Ten Tips for Loving a Newborn Boy

If in his early hours outside the NICU you resist holding your baby for fear his neck might snap, try to look busy doing other things, e.g. ‘Grief blogging, ’ until your wife’s sheer urinary need forces the issue.

One: Should the child’s neck stay sound under your skittish maintenance, gain confidence.

Two: Hold the boy against your chest; burp the baby; note his small features resemblant of yours: the unassailable nose, the furrowed brow of confusion and contempt, the pronounced widow’s peak that calls to mind WWE’s Kane, described during the Attitude era as “the Devil’s favourite demon. ”

Three: If nearly a decade previous you had awoken in hypnopompic confusion, grasped your Affen Pinscher by her mid-quarters, and to the poor beast’s fiery consternation, patted her back while saying, “Got to burp the baby, ” understand this as preordaining your current responsibility.

Four: Consider his crying an apt response to the human condition, i.e. ‘Only two days old and seen enough of the prison planet already. ’

Five: If the hyper-maternal neonatal nurses grant you esteem for your clumsiest of efforts towards baby maintenance, realize that the bar to entry to fatherhood, much like grief expertise, is refreshingly low.

Six: Resent not that phrases like, ‘Everything changes when you see him, ’ or ‘First time I ever cared about anyone more than I cared about myself, ’ have been true all along, but that these flags were planted with trademark normie ineloquence, leaving nothing novel to blog of.

Seven: Relate to the oft-essayed, “When [Regular baby name such as ' Brawnzen'] was born my heart left my body and now it [less interesting version of ' roller-skates down embankments, ' 'plays dice in the alley with the sons of lewd women, ' etc.]

Eight: If you’ve reached this waystation on the highway of regret, realize with chagrin that now there is nothing you won’t do, e.g. ‘Only two chicken wings on plate better give both to Marcel_Proust, ’ ‘Driving him to Scarborough to play with a friend who doesn’t even strike you as cool, ’ e.g. ‘Giving him your hard-earned blogging remunerations for crass commercial products that he’ll believe himself to want or even need once pubescence dawns and he becomes an insatiable maw of low consumerist instinct. ’

Nine: See your partner in a new light: the light of estrogenic surplus.

Ten: Compliment a particularly winsome nurse on the genuine sentiment that must have gone into her “Live, Laugh, Love” tattoo.