Adam says: This is my first full week of parental leave. I've been working for most of the past three months while Sarah has been home with Jasper. Now we've switched, and I'm home for the next 3 months while Sarah works.
It's obviously a big change for us, but it's been fairly smooth. I already felt pretty comfortable taking care of Jasper but had never done a full day on my own til last week, so that was a big day. And Sarah had never been away from him for the whole day, so it was challenging for her too. We've found an interesting perspective on the end of the day, when Sarah finishes working and wants to relax, while I am ready for a break from Jasper after a long day. It's the same dynamic we've had for a while, only now it's reversed as Sarah's the one working. So it's helped to see it from the other side.
Continue reading about my first week on leave here, and watch the video of chatting with Jasper below. Also don't miss the previous post, which is also new.
Mostly, Jasper's been fairly easy to manage. The biggest challenge has been the bottle: We had gotten in the habit of giving him bottles of breastmilk occasionally, just to get him in the habit, but we stopped while we were travelling, and now he acts like he's never seen this disgusting thing before that we're shoving in his mouth, and he only drinks the good stuff, straight from the source. So there's been a lot of shouting as we try to get him back in the routine. We've tried a few different kinds of bottle nipples, trying to find the right one that will enhance the bouquet of the drink. Today at a parenting class, the nurse who runs it actually suggested that we try to feed him with a straw from a cup, which seems like a radical idea but is so crazy that it just might work. I'll keep you posted.
So for the next 3 months, I'm going to try to keep a video journal of my time with Jasper. This sounds more than a little like my friend Lee's big plans for his parental leave: "I figured I'd have tons of time on my hands. I'd write a book. I'd train for a marathon, pushing the baby in her stroller. I'd dust off my guitar." Then he realized what he'd gotten himself into and revised his goal: "I would seek to keep my daugheter alive each day until my wife came home." So I'm sure I'll miss a week or two, but I want to "write it all down," as my grandmother used to say, and since one hand will usually be holding Jasper, I'll use the other to point a camera at him. Here's my first effort (and also see the previous post on our first trip with the little man).
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