The Down and Dirty on Diapering

This is a guest post from Stewart, aka "Papa":

Earlier this summer, I happened to catch an interview on sports radio of New York Jets running back Shonn Greene. At the time of the interview, the NFL lock-out was still in place, so Greene wasn’t permitted to work-out with the team in preparation for the upcoming season. He was on the radio instead to promote a big barbeque being held in the city for first-time fathers, sponsored by Pampers, that Greene and some other local celebrities were hosting. He mentioned that he is a first-time father himself, with a 7 month old son at home. Given the NFL lock-out situation, the radio interviewer jovially asked Greene whether or not, with all of his unexpected free time, he was keeping busy by changing his son’s Pampers. Greene laughed and said essentially “all but the poopy ones” -- which he left to his wife.

Jacob pointed out to me that this was a rather curious response for a man promoting a Pampers event to give -- “Pampers – best left to your wife!” -- and likely not the message the execs at the diaper company were striving for in pushing their brand on new dads. But I was more chagrined by the fact that he is skipping out on one of quintessential experiences of parenting a baby. That’s right, my entirely unsolicited advice for the Jets running back is this: You’re missing out! Change some poopy diapers!

Now we know why Shonn Greene wears gloves

I have been an uncle for approximately 10 years now, and throughout the first few years of each of my niece and nephews’ lives, whenever I saw them I was encouraged by family to change their dirty diapers. My family told me that far from them pushing on me a thankless job, they were actually doing me a favor -- taking on this role would afford me the enviable opportunity to embarrass my niece and nephews for time immemorial with the classic retort to any of their later flack: “I used to change your diapers!” While that was all well and good, I remained suspicious that the real motivation of their pep talk was simply to get out of changing a diaper. Now that I am a parent myself, I am sure of it. I must admit that there have been times when we’ve had guests over to see Max, and he decides to drop a little present into his diaper, that I’ve been tempted to continue the family tradition of “re-gifting” that present for our friends to handle.


So, armed with my suspicions, I never did change my niece and nephews diapers. After all, one of the great perks of being an uncle or aunt is that you get to spoil your nieces and nephews as much as you want. You become their favorite, and the second an inconvenient or undesirable parenting moment arises -- like a full diaper -- you get to hand those smelly little tykes back to mommy or daddy.

There was one exception. About two and a half years ago, I was asked to babysit my then two year old nephew Luke for an evening -- alone. Before leaving, his mother rattled off Luke’s nighttime routine, which included, if necessary, changing his diaper before bed. I just kept nodding: “oh yes, of course of course.” Well, when that fateful bedtime hour hit and it was time for Luke to get into his PJs, I realized I had no idea how to know if this change in ensemble required a diaper change. Or, more importantly, how to perform it. At this point Jacob and I knew that parenthood was in our future, so I decided I better go for it, before poor future Max became my guinea pig. Of course changing an active 2 year old is a little different from changing a sleepy, sedentary newborn. I ended up changing Luke in the bathroom while he was standing up and chattering away about whatever he was into at the time (trains, most likely, but I was too focused on the daunting task at hand to listen properly). It turns out that changing a child while he or she is standing up is a fairly unorthodox and advanced diapering technique, and I was way out of my league. And, wouldn’t you know it, his original diaper was dry and didn’t need changing after all. Too late. Thankfully, Luke didn’t seem to mind my fumblings with the tabs of his new diaper, or puzzlement over which was the front end and which was the back, or the sad, droopy end result that he wound up wearing under his PJs as a result of my ineptitude. But, while I was nervous all the next day that I would get a phone call from his mother about the plastic trainwreck I had patched around her son’s butt, the call never came and I breathed a sigh of relief. I had done it!

 

With Max in my life, I must have changed a thousand diapers by now -- of every degree of wetness and of every shade and consistency of poop. I’ve changed a poop in the men’s room of a highway rest stop in the middle of nowhere while feeling the collective stares of the truck drivers passing through as I sang “twinkle twinkle little star” to Max to keep him calm enough for me to finish the job. I’ve changed a poop in an airplane bathroom that had no changing table and was so small I could barely bend down to maneuver. I’ve changed a poop while wrestling Max on my lap while sitting on the toilet of a public restroom because the sink was too small and the floor was wet. And I’ve ventured into the women’s restroom to get the job done, stressing all the while over the reaction I might get from the ladies who could walk in at any moment. And as long-time readers of the blog know, Jacob has had his own diapering misadventures with Max, as chronicled in this early post, as well as this one.

Getting down to business

I know that I am far from alone in these experiences, and I’d love to read in the comments about your own diapering fiascos. But how are these experiences an endorsement for being an active participant in cleaning your child’s diaper messes? Put simply: it’s character building. It is not an exaggeration to say that in these small, trying moments of parenthood I’ve felt a particular closeness with Max, perhaps resulting from an intimate embarrassment shared and survived. I’ve also felt a palpable sense of accomplishment in carrying Max out of a restroom and back into the world looking perfectly clean and content, and me acting perfectly nonplussed, when in reality the past five minutes of changing his dirty diaper felt like fifty, with neither of us having any desire to re-live a single one of them. So Shonn Greene may think he’s making out by leaving the dirty diapers to his wife, but I strongly disagree. You may sacrifice a little of your dignity in the process of changing them, but it grows back stronger – like breaking down muscles in the gym in order to pump them up. Surely a pro football player like Shonn Greene can appreciate the value in that.

A Prophecy Fulfilled

Earlier this month I celebrated a milestone birthday: I turned 38. I realize that most of you probably think that I’m two years early in making this proclamation, but let me explain why the age 38 has such significance to me. I mentioned in a post I wrote last March about the 10 year anniversary of my first date with Stewart that ever since I came out as gay at age 22, I envisioned for my future not only a kid in my life, but even the exact age I wanted to be when the kid was born: age 38. Because I felt like a late bloomer at the time, I rationalized that the intervening years would give me enough time to mature and get my shit together, which included plenty of time to experience being a single guy, and then plenty of time after that to find Mr. Right and settle down in a serious relationship. I knew I would need that stability and security before I could ever tackle parenting.

