I'm going to be a dad!

Cathy just rounded the corner between trimester one and trimester two, so now that the likelihood of a miscarriage is close to nothing, we can go public: she's pregnant. The baby's due November 30, give or take. We don't know the sex yet, we don't know what we're going to name it, we don't know how to baby-proof the condo, we don't know how to raise a healthy, happy child...there's oceans of ignorance, here, really. The thing that scares me the most right now is the whole never-getting-to-sleep-again thing. I like to sleep.
Cathy just read the last paragraph and asked, "What if it has two heads?" That scares me too, a little, although it only had one head in the last ultrasound.

Comments

[lukeyes]

What can I say other than CONGRATULATIONS!

[Noel]

Congratulations! Better cancel all your MMOG subscriptions now though :-) Are you even going to find time to keep writing here?

[RodeoClown]

Congratulations.
My wife and I had a baby boy about 7 weeks ago. It is a FANTASTIC feeling (and he slept for 9 hours last night, so don't worry, you can get SOME sleep :))

[Badman]

First off, congratulations!

As someone who's gone through this twice and will go through it a third time in November, here are my tips:

1. Yes, you'll still get to sleep, but probably not for more than four hours at a stretch. This will require some adjustment, but it's not impossible. Keep a close eye on your wife, though, because she's going to lose more sleep than you do, and every couple of days or so you'll need to run interference for her and let her get a good night's sleep.

2. Fears that the baby will have some sort of problem are perfectly natural and hardly ever justified. If the doctors aren't worried (especially after the ultrasound and amniocentesis - you did do the amniocentesis, didn't you?) then you shouldn't be worried either.

3. Babies are surprisingly hard to break. Of course, you don't want them to get hurt, so here's my number-one tip - when you go to change the baby, make absolutely sure that the diapers and wipes are close at hand before you open the baby's diaper. Opening the diaper and then realizing that one or the other is in another room and trying to run and get them before the baby rolls over is the number one reason for baby falls.

4. Get What to Expect the First Year. This one book did more to answer our questions and allay our fears than anything else.

5. Understand now that while you're going to start out boiling every bottle and cleaning constantly in an effort to "do everything right", eventually you'll simply be too tired to keep it up and your standards will drop. This is also perfectly natural.

6. Baby-proofing doesn't really become necessary until the baby learns to crawl. Once crawling starts, you must keep the floors clean - the baby will eat anything it finds on the floor. Once the baby is walking, you'll want to consider buying buffers to put on the corners of tables or other furniture and handles to put on the doorknobs to prevent the baby from opening them. Get a gate to put across the entrance to the kitchen - you don't want the baby in there at all.

7. For healthy mental development, you need to play with the baby as much as possible and also allow the baby to regularly come in contact with other children its age. Just be advised that all babies start crawling, walking and talking at different ages, and there's nothing wrong with your baby if it takes longer than the average time for it to master these things, as long as you see progress.

Hmmm...I think that's mostly it. If you have any questions, please feel free to email me. Again, congratulations - I guarantee that this will be one of the best experiences of your life.

[Steve]

Well done to both of you. I hope everything goes well. Having been a grandfather for a year, now, I'm having a "second go" at babies. It's going to be great for you.

[Markus Friedl]

Congratulations to you and Cathy!
Also good to know it's actually possible to work in the games industry and still have a life... ;)

[Markus Friedl]

Congratulations to you Cathy!
Also good to know it's actually possible to work in the games industry and still have a life... ;)

[Jeffool]

Wow, congratulations to you both! I... I got nothing... Just congrats!

[JB]

You know, as I was reading this (probably associating babies with games) I thought, wow -- what a cool idea for The Sims 2. I wonder if they thought of it? How to care for and nurture a simbaby. It could make a cool ancillary diversion fo new moms, too.

- JB

[JB]

Yeah, badman -- I didn't learn this until baby number four, but the best way for dads to get sleep is to sleep with the baby. It worked like a charm -- I just cuddled up with my daughter and we both slept for maybe three hours. Good bonding and all that but, bascially, you get the absolute most sleep possible because you both fall asleep at the same time. The only ting to remember: it can be a bit dangerous, especailly if you are a heavy sleeper and use a couch.

- JB

[Stuart Roch]

Congratulations! Great news! I'm sure you scheduled the delivery between important milestones? :)

[Rafael]

Congratulations to you both! Does the ultrasound show if it's going to be a gamer?

[jvalenzu]

Congratulations!

[Zachary Slater]

I will pay you $500 to name the baby 'Time Doctor Dot Org Fristrom'

[Martin Donlon]

Congratulations Jamie and Cathy! If I may, I recommend having an Irish baby. They are the BEST!

[Zachary Slater]

If it comes out Irish, then you need not apply to the above offer.

[Nat Loh]

Congrats!

simbaby? haha, that's like egg babies from middle school except no one is trying to kidnap them off the school bus and hold them for ransom only to return your sim/egg baby frozen in an icy coffin. or will they?

Wouldn't it be cool if you could use ultrasound to play Pong with your baby? i dunno. just a random thought.

[Jurie Horneman]

Congratulations, man!

[isaac]

Congratulations and I'm sorry. Congrats for all the happiness a child will bring. I'm sorry for the ceaseless torrent of advice you and your wife will be subject to during your career as parents.

[Jeffool]

Which is part of the reason that I'm naming my first male son 'Phred'. I figure with a name like 'Phred' other parents will hesitate to question my child rearing abilities. At least in front of me.

But mostly the reason is because Sam Kieth kicks ass, and 'Phred' is a nice name.

[RodeoClown]

Yeah, my best piece of advice is to ignore all advice...

Has your head exploded with the paradox yet? Anyway, I hope the birth goes well, my son's was fantastic (well... as good as they can really go, it still hurt my wife like hell, and THAT is really hard to bear, but it went a lot better than some friends of ours). Back to the comment on ignoring advice -> listen to everyone, but just pick the things you think are good, no-one knows your kid like you will, even doctors/nurses (although, they probably know the insides better...).

[-d]

On the mental side, studies of pregnant mice have shown that a baby's brain is "programmed" by the mother in-womb. This is not neccessarily to say programmed behaviourally, more that the smarter, more mentally active the mother, the better chance the child has w.r.t. intelligence.

If I recall correctly, the brain's complexity level metric was the number of dendritic connections or somesuch. Babies born to mother-mice in "complex" environs were born with more complex brains (reflective of the mother's level of brain complexity), while babies born to mothers in sterile cages were born with significantly fewer connections.

-d