When your partner is pregnant, it’s a guy thing to want to do everything you can to lighten the load. So you cook dinner, fold laundry, massage swollen ankles. A friend I have has even said he’d go through the pregnancy for his wife, if this was possible. Comforting and pampering your expectant spouse is something you’re probably pretty good at. If you weren’t, she probably wouldn’t be expecting a foot massage, let alone a baby. But when your baby arrives, husband and wife are replaced with dad and mom forever.
Dad-As-Wallflower
And your baby seems only to want what she’s known for nine months: Mom. You start to feel like the third wheel or the odd dad out when social expectations, your own inexperience, and a flurry of visits from wise grandmothers puts you right smack on the outside of all things baby. But the most important thing to remember is that a dad who uses a baby carrier regularly wins two hearts and sets his own aflutter.
Carrier Bonding For Dads & Babies
That’s right, your heart’s aflutter. When you look at your new baby, consider what it means to you to be a dad, and hold your little one for a feeding or a lullaby session.
Or put on a baby carrier and take your baby out to see the wide world – or at least the neighborhood – while your wife takes a much needed break. Wearing your baby in a BabyBjorn in front is easy to do and gives your little one the chance to fall asleep against your chest. Baby will be lulled to sleep by the rhythm of your stride and you’ll get to steal about a hundred kisses on the crown of her head.
The gadget-geek in you will like to know that one Baby Bjorn
Dad Points
With mom as primary food source for most newborns and with the first three months often called the “fourth trimester
Powerful Knowledge
Ever hear that parents of newborns learn to differentiate and understand their newborns’ cries? My wife and I waited a while for this to happen, but wearing my daughter in a carrier helped. As a newborn, she was swaddled and settled into the soft crescent of our Balboa sling. Taking a walk and keeping an eye on her, I could tell when she was squirming due to gassiness, arching due to colic, and when she was hungry, she’d make little mewing sounds and start to turn inward and nuzzle my shirt. (Sorry, nothing there!)
Baby Carrying Dads Score the Win-Win
Using a baby carrier to give mom a break, take the dog for a walk, show your newborn off to the neighborhood, or get some much needed fresh air…these are just a few ways you can have your cake and eat it too as a new dad. For me, it was to soothe her colic. I got into a routine after dinner, because that was her “witching hour” – 6:25 on the dot, for eight weeks, she would begin screaming for about 8 hours. When it began, I would put her in my Baby Bjorn and walk for an hour. Her colic some settled to around 3 hours, minus 1 hour sleeping on me while I walked with her nuzzled into my chest.
I got to know my daughter more quickly and in a more complete and nuanced way. Sure, I loved her before she took her first breath, but learning what made her tick, how to soothe her, and just hearing her breathing as we strolled made me feel more like a real dad than a dad in training. I could speak with the authority of experience about what made my little girl drift to sleep, how she liked to be bounced.
And everyone wins when dads carry their babies on a regular basis. Aside from the intrinsic bonding, knowledge of baby’s personality, and satisfaction at finding ways to be involved and ‘doing your share’ as a dad, there’s something else that - were it the only reason to don a baby carrier – would be a little suspect.
In the currency conversion of family relationships, those dad points become partner points when the mother of the little bundle attached to you realizes the impossible is happening. Just when she thought she couldn’t love you more, she does!
