Those first few weeks

You’re over the birth (your partner isn’t). The pinch-me-I’m-a-parent sense of wonder is gradually fading, being replaced with a slightly more realistic oh-shit-this-thing-is-my-responsibility tingle instead. The hard yards begin here.

After our bumpy start, we were back at home again and ready to parent. We were—we hoped—over the hump, and ready to get going on this journey. Here’s what I learned as a new dad during that period.

You’ll be buying way more nappies than you thought.

Babies wee a lot. Quite a few poos, too. We planned to be as eco-friendly as possible and bought (expensive) reusable nappies. Six weeks into parenthood and we’ve yet to open the packet. In fairness this is partly because we’re waiting for Ted to fit them, and for his nappy volume to decrease a bit otherwise we’ll be forever in laundry deficit (see below). But in general: when I buy nappies at the supermarket, I’m buying them in multiples of hundreds at a time. We get through these in a fortnight or so.

As for buying them, Aldi’s have apparently been voted the best, and they’re something ridiculous like 5p a nappy. Find a supermarket own brand and buy them in bulk because when you’re baby’s not feeding, sleeping or crying, they’ll be soiling themselves.

You’ll be doing more laundry than ever before.

Babies make a lot of mess. Turns out that however diligent you are with the nappy regime, they’ll still find a way to wee, poo and/or vomit all over whatever you’ve lovingly dressed them in (again, see below). During the first few weeks I swear I was doing a full load of baby laundry every other day, plus trying to squeeze in our own clothes in for a wash, too.

A new dad friend of mine bought a tumble dryer specifically to keep on top of the endless rinse/repeat cycle. We have a nifty electric dryer which helps, but it still took a robust washing regime to avoid the dirty clothes piling up and the baby being forced to wear a bin bag until something clean could be found.

You’ll very quickly develop opinions on baby clothes.

Chances are you’ve given a non-committal “that’s nice” when presented with a gift of baby clothes in the run-up to your child’s birth. Now that you’re faced with actually getting them into said clothes, you’ll soon find yourself cursing whoever designed them and thought it was a good idea to use buttons rather than poppers. Conversely you’ll soon be cursing the designer who thought they’d innovate with poppers, placing them in weird, fantastical locations which involve contorting your baby’s abdomen and knee joints in an attempt to click them together. You’ll eventually come to worship at the altar of zips: easy to open, even easier to close.

Oh, and what the actual clothes look like is a complete irrelevance by this stage.

You’ll need to clean up.

If you’re giving your baby formula, you’re going to need to get very good at sterilising equipment, measuring out water at just the right temperature, and adding in portions of formula in the exact quantities specified by the manufacturer. You’ll need to be able to do this at a minute’s notice when the baby’s having a screaming tantrum, and you’ll need to be able to do this on demand at 4am, bleary-eyed, while your partner’s trying to coax the baby to the breast. You’ll also need to be able to smilingly pour these hard-won trophies away down the sink when it turns out your kid wasn’t hungry, just needed a nappy change, and not feel crushed and worn out.

I recommend this Tommee Tippee microwave steriliser for bottles which is quick and fairly idiot proof. Tommee seem to have the market sewn up when it comes to bottles, but we’ve sometimes found Ted refuses them, or gets very bloated/windy after using the basic ones. An NCT friend recommended the Dr Brown ones and in the end we bought some MAM ones with “anti-colic valves”. Who knows how (or if) the science works, but they definitely seem to annoy Ted less.

All the current advice says to make formula up when you need it, but this has proven quite fiddly in practice as you need to cool the boiled water for 30 minutes (a non-starter when you have a hungry baby yelling at you), or cool it in the bottle (run it under the cold tap, for example) and hope it happens quickly enough to placate your baby and doesn’t burn him when you feed him with it. After a few weeks, though, some of our fellow new parent friends said they were just making feeds up in advance and keeping them in the fridge (for up to 24 hours). Once I started doing this I felt like I really got on top of my routine: we still had to warm them in a jug of boiled water for a couple of minutes, but there was much less of a scramble to sterilise a bottle, boil the water, wait for it to cool and so on. Your mileage may vary.

You’ll need to step up your game.

