Spanking! Put that off until baby 2 yrs. That will change!

Breastfeeding is Mom’s department. Thanks for sharing, Dad.
If you can compromise on covering chest area for privacy, good
work.

Use this Blog-ster, as 2nd opinion. Make a game of it for New Dad.

Cheers and enjoy the new beginnings!

Spanking. That’s another big one too!

List can be amended w/ time and experience. Record journal of comments, cause and effect during this time, as years from now, you will enjoy the memories of new parenthood together. Establish communication, as new Parents. Your Baby’s health depends on it!

Also, all of the things that we did discuss turned pear-shape once the baby arrived.

He: I’ll work so you can stay at home.
Me: That’s great!
(reality: I wanted to go back to work by 5 months so much!)

Me+He: Breast is best.
(reality: it was best but soooo hard!)

Me+He: We will follow Babywise and get this babe on a schedule
(reality: baby had other plans for us)

I truly believe that having a foundation of open communication is sooo important, so maybe just having the conversations was a good thing even if we went back on everything.

But more importantly, talk to your partner about the how to deal with day to day conflict. Try and discover a way to talk to each other about disagreements. If you want something done a certain way with the baby don’t talk from a place of certainty, try a talk from a place of co-designing how you both care for your baby. Also, a very handy trick is knowing when to put a conversation “on hold”. It doesn’t mean you don’t care and it doesn’t mean you disagree, its just a way to say, “I’m feeling a little overwhelmed can we come back to this later?” It’s a gift you give to the family. A way to move toward peace when you know you are starting to get reactive.

What helped is that we read the book How to Have Your Second Child First which gave us insight to other’s parenting experiences and figure out what side of the spectrum we were on.

Also, while you don’t know whether you’ll be a schedule follower or flexible type of parent, it’s good to discuss both.

Our theory is that if you at least know where the other person is coming from, or what they are imagining/thinking about these important things, it will be easier to carry on making choices together when you are sleep-deprived and dealing with so much change. So I would say we talk about our ideals – like ideally how we would like to deal w/ sleep training, ideally how we would like to deal w/ splitting responsibilities, ideally how we would like to deal w/ who will work and when, ideally how and when we would like to travel, and so forth – knowing that those are ideals but not absolutes since obviously the actual baby will change so many things when he gets here. Still, knowing what your partner is imagining will happen seems to be a place of strength vs. not having a clue about how he or she is thinking things will go. Sometimes when we talk it becomes clear my husband has not realized certain things – eg how much physical help I might need after C-section, when might be an appropriate time for in-laws to descend based on practical considerations, what to expect realistically from my mom, etc – and I feel much better knowing we have a foundation to work from and won’t have to start at the basic level on these topics when we have a 1 week old.

But we are lucky because we are coming to the baby party so late, so we have so many examples of what has worked (and not worked) for other parents, so our conversations can be based in real-life examples and not Pollyanna-esque scenarios.