Still, picking age 38 to have a kid instead of, say, age 35 or 40, still sounds pretty arbitrary. But actually -- and perhaps this was purely subconscious -- the age 38 has numerical significance for me. Thirty-eight years old is the mid-point age between when my dad had his first child (at age 30) and when my dad had his fifth and last child, me (at age 46). At age 22, I knew that I would not even be close to being ready to have a child by 30. My goal for 30 was to be in a serious relationship, hopefully, or at least to have had a meaningful relationship by that point. On the other hand, I knew that I didn’t want to wait to start having kids until I was 46. While I am very lucky that my dad always had lot of energy raising me and is still spritely for his age, I can’t count on those wonderful genetic qualities being passed along to me.

Over the years after I came out, my age-specific goals somehow never left my mind. First I met my goal of being in a serious relationship by age 30, having started dating Stewart a few years earlier. By the time I was 35, Stewart and I knew that we wanted to start a family together, and my target age of 38 was looking good. But I decided that it made no sense to wait to try to get the age perfect, for several reasons. First, although I had reached a comfortable place in my life, I realized that even so there was never going to be a day that I would simply wake up and say: “Now I am ready to have a kid!” I don’t think anyone ever feels completely ready for such a major life change. So I thought Stewart and I should just take the bull by the horns and go for it instead of letting my goal of age 38 turn into an excuse to put off such an intimidating undertaking. Second, as I have discussed before, having a child through surrogacy involves a lot of factors, and you can’t pinpoint how long it is going to take before you are successful. We were very lucky to find the surrogate of our dreams almost right off the bat, and that she was as motivated as we were to get the process going and to get pregnant. So while Max arrived during my 36th year on this planet, becoming parents could have easily taken until I was 38, even starting the process as early as we did (see my last post about how surrogacy can take years for some couples).

There have been many birthdays past where I have lamented to myself: “Oh my god, I am now such and such an age and look where I’m at in life. I haven’t achieved x, y or z yet,” perhaps in relation to my career or something else. But now at age 38 I look around and I can’t believe the wonderful place my life has taken me. I am a stay-at-home dad, married to an amazing husband, and we are raising an amazing 15 month old son. Also, we have such a great support system from our families and friends. Despite the proclamation I made at 22 years of age about my life goals, in my wildest dreams I did not dare to imagine that I would be sitting where I’m sitting now. I’m more than lucky.

Chucking the Checklist

Max is at an intermediate stage of his development, stuck between being a baby and a toddler, and therefore the people we meet out and about are no longer satisfied just by learning Max’s age. They also want to know what developmental milestones he’s reached. So after they ask how old he is, the next question (usually one of several) is “Is he walking yet?” And I know I’m not alone in getting this question. My friend who has a kid three days older than Max complains that her doorman asks every other day if her kid is walking yet. My advice to her is: threaten to withhold his holiday tip if he asks again! In all seriousness, the questioners are usually well-intentioned, and I don’t think they mean to be annoying to the parent who has to respond to the same inquiries time and again . . . but, let’s face it, the questions do get tiresome.

So I try to get over the topic as soon as possible, getting all the info out to them in one fell swoop -- something like: “Nope. My kid is not walking yet, not saying any words yet, or recognizing any parts of his body yet; but . . . he is truly advanced in the teeth department!” My response is intended to be informative, but also, by bringing up Max’s dental accomplishments, hopefully hints at how silly I think the whole comparison game is for kids whose ages are still measured in months. Basically I’m saying to these people in a joking way: Unless your kid, grandkid, or whoever else you’re comparing my Maxxie to, has or had four front and bottom teeth, plus two molars, already in at 13 months old, you’re no one to talk comparisons with my child!

While I like to think of myself as pretty mellow when it comes to assessing whether Max’s development is keeping up with that of his friends’, I do have my slip-ups when my competitive streak slips out. One of Max’s playmates, who is six weeks older than Max and seems advanced in all of the main developmental yardsticks, for several months now has been able to point to his nose and ears when prompted. So, shortly before Max’s birthday, I couldn’t help myself but to test him for this skill . . . with no success. At Max’s 12 month visit with his pediatrician, I casually mentioned to him that Max is not able to recognize his body parts. The pediatrician responded by looking straight at Max and asking: “Max, you are not a trained seal, are you?” Point made, and naturally that humbled me and reminded me that my instincts about how silly all these developmental comparisons can be was spot on in the first place.

A couple of weeks later, my same friend with the inquisitive doorman mentioned that she visited the American Academy of Pediatrics website to look up developmental milestones for one year olds. As is human nature, she immediately focused only on the ones that her kid wasn’t doing yet:

• Says “dada” and “mama”

• Uses exclamations, such as “oh-oh!”

• Tries to imitate words

Of course Max wasn’t doing any of these things either. And, unfortunately, the number of teeth that a child has did not make the Academy’s list! To try to reassure my friend, I told her that Max was in the same boat as her kid. I was all nonchalant, like: “Why are you looking these things up? You are only setting yourself up for disappointment. These developmental steps will happen when they happen.” I truly believe that to be the right attitude to take -- but of course in my pep talk to her I omitted the part about my own recent neuroses in this area that I had displayed in my nervous questioning of Max’s pediatrician about his nose-pointing deficiencies.



All this said, I’m not trying to downplay the enjoyment parents do and should feel when kids reach developmental milestones. I am enjoying watching each of Max’s friends develop on their own time. It’s exciting to see the ones that have begun to take their first steps. It’s like they are drunken soldiers! Of course, I enjoy seeing Max develop the most, and he is truly at a great age for it. At the moment, Max is standing up on his own for up to 15 to 20 seconds (at the longest) before he topples over or sits himself down. It’s really cute to watch, and particularly because he is so proud of himself when he does it!



