The initial few days are a bit chaotic, both for myself and my wife. Then things settle down a bit, as baby eats well, and sleeps well: except she mixed up day with night. In other words, she sleeps well in afternoon and evening, but she wakes up very often (every hour or so) and needs her mom’s feed and attention.

In last few days, we tried to train her sleep better in the night (this is also advice from our Pediatrician). So far so good. Now the longest stretch is about 4 hours in the night. She continues to gain weight, and have more activities on her hand. Besides holding the feeding bottle, she tries to hold me or my wife when we hold her sometime. More interaction between us.

Life would be too easier if that’s the only tasks for dads. From emotional support when the pregnant wife have cramps and/or difficulty to sleep due to growing belly size, house chores, to big picture issues like child development and education. I am not saying this to make myself and other new dads to worry, I think the important thing is we have a game plan. It’s hard to predict which college our kid will go, which major will she pick, but we can think about the college funds, put away some while building our nest eggs, etc.

Grandpa fix

I have an observation on Grandpa obsession with new grand daughter. This happened to my dad 14 years ago, and it happened to my in-law this time around (both being first time grand parents). I can think of one reason, back in the days when my dad/in-law became new parents, the society is so different from today, and their main thing is their work (bring home bread). They left the baby-sitting job to moms, and grandmas. This applies to both my wife and myself (and our siblings).

Obviously a lot has been changed  since our time, it’s widely acceptable for daddy to show his affection to the baby (in the past this would have seen as weakness, or lack of man’s masculinity). There are even stay at home daddies nowadays. While I have not envision that as my full time job, I think I would definitely spend more time with my baby, instead of playing catch up when I become grandpa

A lot of emotions, anticipations, before March 5, when she actually came to the world, I was a bit intimated, after the sleepless night at St. John’s Mercy Medical Center. Obviously my wife has been through much more.

This past week, last 7 days, we went from panic parents to more-at-ease parents. One interesting thing I noticed our baby girl has some new change everyday, esp. her facial expressions (like smile). Upon further examination like this article “First Signs of Intelligent Life“, it appears our baby is not at the stage of sophistication.

Why this blog/website?

My purpose of this blog, is more than trying to record my daughter Serenity. For that I can put it in my own blog if necessary. I am thinking more from new dads’ perspective, we have a lot of questions, from wife’s pregnancy (preparation for the arrival of new baby), to the baby arrival (thrill, panic, calm down), and as another good friend said “we need to raise them at least at 18″. Thinking soccer daddies and college tuitions!!!

You may think that’s a long way to go. But as I heard from multiple friends, kids grow up quickly. I think that’s mostly true for happy moments.

So, let’s use this cyber place to record our babies, exchange our ideas, and have some intelligent and interesting discussions, meanwhile watching our new babies grow!!!

Guest bloggers are welcomed and in the future, we could expand from blog to other website formats.