Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Olaf the Stout" data-source="post: 3683713" data-attributes="member: 13703">Thanks for the advice so far everyone!  It is all useful, even if I may not agree with all of it (although I do agree with almost all of what I have read).Just to fill in a few more details for people.  We are having the baby in a hospital.  At the moment we are expecting that it will be a natural birth (the baby isn’t currently in the breach position).I plan to take about 3 weeks off work after the baby is due.  I will have about 5 weeks annual leave accrued by the time the baby is born, plus I get 3 days paid paternity leave.  I may take those 3 days as extra leave on top of the 3 weeks, or I may make it 3 weeks all together and save 3 days of annual leave for when the baby is a couple of months older.  We’ll just have to see how things go.My wife does intend to breastfeed (I assume that it’s sometimes called nursing in the US).  Our hospital, like most in Australia, is particularly supportive of breastfeeding.As for where the baby sleeps to begin with, we plan initially to have it in a cradle/bassinette in our room.  After a couple of months, when it is too big for the bassinette, we’ll move it into the cot in the nursery, which is the room next to our bedroom.  I think that if we didn’t have the baby in our room to begin with my wife wouldn’t get any sleep as she’d be getting up to check that the baby was ok every 5 minutes.  At least this way she has a little more piece of mind.I am a bit of a night owl, while my wife is a morning person (although I imagine we’ll both become “sleep whenever you can” people in the first year!).  That means that I can generally deal with the baby when it cries at night and she can look after it in the early mornings.  Obviously, if we are breastfeeding I don’t have all the right equipment so I won’t be able to do everything but you get the idea.I have done a bit of reading.  My wife bought me a book about 6 months ago, So You’re Going To Be A Dad.  It’s a pregnancy book, written by an Australian male for expectant Dads.  It was light-hearted but informative at the same time.  It filled in a lot of the blanks for me, as I knew very little about pregnancy and babies at that point.My wife did a degree in Early Childhood Education at university and she’s a Kindergarten Teacher so we have a bit of an advantage over many new parents in the childhood development area.  We’ll both be reading to the baby from the day that it’s born (babies like being read the Monster Manual right?  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> ).  Being a Kindergarten Teacher, my wife actually already has more children’s books than many children will ever have in their childhood!We also had birthing classes at the hospital where they talked to us about the birthing process, the sorts of complications that can arise, and about dealing with the first few days after you take the baby home.  They were also pretty useful, although they were very much unlike the classes you see on television where the women are laying down on beanbags, practicing their breathing with their husbands at their side.  Are birthing classes actually like what you see on TV in the US, or elsewhere in the world for that matter?We’re lucky in that both sets of parents live close to us (within a 25 minute drive) and have offered to give us whatever help we need.  Even if we don’t use their help (which I’m certain we will!), it’s reassuring to know that they are there.Overall, I feel that I’m reasonably well informed on the major issues but I am far from an expert.  For example, I know not to have anything else in the crib with them when they sleep (including pillows).  I also know to place them on their backs when you put them to sleep so as to reduce the chance of SIDS.At the same time, I imagine that it all goes out the window once you actually have the baby at home with you.  All the reading in the world still can’t prepare you for the real thing!Olaf the Stout</blockquote>

Verification