Archive for October, 2009

I will have to admit that this year, this year was going to be something special. Normally Halloween isn’t my thing but this year was going to be something unique and amazing. My goal was to create something that worked well for me and the baby. Like all of my questions, I started on the internet but quickly found nothing. Seeing as pirates, vampires and zombies are hip right now, I decided to go with something safe. I ended up with was a rather lame pirate and baby pirate outfit. Boring, I know. Luckily for me, Diane is a real thinker and she came up with this…

Castle crashers!

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The day that my daughter was born was truly an amazing day. It’s not often that I break into uncontrollable tears but this was one of those moments. This was the moment that I became a father. Unfortunately this joyous occasion was not shared by the law, who at this point did not recognize me as the legal paternal father. As it turns out, just because you’ve provided the seed doesn’t legally make you a dad.

Since Diane and I weren’t married when our daughter was born, I had a lot of fears of what legal rights I had. As the father who attended all the appointments, read up on babies and put in my share of the work, I felt like I was entitled to everything. Asking around my work I heard horror stories from divorced men who were “screwed over with their kids” or “felt like they had no rights in the system.” I could see that maybe this wasn’t going to be a game I’d like to play, just waiting for the day the law messes with me. Well, sometimes the law doesn’t work like that, so for all those new fathers out there, here is a basic guide to being an unmarried father.

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This week I ask Diane to write about her first week working from home. This post also appeared over at Tocket.info, the home of Diane’s blog. With out further ado, I give you Diane…

Since giving birth I’ve been out on maternity leave for about 12 weeks. Having originally requested 8, the extra few weeks were both a bonus and a burden. On the one hand it was awesome to have more time to spend with my daughter and get her into a semi schedule. But the downside was my FMLA only covered 8 weeks, so for 4 extra weeks I was on my own money wise. Needless to say things got a bit tight. But now it’s back to work and back to making money. Goodbye Law & Order: Special Victims Unit! Goodbye Xena Warrior Princess! Hello web design and print ads!

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Ever since my daughter arrived in our house, I’ve been having sporadically crazy panic dreams. Well, to call it a dream would be bad classification on my part. It’s really a something that I’m doing when I wake up, which is quickly followed by panic. But I guess instead of just trying to define it, I should just tell you.

Set Up: I go to sleep first because Diane has the night shift. I curl up with 2 pillows, one for my head and another one that I shove under my shoulder so I can sleep on my stomach. I then fall to sleep rather easily and everything is great.

What Happens: Sometime during the night, maybe a few hours later, I’m half awake and I reach inside my pillow case and suddenly feel the baby in there. In a state of panic, I tear off the pillow case and realize that she isn’t in there. I search the pillow for the “hard object” that I felt earlier and generally about this time, I realize that it was nothing and I stop panicking. Sometimes I even go out and check on her to make sure everything is ok. The first time this happened I was so scared! Since then, I’ve been catching myself before I freak out too much but it never fails to get me at first. I’m always so sure that I felt something solid in my pillow case, and the only thing that could be is Amelia! So what’s going on with me?

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When our daughter first made it home from the hospital, we were a wreck. Diane had a C section, breast feeding wasn’t going so great and I was worried sick that something horrible was just about to happen. When we finally switched over to bottles, we encountered a major problem that we didn’t foresee coming – the gas bubble.

While you will encounter gas bubbles with breast feeding, bottles will compound the problem in ways you could never imagine. We found this out one day after a regular feeding that led to a marathon of death cies. We were both so confused because she was fed, had a clean diaper and she had just woken up from a nap. What we eventually figured out is that she had massive gas build up which lead to a massive burp – and everything was great. Since then, we’ve taken the time to master the art of baby burping and our lives has become that less hectic.

Dustin’s Rules to Little Gas Trouble Read the rest of this entry »