Max standing (daddy method)



And, as an example that most babies eventually do develop the skills set forth for them on all the checklists out there -- sort of -- in just the past week, when I ask Max where his nose is . . . he points to mine. It is so adorable, and at least he is pointing to someone’s nose when prompted! Needless to say, I’ll take it. Max is pretty perfect in my book and it’s very easy for me to be proud of whatever he accomplishes, whenever it happens and whether or not it is on somebody else’s checklist.



Max standing (chair method)

When Three's a Crowd

Naturally in any triangle of human relationships someone is bound to feel left out. When it came to my relationship with Stewart and Max, however, it never crossed my mind that this concept would directly apply to me! When I am alone with Max he gazes at me like I am his one and only. But whenever Stewart enters the room, I suddenly become chopped liver in Max’s eyes and he only has time for his papa. At first, I championed Max’s fondness for Stewart. I loved that Max would smile, get all giddy, and make his way immediately over to Stewart when he came home from work. First off, Stewart is an excellent dad and deserves all the recognition that Max can give him. Secondly, it is an easy way to pass Max off to Stewart at the end of the day so that I can have some time for myself.

Over the past month or so though I’ve lost my benevolent attitude towards Max’s behavior, because his preference for Stewart has grown beyond my limits! These days, when Stewart tries to hand Max over to me after they have spent time together, Max starts wailing and reaching out for his papa. When Max is with me in one room of the apartment, and knows that Stewart is somewhere else in the apartment, he will crawl his way to whatever room Stewart is in. And there is a game that Max likes to play that is particularly disheartening. When Max is being held by Stewart and people come up to them -- family members, friends or even random strangers -- Max will reach out his hands, motioning them to take him from Stewart; but, just as they are about to do so, Max turns into a big tease, yanking his hands away and turning in the opposite direction. I used to think this game was sort of entertaining, until I became the main target!

 

I will admit that my feelings get hurt, especially given that I am the stay-at-home parent who spends all day with the kid, entertaining him, feeding him, changing his diapers, soothing him and looking after his many other needs. I had been in a complete state of denial that Max would ever favor one of his parents over the other -- but especially over me given how much of this daily love and sacrifice I dispense! I mean, come on folks, how many kids get to spend their days with a cool fun dad like me?!

 

Fortunately, Max’s favoritism of Stewart is not personal, but rather a perfectly normal phase of childhood. In a recent poll at Parents.com, more than 90 percent of mothers and fathers said that their children favored one parent over the other at some point.  Indeed, favoritism is considered healthy behavior for an emerging toddler. According to Parenting magazine:

Playing favorites is actually a sign of emotional and cognitive growth. It helps your child explore relationships and intimacy, exercise her decision-making skills, and assert her independence.

It is also not unusual for a one year old to favor the working parent, who is not with the child all day, over the stay at home parent. In other words, all of my nurturing of Max that I thought would beholden him to me is apparently working against me! Basically, he’s taken me for granted – a good way for a baby to feel, for sure. Stewart, meanwhile, leaves Max at least every weekday morning, so Max is naturally more clingy to him when he is around, since Stewart’s companionship is not as much of a given in Max’s mind.

 

I’ve also learned that a child will go through phases of favoring one parent for a spell, and then switching 180 degrees and preferring the other parent instead. For example, check out these mothers in an on-line parenting forum complaining about their husbands being favored when their kids were one year olds, and the encouragement back from other moms to wait it out because soon enough the shoe will be on the other foot!  And I have to admit that this has been our experience. When Max was three or four months old, Stewart used to come home from work and complain that Max would only look at me and not him. I would say I think you’re imagining things, but secretly I was a little happy about it since I was spending all this time with Max and appreciated the recognition from him.

 

I hope Stewart is more mature than me and is not secretly enjoying the current period of time of being the favorite, however long it might be. Because it isn’t fun. Despite knowing in my head all that I mentioned above about why I shouldn’t feel shame about being the odd man out with Max, I still do. I am not exactly sure why, but it is probably because I spend most of my days with Max and still feel a little rejected by him. All I can tell myself is that just as it is a natural phase for him to sometimes act as he does, it is also natural for me to sometimes feel disheartened by it. But I am not complaining, because one thing that is constant throughout all of Max’s temporary phases is how much I love him, and how much I know he loves me back.

Spring Break

I have never yearned for spring more than this one. As all of you reading this in the Northeast know, it was a rough winter. And long. I thought that Day Light Savings Time signified that spring was just around the corner, but only now, over a month later, is the weather finally coinciding with the time of year. Of course it doesn’t help that I am simply not a winter person, and it seems that every year I complain about the cold weather more and more. I can be overheard to say on more than one occasion each winter that one day we need to move somewhere warmer; but, besides having most of our family and friends here, we love New York and couldn’t imagine raising Max anywhere else. I guess that means I’m resigned to bitch about winter for many years to come!

What made this winter tough wasn’t just it being frigid and long, but that it meant more often than not being cooped up in the apartment with Max. You see, before Max I was never known to be a homebody. And, and since Max was a spring baby, I didn’t have to become a homebody after his birth. Until early November of last year, I spent most of my days with him out of house, and much of that time we stayed outdoors. I strolled Max on long walks, pushed him in the bucket swing at the play ground (after he was 3 or 4 months old), and chilled with him at one of the numerous community gardens in my neighborhood.

