Yenz @deyennie - Twitter Profile

My fellow men, we need to talk about postpartum care. Before Rumi was born, I read up on postpartum. Hormonal changes, baby blues, sleep deprivation, mood swings (I am thorough, bro). I thought I was reasonably prepared. Yeah, so that was a big misjudgment. I was absolutely NOT prepared. Turns out reading about this phase and actually living it are not the same thing at all. So I'm not going to pretend I have a solution. Think of this as a note you can come back to when you're in the middle of it and have no idea what you're supposed to do. 1. Put your ego somewhere very, very far away. A friend told me this before Rumi was born: "For the next few months, destroy your ego. Take everything on the chin." I nodded as I got it. Oh boy, I did not get it. Your wife has just gone through pregnancy, delivery, physical recovery, a hormonal crash, no sleep and being responsible for another human 24/7. This is not the time to win arguments. There were plenty of moments where I wanted to defend myself or explain what I actually meant. Honestly, most of those moments did not need a defence lawyer. 2. You are the translator between her and the rest of the world. Biggest learning for me. Parents, in-laws (this needs its own thread), relatives, friends, visitors, phone calls, everyone's opinion on feeding and sleeping and how to hold the baby. All of it should come to you first. You take the hit, you filter it, and only the useful and kind stuff gets to her. Someone wants to visit at the wrong time? You handle it. A dozen people want updates? You handle it. She is recovering. Don't make her manage everybody else's feelings on top of that. 3. Stop trying to solve everything. I am always in problem-solving mode, and I have learnt that females hate it. There were days my wife would cry and neither of us could say why. My default with any problem is "okay, what's wrong, how do we fix it." Terrible strategy here. Sometimes there's nothing to fix. She just needs to get everything out of her head while someone listens without turning it into an action plan. So sit with her. Listen. Hug her. Ask what she needs, and then actually do that thing. And if the crying doesn't ease off after a couple of weeks, or something just feels off, that's a doctor's job, not yours. Get help. 4. Don't wait to be asked. This one is straight from my wife. The baby is your job anyway, that doesn't count. Notice her. Get her food. Fill her water bottle. Offer a massage. Take stuff off her plate before she has to assign it to you. And every so often, give her the one thing that basically disappears once there's a newborn in the house: your full attention. Phone away, no baby logistics, just her (I was playing IPL fantasy during this phase and it was a bad decision). 5. Rehearse, if you can. If you're anything like me, you forget things. Especially at 3am. Nothing on this list works if you only read it once, so go over it now and again before the baby arrives. Be a bit deliberate about it. Looking back, I think I got "being prepared" wrong. I thought it meant knowing what could happen. What it actually means is remembering all of this at 3am, half asleep, holding a crying baby, while your wife is having one of the worst days of her life. Trust me, you're going to need it.

51

4K

563

3K

692K