I don’t believe men talk about babies all that much with their buddies. If they happen to be uncles, they are more likely to have spent time playing with their niece or nephew than changing diapers. So we expectant moms start running around getting ready for the baby and the dads are often left wondering what all this is about. And, more importantly, they see that we moms-to-be have things often happens when we get ready for our wedding. Sometimes the hubbies are involved but more often, we women run around trying to make everything perfect and the men, whether through their choice or ours, get left behind in the planning. What we are doing here is establishing a situation where our dear husbands understand that this is something we will take care of. And, as with weddings, they will show up when needed and do what they’re told.
Let me just step back here and say that I realize this is not the case in all relationships. In fact, my dear husband was quite involved in our wedding planning as well as in planning for the arrival of our baby. In fact, he knew more about babies than I did before we had our little joy. This is, however, an observation on how I see many couples around me interacting.
Once the baby comes, there is the initial learning period, and period of strong motherly hormones kicking in. During this time, we moms often get very protective and very possessive and we want to hold our babies all the time. A common pitfall many new moms fall into is not letting the dads have enough opportunity to bond with the new baby. The first few weeks is time when we learn how to take care of our babies, and if we don’t do this jointly with our dear husbands (often because our husbands don’t have the time off work to be around full-time the first few weeks), then we wind up figuring out our own way of doing things, and our protective instincts tell us that any other way of doing things is wrong. This often further alienates the dad, who is already incredibly scared of doing something wrong with this new, fragile little person.
