It is the first of the important dates in any person’s life, allowing for the other important dates to even happen - the day you are born. It is a concept we are all familiar with, we all have one. We are constantly reminded of it by official documents or by password reset prompts online. 

But what about another person’s birth date? And not only any person or birth date, but your kid’s birth date. This is a person that comes from you and whose birth date happened because of you. Such is the magnitude of the day your child is born. 

Taking the words of a famous author: It is the best of times, it is the worst of times, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us - in short, the day is so far like our own birth that it is worth commemorating for the rest of our lives. The parents’ lives I mean. Though it might be second in importance to our birth, it is not by much.

But this post is not about how the birth of your first child changes you. I am still going through that change and I don’t think I will have a complete perspective on it any time soon. What this post is about is what the dad can literally do during that day and the ones immediately following it.

The first thing I realized, which now in hindsight seems obvious but I had to go through the actual day to understand it, is that the birth is the mother and the baby becoming two separate beings. They are in some way the same person one second and the next they are two distinct ones. It is simple yet complex, easy yet hard, exciting yet nerve-wracking, all at the same time.

A successful birth could be defined from several points of view, like medically, but what does a successful birth look like for the parents? To me, that day and the ones following it are all about ensuring a peaceful transition. For nine months, all of the baby’s existence, mother and baby have been together in a very unique way. After birth, they are still together but it is different. The mother needs to recover from the effects of giving birth and the baby needs to start adjusting to real life, the one outside of the womb. 

Neither is impossible. If they were, none of us would be here. But they do require a lot of effort on behalf of the parents. The mother has her work cut out for her and it is pretty straightforward: to recover physically from the wounds of birth and to breastfeed the baby. But where does the dad come in in all of this? 

As mentioned in the introduction, please refer to your chosen source of specialized information to learn about meconium, colostrum, and all the new words you will hear in those first few days. You will not find that below.

I would refine the question a little bit more to this: How can a father help to ensure the mentioned peaceful transition both for the mother and the baby? After having gone through it, my answer to that question is that the dad can and should:

• Do everything he can to bond with the child,
• Do everything he can to reduce and avoid stress for the entire family; and
• Do everything he can to allow the mother to rest.

Someone telling you to bond with your child when it is your first baby might as well be like someone telling you to fix your car or fly a commercial plane. Where do you even begin? Nor like fixing internal combustion engines or flying heavy machinery, bonding with a newborn is relatively easy - you just need to be close to them. 

A baby just does three things: Sleep, eat, and go to the bathroom (ideally in a diaper, which is not always the case if she decides to go right when you are changing her!). So the way to bond with a newborn baby is to simply help put her to sleep, with eating, and with the diaper change. And lastly, the gold standard of bonding - holding the baby. If you actively do those four things, you are going to get to know your baby fast, which will allow you to feel comfortable around her quickly. It will also help get your parental instinct to kick in faster. Because trust me, we all have it.

The following way a dad can be helpful during birth and the days immediately after is to reduce and avoid stress for the entire family. And when I say family, I mean the one just completed when the child was born - mother, father, and baby. Reducing and avoiding stress can take many forms. For example, something with the baby does not look right? Dad can make sure the pediatrician sees her as soon as possible, both for the baby’s sake and for the parents’ peace of mind. An overly excited family member is disturbing the peace? Dad can ask them to give the family space for a few hours. A nurse is not providing the care you think you need? Dad can coordinate with the hospital so they change it to another one.

Much like knowing what is best for your baby once the parental instinct has kicked in, identifying a stressor will come naturally. In any case, my suggestion would be to err on the side of being excessively cautious and setting boundaries that might look too strict later, rather than not setting the boundaries and letting the stress harm you during those critical first days.

Finally, the last way I suggest a dad to help during the birth and the next few days is to do everything in his power to make sure the mother rests. She not only needs to recover from giving birth, but she also needs to breastfeed the baby often and regularly. If the mother cannot rest, she will not peacefully transition to the new stage where she can do that. If you as the dad are bonding with the child, which in those first days and weeks entails taking care of her, and reducing outside stress, it will most likely be the case that your wife will be able to rest.

I realized this was important a few hours after my baby was born, when I saw my wife lying down on the bed after spending almost 12 hours giving birth, holding the baby against her breast to feed her. To my mind came the hypothetical scenario where she fell asleep while breastfeeding and she accidentally dropped the baby. Catastrophic, right? At that moment, I realized that getting my wife to sleep would have a positive ripple effect on the entire family.

The order of the three recommendations for the big day and the ones immediately after is not by chance. I believe that the more you bond with your baby, the faster you will feel comfortable around her, which then will allow you to feel more relaxed and collected to face outside stressors, which will then create the perfect environment for your wife to be able to sleep, rest and recover faster. You, as the dad, have the power to create a virtuous cycle that will ensure you get that peaceful transition.