and dreams. They all become meaningless in the face of this little human who takes 100% of your attention and care.
- You think everyone drives too fast – you used to like putting the pedal to the metal and didn’t care that much who else did as well. But now, you find yourself giving death stares to anyone going over the speed limit or making careless manoeuvres on the road. I’m not yet at the stage where I’m shaking my fist, but give me another few years.
- You’ve stopped trying to be cool – I always thought that people who tried really hard to be cool as adults were actually pretty uncool. I’ve always known I’m not that cool but I still did put the effort in during my twenties. But it’s very hard to be cool when you have a newborn and you’re way past your twenties. You can’t be all nonchalant about shit, you can’t afford to wear expensive trendy clothes anymore, and you find yourself singing Raffi in public. It’s over. Accept it. Parents don’t need to be cool; they need to be good parents. And funny enough – that’s what makes them cool. Strange isn’t it?
- You realize you’ve left the house with spit-up on your shirt and pureed baby food on your pants and you’ve decided you don’t care – nothing more to say about this one. It’s the real moment when you realize you’re a parent.
Written by Jesse Wilkinson