Max happy to be back at the playground

Obviously during the winter months these activities are limited, so I really had to challenge myself to still get out of the house with Max and have at least one activity for us to do each day -- such as: attending story time at the local library, meeting up with other new parents for a play group, or entertaining Max at music and movement classes. But even with these different activities, there was still a lot of idle time at home, and this idle time became increasingly challenging as the winter months crept by. Max was growing before our eyes and becoming increasingly mobile. He quickly learned to entertain himself by finding and frequenting all of the danger spots in our apartment and playing with all the possible harmful objects in our place. Even after baby-proofing, it seemed like most of the time we spent together in the apartment was occupied by me either chasing him away from those places or distracting him from going to those places with more appropriate playthings, such as toys and books. I now understand why parents of little ones need so many!

Max fights the winter blues at Chelsea Piers

So for me, the arrival of this particular spring season is exciting, beyond the general pleasantness of warmer weather, because I can once again spend a lot of time with Max out of the apartment and into the great outdoors. And just in the nick of time, because these days I desperately need to get out with him between 5 and 7 pm, which can be the most difficult hours of the day. In the late afternoon, Max can grow cranky and fussy just at the time that I get wiped out from having ran around taking care of him all day, and Stewart hasn’t gotten home from work yet. It is too late in the day for Max to take a nap, but too early for him to go down for the night. Plus, during this time there aren’t any planned activities for infants or toddlers. Most parents are instead winding down their day, having dinner with their families or getting their kids ready for bed. Thankfully, now that the weather has improved, I can spend that time strolling Max around the neighborhood, letting him roam at the playground, or pushing him in a swing, until Stewart gets home. Everyone’s mood brightens at that point, because I am happy to get the break I need, Max is happy to see Papa, and Papa is happy to play with Max for the hour or so before his bedtime.

Our family is thrilled that spring is back!

So welcome back spring, you were missed!!!

Pulp Fiction

This is a guest post by Stewart, aka "Papa":

As a willful 10 month old, Max has taken over our lives, and our apartment, in many ways – not the least of which is our bookshelves. The living room bookcase used to feature nothing but award-winning hard-cover tomes. Never mind if we had actually read any of them, the bookcase advertised to all of our visitors that we possess exquisite literary taste. Updike? Austen? Murakami? Check, check and check!

But that was then. Now our bookcase contains no less than 57 baby books for Max. Goodbye “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” hello “Cat in the Hat”! 57 books for a 47 week old may sound a tad extreme, but it’s not entirely our doing. Presents, hand-me-downs and gift-cards generated the majority of his collection.



Left side of baby bookshelf



And I’m very glad to have all 57, for a reason that might surprise you: their construction. Books published for Max’s age come in the form of “board books.” That means they are comprised not of leaves of paper, but of thick cardboard slabs. Most of you probably know this, but I didn’t until a couple of years ago, when our nephew Luke (the son of my sister-in-law, Esther) was perhaps a year old. He was very into animals at the time, and Jacob and I had excitedly bought him a huge hard-backed book full of animal photos that we planned to present to him during our next babysitting gig. Esther, however, rained on our parade by correctly pointing out that the glossy animal photos were laid out on thin sheets of paper that Luke would instantly tear up in his enthusiasm over their content. He simply wasn’t ready for paper books.



Right side of baby bookshelf

Max certainly isn’t either, as he reminded me this weekend when his own babysitter came over. As I was cleaning up the apartment Sunday evening in preparation for her arrival, Max was innocently watching me as he sat by the bottom shelf of our bookcase, where we keep our DVD and music collection. When the doorbell rang announcing the babysitter’s arrival, I turned to pick up Max, only to see him cheerfully munching away on the paper cover to my Ella Fitzgerald CD box set! (A cardinal sin in this gaddy’s eyes). After my initial reaction that I was glad the babysitter hadn’t witnessed this abject lack of decorum on the part of my son, I shifted into what probably should have been my initial reaction, which was concern over Max’s decision to start a paper-based diet.  It was then that the genius of the board book -- letting babies handle their cardboard pages without tearing them apart, and easing fear of babies’ knack for chomping on their reading materials -- truly hit home.  It’s no wonder that the children’s publishing industry nicknames board books: “chewables”!



Max does Ella wrong



So why am I happy to have 57 of these chewables?  Because the pages of board books are so thick, and the books themselves are so tiny – so as to fit in tiny toddler hands – that these books can have as few as four pages to them . . . total. That’s just fine and dandy for the kids, who have the attention span of a cartoon character, but for us parents the experience does not quite satisfy at the Updike, Austen, Murakami level. Don’t get me wrong, one of my favorite parts of my day with Max is reading with him before his bedtime.  But part of what makes the experience enjoyable on my end is that I have 57 books to choose from on any given night. In the 15 minutes that Max is on my lap, we tackle at least 5 or 6 books, so having that variety each night is crucial. No matter how much I genuinely enjoy many of Max’s books, if I had to read the same 10 or so night after night I might go crazy!

Now that I feel like I have a little experience in this genre, in my next post I will share with you my all-time favorite books from Max’s collection, and why I find them so enjoyable to read with Max. So if you are in the market for some board books, for yourself or for that special new parent in your life, be sure to check it out!



In Memorium, My Aunt Beth

Last week, Stewart, Max and I drove to the suburbs of Philadelphia to attend the funeral of my Aunt Beth -- my mom’s younger and only sibling. After the service, we went back to my Uncle Jack’s house, where the family gathered to reminisce about the memories we all have of her. Driving home after that emotional day, I recalled my own relationship with Aunt Beth, that began when I was just a kid.

As far back as I can remember, I was always fond of my aunt. I wouldn’t have been able to articulate it as a kid, but in retrospect I really liked the way she was somehow able to be direct and witty while at the same time exuding an unassuming and accepting personality that put people at ease. Let me try to give you some examples of what I am talking about.

