Man, there's so much you learn on the fly becoming a father. You can take classes, read, and plan, and in the end... there's so much more to it, so much you didn't anticipate, so much more you need to know.

You Don't Know What You're Going to Need

We had a list of things we knew we needed before the baby came. Went out, and got all those things, and thought we were prepared. Hoo-boy, were we wrong. Turns out, you don't know what you're going to need until you need it.

There's a whole shopping list of things we ended up buying after baby was born.

Accept it!

Bottles

If you're dealing with bottles, at all, save yourself water and energy: Go buy yourself a bottle warmer and a bottle sterilizer.

While you can do things using pots, burners, stoves, you quickly discover that it's an enormous use of water an energy. Using a pot for sterilization means boiling a few litres of water. Using a sterilizer; 100ml.

Nutrition

The first two weeks in particular, you're adapting to the crazy sleep schedule, you're adapting to the demands of a baby. It's so easy to get your nutrition wrong: don't.

We were really prepared for dinners: Andrea cooked a bunch of meals that we froze for eating. What we were unprepared for were snacks.

Make sure you have snacks you can eat in the middle of the night that have protein; don't just down a juicebox or a couple slices of bread.Making smoothies with protein powder, and pepperoni sticks turned into a lifesaver for me.

Sleep

So it turns out that it's really easy to not get enough sleep with a baby. I would highly, highly recommend that you track how much sleep you're getting.

I started tracking after two weeks, and it quickly became clear I wasn’t getting enough, and it was very likely neither was Andrea. Just seeing it made it possible to work on it.

I use Sleep Diary, a pretty no frills app that let’s me hit a button when I get into bed, and hit it again when I get out of bed. Good enough!