My First Day as a Stay-at-Home Dad

Well I’m finally at the end of day one of being a Stay-at-Home dad for the week and I’m already thinking about the fact I have another four of these to go. Suffice to say, there’s a part of me that feels a little bit like this:

Spending My First Day as a Stay-at-Home Dad

In all honesty though, it wasn’t actually too bad. The couldn’t have gone any easier. Isabelle loved the bath, something I haven’t done with her for a while due to the fact she hated being in there alone. She then got dressed without any problems, played happily, drained the breast milk from her cup and nodded off quite quickly with a little swaying and singing. The end result:

She then napped for a mere hour, and by 11 o’clock was up and raring to go. Yay! The next few hours went by quite well in fairness. I did some housework, purely so I could say that I managed to do it and make myself look really good. Then I fed Isabelle and even remembered to change her nappy. Basically I did parenting things. You know, the type of stuff my wife, Rachel has done every day for 8 months and not mentioned any of it. I do it for one day and turn it into a bloody blog post. Typical man. Please can I have my father of the year medal now?

It Wasn’t All Easy Work

Somewhere around two Isabelle really started to notice that Rachel wasn’t here. This is after all, Rachel’s first day back in work after maternity leave. She started to get a little irritable, and really just seemed like she wanted a good sleep feed on the boob. Milk from the cup just didn’t seem to cut it, and she didn’t want to be sung to, rocked, swayed, picked up or put down. Makes sense, right? She basically just wanted her mommy back, and who can really blame her.

So I just cracked on. I’ll admit, that I did put headphones on and carried on singing her to sleep. I don’t mind her crying and screaming on occasions, I’m just less fussed when it’s in my ear. I tried my best to drown it out whilst at least still being present with her.

Eventually it worked and she drifted off as she lovingly pinched my arm. Ten minutes later, Ralph, our one dachshund, came and snuggled up next to me before spotting a bird in the garden and barking at it. Suffice to say, in that split second moment, I was willing to do time in exchange for his immediate death. Fortunately for Ralph, Isabelle only stirred slightly and fell back asleep. Had she not, the sausage dog would’ve become a literal thing.

Overall It Wasn’t Too Bad of a First Day

Overall it’s been a draining day, but one that I mostly managed to enjoy. How do I feel about repeating this another four times? Well I’m not exactly enthusiastic about the idea, but I know solo parenting is going to be a much more frequent occurrence going forward. When I did that stupid 100,000 steps in one day thing that I did, I learned about looking at a struggle and trying to embrace it. I knew when I set off that it was going to take a long time, and likewise with this I know I have another 40+ hours of something that will at times be difficult. Can I moan about it? Probably not. I’m Isabelle’s dad, so this is hardly what you would call a challenge. This is just life being life. And I’m probably being a melodramatic arsehole by merely writing about this.

But I didn’t just write about it. I also filmed quite a few moments throughout the day and turned all of that into a lovely little vlog. So feel free to watch that here:

I have a lot of respect to the people who do this every day. I’ve done one day and I’ve almost written a post where I’m moaning about it. ONE DAY. My wife has done 8 months!

It’s also not like I’m going to be doing this on a full time basis. I’m what you might call a part time stay-at-home dad. I’ll be solo parenting on my days off whilst my wife does 12.5 hour shifts. Basically I’ll be in charge roughly 30 hours a week. I’m certainly counting that as being a part time stay-at-home dad even if others might disagree.