I have one particular favorite story that perfectly captures Aunt Beth’s direct and witty side. One day, when I was 11 years old or so, I was spending time with my aunt at her home looking at family photographs. I innocently asked her why my mother looked younger than she did in the photos when my mom was actually the older sibling by a couple of years. (Please understand that I hadn’t yet acquired all of the graceful tact that you all know I now possess.) My aunt replied, “That’s easy. It’s because your mother dyes her hair and your grandmother Augusta does good touch up work on her photographs!” As a little kid I was shocked that my mom dyed her hair, and absolutely delighted to be made privy to this family secret! From then on I knew that I had one cool aunt in my Aunt Beth. I have told this story to my mom repeatedly over the years to tease her, and she always responds the same way: “That’s your aunt Beth!”

Mom (l) with her sister, my Aunt Beth (r)

While perhaps less exciting, what I hold dear even more about my aunt are my memories of her warm, embracing side. My family photo story comes from one of the handful of times that I got to visit Aunt Beth at her house over some of my school vacations when I was a tween. As I mentioned in a prior post, since I am the youngest child in my family by a fairly wide margin, I did not have any cousins to play with growing up, unlike the rest of my siblings. So I cherished my trips to see Aunt Beth. They made me feel special because I had my very own place to go and my own family member to visit.

It is weird now though to realize that I would visit her for an entire week. It doesn’t seem like it now, and I can’t remember any particular conversations we had together during those visits other than my photo story. While I doubt that our conversations ran very deep, my Aunt Beth was a very easy person to be around and I certainly know that enjoyed talking with her. At a point in my life when I didn’t always feel that I related to my peers, and felt vulnerable around them, I felt very safe with my Aunt Beth. She was very attentive, and also had the time to spend with me. When I started visiting her, her oldest kids were already out of the house, and her youngest was a senior in high school who was busy with her own life, so my aunt was free to become my companion. My favorite memories of those visits are playing game after game of scrabble with Aunt Beth, with frequent breaks for ice cream! In fact, my Aunt Beth was a Scrabble maestro. I don’t ever remember winning a game against her during those visits. So what possessed me to keep playing so many games, knowing that I would go down in defeat? I really enjoyed the game, and I was good at it for my age. My grandmother Sadie had taught me how to play, and I liked continuing that tradition with my aunt. Besides, there wasn’t anyone else at the time who would indulge me in playing back-to-back games like she did!

By the time I was in ninth grade, my visits with my aunt ended. Maybe I felt that I was getting too old to be visiting my aunt over school break, I’m not sure. I am sure though that I loved those visits while they lasted, and they helped get me through those difficult middle school years. Afterwards, I still saw my aunt a couple of times a year, and made sure that we played Scrabble every Thanksgiving.

Traditions like these have gained new importance in my life now that I’m a parent. When Max is old enough, I look forward to teaching him how to play scrabble and to playing many family games with him and Stewart. Max will also have his Aunt Paula and Uncle David, both avid scrabble players -- plus many other family members -- to play games with, whether it be on school vacation or over family holidays. My hope for Max is that, like me, when he is an adult he will look back fondly on his childhood bonds with the adults in his family’s life who are always there to support and encourage us.

Our Ten Year Journey to Ten Months

While in my late teens, my mom liked to tell me: “Jacob no matter how far out there or different you think you are, you have very traditional values.” She was right. Last weekend marked the ten year anniversary of my first date with my (now) husband, Stewart, on February 26, 2001. Ever since I came out as gay at age 22, I knew that my ideal future would include a life-long partner and a kid to raise with him. I was not envisioning a “husband” per se, because gay marriage was not only legally unavailable in the mid 1990s, it wasn’t even on the radar screen back then. That didn’t discourage my plans though. To the contrary, I even pinpointed the exact age I wanted to be when having a kid: age 38. I figured that gave me plenty of time to have fun as a single guy, and then get my act together through a serious relationship. Of course, life doesn’t run according to our planned timetables, and Max arrived when I was 36. But who doesn’t love an early present?!

Summer 2001, months into our relationship

While I ultimately succeeded in my aspirations beyond my wildest dreams, they didn’t always seem attainable. First off, I had the small problem of actually finding a life-long partner. Before I met Stewart, my longest romantic relationship had lasted all of 2 months. I remember being 27 years old and worrying that I was never going to find Mr. Right. Secondly, even assuming I found that special person, what was to say he would want to embark with me on the journey of parenthood? The concept seemed much more far-fetched back then than it does now. I didn’t know any gay male couples that had kids, or for that matter many gay male couples at all, and there was no such thing as the sitcom Modern Family on network TV. The only gay dads I had even heard of were men who came out as gay later in life after they already had children through a straight relationship. Most childless gay men who came out back then thought that in doing so they were necessarily sacrificing any opportunity to have kids of their own. Stewart has told me that he was one of those men.

Nor was it immediately obvious when Stewart and I met that we were destined to create the family we now have. Stewart was dating somebody else at the time, and so we were just good friends for a period of six months before he broke off his relationship and we became a couple. During those months we slowly became closer as we played squash together first weekly, and then twice weekly, and then started hanging out together after each squash match. Sometimes that entailed watching college basketball while having lunch at a sports bar, or discussing books at a cafe, or checking out art galleries in Chelsea. I realized that I had finally found somebody who shared all of my eclectic interests in life. Therefore it hardly seemed strange at all that our first official date was attending a New Jersey Devils pro hockey game followed by a late-night visit to a gay bar back in the city to watch a favorite drag queen perform. But I’m pretty sure we were the only couple with that itinerary that evening!

Ticket from our first date, a hockey game

From the very beginning I was up-front with Stewart about my serious interest in becoming a father down the road, and thankfully Stewart was receptive to the idea. As our relationship progressed, we renewed this discussion at every important step along the way -- including when we moved in together in 2003 and when we tied the knot in 2008 -- just to make sure we were still on the same page. Each time we were more and more enthusiastic about pursuing parenthood together, and finally decided to go for it in 2009. The rest is history, as they say, and our precious Max, born almost 10 months ago, is proof positive that a little dream I had in my twenties could actually become an amazing reality over a decade later.