This tip applies pretty much in general for fatherhood, but specifically: I made it my business to take on every household task while Maddy focused on feeding the baby, or holding him when he wouldn’t settle and he wouldn’t calm down when I held him. I did the dishes (well, loaded the dishwasher), emptied the bins, did the laundry, attempted to tidy the house, cooked the dinner (or ordered the takeaway), replied to messages and cards and did the food shopping. Dads, you should’ve been doing at least half of the household chores before this point, but if not, now is absolutely the time to learn. Fast.

I say all this not to boast (or humblebrag), but to emphasise to other new dads that doing all of that stuff is still less work than your partner is doing, and is often easier (a dishwasher will never cry at you because it’s overstimulated). Unless you’ve got live-in help from friends/family, none of these chores are going to do themselves, and believe me you’re going to need to keep moving on them because it’s incredible how fast it all piles up otherwise.

Friends got us an introductory box of HelloFresh food delivery. This was amazing. We’d made a bunch of meals in advance of Ted’s birth and frozen them, but this got quite joyless quite quickly: if we forgot to defrost something then we were stuck eating not-quite-cooked lasagne that evening, or microwaving it until it was crunchy and dry. HelloFresh, while not cheap, meant we were eating fresh food again without having to think very much about recipes or ingredients. We got a “rapid” box meaning each meal takes 20 minutes or less, which turned out to actually be true (saying nothing, Jamie “15 minute meal” Oliver). We’ll probably cancel it once Ted’s a bit older and cooking longer/more involved dishes feels attainable again, but right now it’s brilliantly convenient and the meals themselves are great too.

The daily grind of chores and tasks gets easier, you’ll be relieved to hear. By the time I went back to work on week five I had a pretty good routine down:

• Wake up, shower, dress
• Clean the finished formula bottles from the night before
• Cool some boiled water in the fridge
• Sterilise the bottles in the microwave
• Make Maddy some breakfast/coffee
• Make up the new bottles for the day, put them in the fridge
• Head out to work

Once I got home it was basically the same thing in the evening (plus making sandwiches for both of us for the next day’s lunch). Maddy said this made a huge difference to her day at home looking after Ted: not having to scramble to make up a feed with one hand, or assemble a sandwich while trying to breastfeed, made a massive boost to her wellbeing. Get on top of things!

You’ll be absolutely rinsing Amazon.

If you don’t have Prime, get it now, because you and the next-day delivery guy are about to become BFFs. Get over your contempt for their tax-dodging because you’re not going to want to shop around when you urgently need that wonder toy that promises to instantly halt your baby’s nighttime cries (spoiler: it won’t).

Things we ordered in those first couple of weeks:

• A nursing pillow for the baby to lie on while breastfeeding
• Bulk packs of cotton wool pads and water wipes (for nappies)
• A new car seat (turns out the hand-me-down one wasn’t up to scratch)
• A mobile/toy holding mount for the bedside crib
• A secure baby monitor (don’t get one that uses wifi or an app, who knows where that video is being streamed to?)
• A “baby shusher” – absolute magic.

I asked fellow new dads for their pro tips and Tom had these recommendations:

If using bottles, the [Tommee Tippee] sanitiser and water prep machines are life savers. The sling/carrier is good after first few weeks for going walking to rock them to sleep or trying to do housework. We have a little rocker seat which she likes going in so she can look around the room. There are various phone apps to track stuff like when they last ate and pooed and slept etc. Take a change of clothes for baby when you go out. I think we all learnt that one the hard way!

I can’t agree with Tom more about phone apps: we got recommended Baby Manager by friends (thanks Rose and Andy!) and it’s been a genuine lifesaver, really helped us in the early days to keep track of when he was last fed/changed when we were too tired to otherwise remember.

You’ll need to manage visitors carefully

Suddenly, having people over will be a big deal, even if it’s for an hour and they make their own cups of tea. You’ll find it tiring to maintain conversation (and interest) and will find yourself annoyed if your baby sleeps soundly through their visit, because you know he’s going to pay you back and be awake all evening after they’ve gone. It’s lovely introducing your baby to friends and family but remember that in these early weeks you’re still catching your breath after everything that’s gone before, not to mention establishing a routine. Keep visitors to a minimum and timebox them too – a couple of hours max. Your time is precious at this stage and any time spent chatting about Game of Thrones when you could be sleeping is time wasted. Probably.