Help An Unhappy Dad To Be Become A Happy Dad To Be.

you do get a little walking, talking ball of love that will love you unconditionally. If you get one of these, you are really lucky. I always thought it was only dogs that loved you unconditionally! My son's happiness or unhappiness with me is usually based on what I will or will not allow him to do. Then again, he's three, and extremely stubborn.....just like I was. Just like my husband was. Whoops! Oh, and about the being scared about dropping the baby thing - I drop stuff a lot. I worried years before I had a child that when or if I did, I would drop it. Trust me, I dropped the diaper bag on the ground every day when I was carrying the baby, a purse, a bag, groceries, etc. One day I held the door open so my little boy could run out of the house, and I realized HE'S NOT A BABY AND THE TIME PERIOD FOR ME DROPPING HIM HAS PASSED. I wanted to toss some confetti in the air.

And what effect will this lack of a bond between my child and I have on my wife, who is guaranteed to love the child the second it pops out of her? I'm glad somebody brought up PPD as a counter to this. Your wife is going through a lot with pregnancy and then the birth. It's not "guaranteed" to be all sunshine and roses for her after the birth- many women go through complicated emotions on top of their physical recovery. Don't push all the work of caring for and loving your child on your wife under the assumption that it's all going to come naturally to her; that's an easy out for you, but it's not going to do your relationship with your wife any favors. Try to man up and let the baby be the only one needing babying.

If your wife happens to suffer from any flavor of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postpartum_depression, therapy will be extremely important. Please, rethink your attitude now that therapy is "just talking." It may not be your cup of tea, but that attitude could be deadly for your wife and/or child. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17150072 I know you're not asking for this, and the article is behind a paywall. But academics are nice, they put the findings in the abstract, and I'll insert a salient bit here:Of the 40 articles included in this qualitative systematic review, most studies focused on women's experiences of postpartum depression where help seeking emerged as a theme. A common help-seeking barrier was women's inability to disclose their feelings, which was often reinforced by family members and health professionals' reluctance to respond to the mothers' emotional and practical needs. The lack of knowledge about postpartum depression or the acceptance of myths was a significant help-seeking barrier and rendered mothers unable to recognize the symptoms of depression. Significant health service barriers were identified. Women preferred to have "talking therapies" with someone who was nonjudgmental rather than receive pharmacological interventions.(emphaisis mine) So. This follow up does not answer how to get excited now, but it does provide you with some insight into how your patterns of talking may affect your wife in the long term. If she discerns that discussing her excitement are "not ok" then the inner brain will make a leap that later, discussing her sadness, disappointment, and stress will also not be ok. ESPECIALLY if you decide now that your sadness, disappointment, and stress are not on the table for discussion in a healthy and effective way. So. What I am saying, is yay to you for loving your wife so much that you are (by the nature and wording of your question, I can tell) committed to preventing and mitigating these problem for your wife. You will do everything in your power to help your wife be happy - you've basically said that. So I am begging you to expand your toolbox over these next 7 to 9 months.

Also, if you can handle some NSFW language start watching some Luis CK comedy. You may not get it today, but you will get it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gn6XfTk-ouY&feature=related. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_ZS11fc_Go&feature=related. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLhC6NSlDzY&feature=related. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNSf-KQORRk&feature=related. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTrCBcrFMCI. But, most importantly if you only watch one clip, watch this one that is 100% safe for work and 100% on dealing with your exact fears: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJI8wLao1yY&feature=related.

It's not that easy to tradition, on demand, between one identity and one stage of your life to the next. It's a gradual process and it takes time and it even extends after the baby is born, especially those first six weeks which are sort of like your time in the mouth of hell, at least that's how it was in our house. Gradually the stuff you like about the new life exceeds the stuff you liked about the old one, because the old life is like a pair of pants you can't imagine wearing anymore. In the meantime you rely on the terrific human rituals that exist to help us through these things, which is stuff like saying Thanks! brightly when people say congratulations. In short, go ahead and be bummed, just don't make an overly big deal out of it or beat yourself up about it because it is pretty common and people generally don't admit to it all that readily, so it's under-reported. I also recommend starting to develop a very dark sense of humor. That really worked well for us.

My brother and his then-new wife discovered, to their appalled astonishment, that she was already pregant at their wedding and they hadn't known it. He had already raised two kids; his youngest was 13 and he was more than ready to be done. She had never wanted children. They were 44 and 47 at the time. They lived an hour away from each other and, because of their jobs, hadn't yet worked out how they might combine their households. They had hoped for some time to figure out how to be married to each other. But blammo! Late-life surprise. I am not privy to the decision-making process that led them to go ahead and have the baby, but my sister-in-law told me once that they were both so distressed about it that they couldn't even talk about it with each other until she was about 7 months pregnant. He went to her prenatal appointments with her, but outside of that they just didn't discuss it, they were that freaked out and unhappy. They finally both had a softening of their hearts during an ultrasound late in her pregnancy, and started to get cautiously excited. I don't think things have become magically great. My nephew is almost two and they still maintain two households because of their job situation; my sister-in-law and the baby sometimes spend the week at her place and the weekends at my brother's; sometimes somebody does the hour+ commute. My parents, who live next door to my brother, babysit a *lot*. My sister-in-law still struggles to navigate changes in her life she didn't want. My brother tries not to think about how he'll be 60 when the baby is 13. But, on the other hand, my nephew is awesome and we all dote on him. He is thriving, and while they don't enjoy the complications of their life, they enjoy him a lot. They take advantage of family to watch him overnight so they can have some of the new-married alone time they never got. My sister-in-law can't believe how much she loves the baby. They're adapting, with a mix of joy and frustration, and, while it's hard, it also seems OK.

Barring therapy (I'm not going to tell you to get some, because you've taken it off the table.), get a copy of this book: And Baby Makes Three by John M Gottman PhD and Julie Schwartz Gottman PhD. I'm not pregnant yet, but I've already gotten a copy. However, I do want to point out that you say: since in the end it's just paying for something you can do for free - talking. One of my favorite sociologists, Deborah Tannen dispels this. In a nutshell, the ways you and your wife are talking aren't working (you're unhappy, and she's disappointed even though she knows these reservations you have are normal) a good therapist will help you and your wife find different, more effective ways of talking. If the therapist can't do that, it's either because they' aren't a good fit, or because you (and/or) your wife have decided not to change the ways you communicate.

Yeah, tell the kid all you want that santa doesn't exist. You may find they greet your insistence with the evidence of pressents that magically appear over night, the cookies that disappear, and any number of magical explanations that prove you wrong. Q.E.D. If you are a glutton for knowing how wrong and uninformed you are about the world, teach your kid Q.E.D.

Well I'm going to go against the grain and say yeah, you really can mess your kid up. Not by telling him/her there's no Santa Claus, but by resenting him for keeping you from having the perfect, free life you envision for yourself. My wife and I could save our money, maybe retire early, enjoy our lives and see the world. Yet you were close to welfare and had a mountain of debt before he was even on the radar. That's ok, you can raise a kid that way, you can be happy that way, you can lead a meaningful life that way. But what it means is, this kid is not the reason your finances are tight or you're not yachting around the world or whatever. This kid is not at fault for anything that happens coincidentally or even as a result of his existence (changes to your sex life, sleep patterns, other routines, expectations, etc.). No matter how ambivalent you are (and most parents are ambivalent at one time or another), don't ever, ever, ever blame him for being born.