With 10 month old Max on the 10 year anniversary of our first date

Super Dad Versus Sleep Training -- The Showdown

Like any problem you have, admitting that you have it is the first step towards solving it! My most recent pressing problem – I was finally forced to admit to myself – was that 9 month old Max could not fall asleep on his own.

In the months before Max was born, I was newly laid off from work, and therefore I had plenty of time to prepare to become Super Dad, including reading one parenting book after another. All of them devote considerable content to sleep training, which was my first warning of what was to come by becoming a new parent: many disjointed, sleep-deprived nights with my crying baby! But donning my imaginary Super Dad suit, I vowed to have Max sleep trained at 6 months old.

 

Why by then? Pediatrician Dr. Ari Brown declares in her book, Baby 411, that “100 percent” of healthy 6 month old babies are perfectly capable of falling asleep on their own. Indeed, she notes that even “your four-month old baby is aware of his surroundings.” Therefore, if you allow him to “fall asleep in your arms and you sneak him into bed, he will awaken at the end of his sleep cycle (every 90 minutes) looking for comfort” – i.e. will wake up crying until you comfort him asleep again. But, “if your child is put into his crib at bedtime still awake and you leave the room,” he will eventually learn to “fall asleep alone and content.” Boy did I like the sound of that! Hence, my Super Dad pledge to get Max to this nirvana by 6 months old. Most of my parent peers hadn’t accomplished this feat before 7 months at the earliest, and I was determined to beat them by a month (not that I’m competitive or anything!)

Then . . . Max was actually born.

In Max’s initial months, I was no longer thinking about sleep training – it simply wasn’t an option. The Baby 411 book states that at this age babies are defenseless, and therefore need to be comforted whenever they exhibit distress. Fortunately, by 3 months old Max was beginning to sleep through the night. First thing we did at his bedtime was swaddle him like there was no tomorrow (which Stewart blogged about here). That done, Stewart and I then diverged in our methods of getting Max asleep. Stewart rocked and bounced Max to sleep in his arms, and I bounced Max in his Fisher Price bouncy seat. In the beginning these were painless processes. Max was light weight, and it would take us ten minutes at the most to get Max asleep and smoothly transferred into his co-sleeper or, later, his crib. I was feeling pretty proud, and I knew my parenting peers were pretty envious (to whom, of course, I had bragged about our magical methods).

Bouncy seat sleep . . . ahhh!

Unfortunately, over time, as Max became more and more cognitively alert, putting Max down for the night became more and more of an ordeal, so much so that Stewart and I would negotiate on which one of us was due to put Max down that evening! Stewart, who once was able to get the job done by easily gliding around the apartment with Max swaddled in his arms, now had to frantically pace about for what seemed liked hours with a 22 pound, 6 month old Max weighing down his arms. By the time Max finally fell asleep, Stewart’s back killed and he wasn’t in the best mood. My method had also broken down. Max had grown quite a bit vertically and was much more mobile, which made bouncing him in his bouncy seat much more difficult. His feet were now hanging out of the bouncy seat and he was constantly turning over and trying to climb out of the chair. Hopelessly bouncing Max in a dark lonely room for what sometimes felt like eons to get him asleep certainly did not feel like a Super Dad moment! And if all of this were not bad enough, getting Max to fall asleep was just one bedtime issue. Once he was asleep, in the seat or Stewart’s arms, we could no longer easily transfer Max into his crib without risking him waking up, which would require us to have to start the process all over again. Yikes! Max was also waking up at least once, if not multiple times, during the middle of the night, crying to be fed. Getting up and feeding him was not so bad. But starting the whole demanding process of getting him back to sleep – now in the dead of night – was nothing short of brutal.



Sleep in the crib?  Who me?

Many mornings after these rough nights with Max, Stewart and I would have the same familiar conversation:

Me: "Hun, this is no joke, it is seriously time to start sleep training."

Stewart: "Okay, let’s read up on it to refresh ourselves about the process, and make a plan."

There are many books and theories out there on sleep training. We decided to go with the “Ferber method” which is explained in Dr. Ferber’s bestselling book, Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems. Ferber states that you should have the same nightly ritual to prepare your baby for sleep (such as reading, cuddling, and singing to him). But, directly opposite to what we were doing, Dr. Ferber declares that you should not let your baby fall asleep during this routine, i.e. by feeding, rocking, or being rubbed by you. Instead, once he is relaxed and sleepy – but importantly, NOT asleep, you should put your baby down in his crib to fall asleep on his own, while you leave the room. Ferber believes in “progressive waiting” which is once you have put your baby down, when he starts howling (and, believe me, it is a “when” and not an “if”) you should briefly return to the baby’s crib at increasingly extended intervals to reassure him (and make yourself feel better) that you have not abandoned him. Eventually, after a couple of crying jags by the baby and visits by you, Ferber assures that he will fall asleep on his own. This “sleep training” is supposed to last a few nights, after which the baby learns that crib-time at night-time means sleep, and will fall asleep on his own with minimal fuss.

So we knew how to sleep train Max, but we kept finding different reasons to put it off, as Max at 6 months old turned into 7 months old, turned into 8 months old. Max was sick for portions of those months, and we didn’t want to start when Max was feeling vulnerable. My being sick for the month of January was another excuse. And Stewart also had one: if he had to get to work early in the mornings, or on the weekends, we didn’t want to disrupt Stewart’s sleep, as we knew sleep training Max would do for at least the first few nights. We also feared the very process of sleep training. Stewart couldn’t bear to hear Max cry out for us in the dark when Max was used to being rocked to sleep. I feared sleep training, not because I hated to hear Max cry (though that’s certainly no fun), but because I worried we would fail at it and then have no options left to get Max sleeping through the night in a sane way.

Last Friday we finally bit the bullet and started sleep training Max. We had run out of excuses, and even Max’s very mellow pediatrician informed us at Max’s 9 month check-up that it was time to begin. So far, the process has gone much smoother than expected. The first night was by far the worst. Max cried for 20 minutes before he went down, which was tough to sit through, no matter how often we checked on him. But miraculously, once he fell asleep, he didn’t wake up even once during the middle of the night. A full night’s rest for us? We had forgotten what that felt like! The second night Max only cried for 5 minutes before he fell asleep; but, life not being perfect, he did wake up during the night. After feeding him though, he amazingly went back to sleep for good within minutes. Yes! Okay, so Dr. Ferber and others declare that you shouldn’t feed your child when he wakes up in the middle of night, because it gives him an excuse to do so. But hey, one step at a time for us!

Now a full week into sleep training, both Max and his parents are getting better sleep, making for happier mornings (and noons, and nights) for everyone. Max has been as cheerful as ever, which I take to mean he doesn’t hold his first night 20-minute cry-a-thon against us. Frankly, we are kicking ourselves that we didn’t do this earlier. While Max does not always fall asleep in 5 minutes, getting him down for the night has gotten relatively painless, and certainly nothing like the grueling procedure it was before.  For you parents out there who are skeptical or afraid of sleep training, give it a chance -- it may just drastically improve the quality of your family’s life.

The Winner, by TKO: Super Dad!

Please Stop Mothering Me!

This is a guest post from Stewart, aka "Papa":

More than once, parents in the workforce have told me that they bet I am secretly happy to have an office to go to that allows me to escape “dealing” with my baby all day. Apparently they feel that way, and I must admit that on some tough parenting days the thought has certainly crossed my mind.

But generally speaking, nothing could be further from the truth. As we gay dads like to say, we can’t have kids by accident, but only through what is usually a long, involved process that is not for the faint of heart. So if we have kids, it is likely because we ardently wanted to become parents. It would make no sense to then look to “escape” that role once our dream finally comes true. Instead, I take parenting Max very seriously, both by maximizing the quality of the time that I get to spend with him each day – playtime, chowtime, bathtime, bedtime -- and by continuing to provide for him even when we aren’t together – by buying him food, diapers, wipes, toys, books and clothing.

So it is a little frustrating that the billion-dollar baby product industry likes to pretend that actively parenting dads don’t exist. Here are some examples of what I am talking about: 

• When Max was a newborn and I was on paternity leave, I found myself running out to Babies R Us and back multiple times a day as we learned just how rapidly an infant can blaze through diapers, burp clothes, bips, onesies and a whole host of other baby products. I decided to save some money by signing up for the Babies R Us rewards card. Lo and behold, less than a week later our mailbox became deluged with coupons, flyers and catalogues from every baby product company on the planet. One of the items was the May 2010 issue of BabyTalk magazine. I was very happy to see it, being eager, especially in those early, insecure days, to absorb as much information about babies and parenting as I could. Then I noticed the cover. The tagline for BabyTalk magazine is “Straight Talk for New Moms.” The articles inside, as described on the cover, included: “Oh, Sweet Sleep, Moms Dish on What Really Works”; “Moms Who Rock!”; and “Help for Moms with Multiples.” I also received a letter from “Parenting Magazine” that purported to offer a special subscription to “Mr. W. Stewart Wallace only.” Forgive me for casting a skeptical eye at that claim, because in that same letter the magazine described itself as “The Resource for Moms with Young Kids!”
  

• A few months later, I spent untold hours researching the perfect jumperoo (out of seemingly thousands) for Max: what the important safety features were, which ones folded easily for storage, whether the different bells and whistles they came with were worth the cost, etc. I finally chose a jumperoo, and ordered it online. When it arrived at our apartment, the box touted that I had made a wise choice, because this jumperoo was not only “Better for Baby” but also “Better for Mom.”
  

• You may have heard of the online store where I bought this jumperoo: a little e-retailer named Amazon. In September, Amazon rolled out a new promotion for parents – if you agree to buy a certain amount of your baby products from Amazon, they will give you additional discounts off of the retail price for those products. The promotion is called “Amazon Mom.”
  

                             
• And finally, multiple times a day, every day, for the past 8 months, I have found myself face to face with a huge tub of Enfamil powder formula on the kitchen counter that Jacob and I scoop into baby bottles full of water to make Max’s feedings. Sometimes these encounters occur at 3 a.m. with Max bawling in my sluggish arms. And while I am muttering under my breath, what does the annoyingly perky yellow tub of Enfamil tell me? Why, of course, that it is not only “Trusted by Pediatricians”, but it is also “Trusted by Moms.”
   

Hmmm, notice a trend? A certain 3 letter palindrome beginning with “M”? 

I’m not trying to make a federal case out of the fact that baby product manufacturers cater to moms – they are entitled, and I’m man enough to read BabyTalk on the subway no matter who the cover stories claim to be directed towards. But that doesn’t mean I think it’s right, or that I have to like it. Let’s face it: these campaigns are disrespectful to the many actively engaged dads out there. Are parenting magazines really only a “resource for moms”? Is the jumperoo not “better” for dads too? Am I really the only “Amazon Dad”? And would I feed Max Enfamil all day, every day, if I didn’t trust it as much as moms do? I worked hard to join this club called parenthood, and I’ve worked hard to be a good parent. And yet many of the products, magazines and websites that I associate with in an attempt to be a good parent essentially tell me: “You’ve made a mistake.” “You aren’t for us.” “Look elsewhere.” “Why are you spending time looking at me when should be escaping to the office?” “Send your wife over instead, she’s the one we want to talk to.”  Frankly, it’s discouraging.

Is this really the message we want to send to dads? To boys growing up around these products who will become dads one day? Not only do dads have every right to make the mundane everyday parenting decisions for their children, but as a society we should be encouraging them – not discouraging them -- to do so.

Heaven knows that a lot of moms would welcome such input and relief from their other half about these decisions. Instead, these companies are essentially giving fathers a free pass to abdicate responsibility for all of the little decisions that help add up to being a parent. “ You see,” these guys can tell their wives, pointing to the way these products are advertised, “not my job.” 
 

And what is particularly frustrating is the seeming purposelessness behind the marketing of these products expressly to moms. Would it kill Amazon to name their promotion “Amazon Baby” instead of “Amazon Mom”? If a mom read that Enfamil formula is trusted by “Parents” instead of just “Moms” would she sniff and walk by, reaching for the Similac instead? Of course not. No mom is going to refrain from buying a baby product just because it is marketed towards parents or caregivers generally, instead of to moms specifically. Moms deserve a lot more credit than that. And I’m not even going to dwell on the fact that not all families even have a mom.

Raising kids is still a female-centric endeavor, I get that, but alienating half of the parenting population for no apparent reason seems to me to be both bad business and bad mores. Agree? Disagree? I’d love to know your thoughts.

Tennis, Anyone?

One of the annual bright spots during the typically dreary month of January is the start of the professional tennis season. While it is bitter cold and snowing outside here in New York, I get the pleasure of watching the first grand slam tennis tournament, The Australian Open, on television and listening to the announcers talk about how the on-court temperature has risen to 100 degrees and that the players need to be on the lookout for heat stroke. Is it crazy to feel a tinge of jealousy in hearing that?

Stewart and I are huge tennis fans, both as players and as avid followers of the professional game. As players, it has given us yet one more thing to be competitive with one another about – in addition to ping pong, backgammon, squash, Ms. Pac Man and who can get Max down at night the quickest (just to name a few!) Ironically, as competitive as we are when matched against each other, tennis has also literally brought Stewart and me together as a team unit. Before Max was born, we regularly played doubles together in a few tennis leagues in the city and have a few trophies to show for it. Everyone at the time worried for the state of our marriage when they heard that we played together. Would a pivotal missed shot by one mean that the other had to sleep on the couch that night? Fortunately not! We really enjoyed playing together.

We are also such fans of professional tennis that, perhaps sad to say, I can actually mark significant events within the parenthood journey to the four grand slam tournaments: Wimbledon, the U.S. Open, the Australian Open and the French Open.

Wimbledon marks a momentous moment in our path to parenthood because the tournament was taking place while Stewart and I tried to conceive a child with Christie for the first time in July 2009. Christie and her family are not big professional tennis fans, and I remember how tentative I was in asking them to turn the television to the tournament while we were hanging out in their living room trying to escape the intense summer heat of Georgia. When we tuned in, it was to the now-epic men’s tournament final between top seed Roger Federer and American Andy Roddick. Federer squeaked out the match 16 games to 14 games in the 5th set in the longest Wimbledon final ever. Christie’s husband Bill later told me that because I had us tune into the match he was actually able to join in on the water cooler conversation his colleagues were having the next day at work about the historic final.

Our first attempt at conceiving a baby that July did not take, and nor did our second try that August. Our third try was scheduled for early September, which happens to be when the United States’ tennis grand slam, the U.S. Open, takes place right here in New York City. Since Stewart and I started dating in 2001 we have gone to the US Open each of the three days that mark Labor Day weekend to watch the pros in action during the middle rounds of the tournament. We were crossing our fingers that we would not have to be in Georgia that weekend in 2009, because we knew it would be our last chance to attend the tournament with complete freedom and abandonment before the responsibilities of parenthood set in. Fortunately our fertility doctor in Georgia did not need to see us until the following week, and we had a wonderful time as always at “the Open.” However, that U.S. Open still marks a Max milestone because he was actually conceived the next weekend, which was the date of – you guessed it – the men’s tournament final. While we had other things on our mind and on our plate that day, we later learned that Roger Federer lost that final to up and coming Argentine Juan Martin del Potro in another epic showdown that lasted over 4 hours.

By the time the Australian Open rolled around in January of last year, Max was busy growing inside Christie and Stewart and I were feeling some measure of relief that he had made it through the nerve-wracking first trimester. But that didn’t mean that my life had become smooth sailing. I had recently been laid off from my job. While the Australian Open was broadcast live on television during the wee hours of the morning, Stewart and I made the big decision that instead of looking for work, I would devote myself full-time to preparing for Max’s arrival, and become a stay-at-home dad once Max entered the world. The rest, as they say, is history. Federer beat Scotsman Andy Murray in the tournament final in straight sets.

When the French Open rolled around in late May, Max was a couple of weeks old and Stewart was just returning to work. The tournament was broadcast live in the early morning New York time, and Max acted as my failsafe alarm clock. I would groggily get up and lay a blanket down in front of the television in the living room for Max and me to lay down on side by side to watch the early rounds together. Having my favorite sport to watch helped to distract me from the reality that I had the whole day ahead of me with just me and this brand new, fragile child who I was just getting to know. My one saving grace was a duela that we had hired to visit for a few hours at a time in the early-going to help answer some of our questions about how to take care of a newborn. One morning during the tournament she arrived and looked on in surprise at my set up in front of the TV. She laughingly told me that only a man would hang out with a newborn side by side on a blanket on the floor. She was used to seeing new moms clutching their babies tight against their bodies. She didn’t seem to get it that I had my space on the blanket and Max had his!  Oh for the days that Max would just chill on his side of the blanket -- long gone now! The Spaniard Rafael Nadal beat Swede Robin Soderling in straight sets to take the men’s title.

We can't wait to raise Max as a tennis player and as a fan of professional tennis.  After all, as you can see that his tennis roots already run deep!