Six Lessons from My First Six Months as a Parent

Posted on February 10, 2014 by Rob Pollak

It’s been almost six months since Owen was born, and in that time, I’ve learned a lot about the world. Lucky for you, I have a blog, so I can happily share these life lessons with you. To keep things simple, I have decided to leave out the obvious lessons, like “You won’t need an alarm clock anymore” or “Golf is something you used to do, Rob” or “use a wipe, not your hand” or “moms lose baby weight; dads find it.” You know these things!

Lesson 1: The minutes are long, but the months and years are short

At every first birthday party, the parents stand up and say, “Wow, this year really flew by.” I’m sure that I will give that obligatory speech when my son hits one year. But what does it really mean for time to fly by? There are times when I look at my son and think, “Holy shit, he’s a little person. It seems like just yesterday that I was getting weekly email updates from babycenter.com describing his size as about that of a kernel of corn. So in some ways, yes, the time flies by. But sometimes I am equally shocked about how long certain moments feel. Like I bet you didn’t know that when a baby screams in your ear, you can sing the same verse of twinkle twinkle 14,221 times without the minute hand on the clock moving even once. Then after giving it all you got and check to see if the baby’s asleep, you look down and see this looking up at you:

I can sometimes hear him saying, “Nice try, dude.” When the year is done and it feels as if it flew by, don’t forget about how excruciating some of those individual moments were. There’s practically a life time in there. Take one of those long moments to reward yourself for a job well done. You (I) deserve it!

Lesson 2: Holding a baby is an amazing lower back workout

There is probably some medical reason why it’s bad to arch your back just so in order to support the full weight of a small human being on your chest But for now, I’m sticking with it. In fact, there are a number of ways that a small child can be used like a medicine ball or kettle bell. I’ll leave it up to you to decide which exercises lend themselves to the child as medicine ball approach, but here’s where I come out:

YES:

NO:

YES (Anne wants me to make it explicitly clear that she says this is clearly a no):

NO:

Maybe:

Definitely NO:

Lesson 3: If you’re going to use Habanero Tabasco Sauce, wash your hands before you put your contact lenses in your eyes.

This one has nothing to do with parenting, but it’s a valuable lesson nonetheless. You would also think that it’s the kind of lesson I’d only need to learn once. Not so! I once read that it takes 21 times to create a habit. So let’s just say that I’m well on my way to making washing my hands after Tobasco a lifelong habit. About 1/7th of the way there to be exact.

Lesson 4: Getting out of changing a diaper is an art.

Getting out of changing a diaper is a subtle skill, and I am lucky to be married to a beautiful, kind, caring, considerate, intelligent, gracious, tolerant woman who has mastered it.

Here is Anne preparing to diaper bomb me.

Now don’t get me wrong, Anne changes a shitload of diapers. Literally. (Get it?) (Because the diapers are sometimes filled with shit) (You get it) (It was bad. I know). But, she still manages to be an expert at the diaper bomb, i.e., handing a fully loaded baby over to get out of changing the diaper, but couching it in terms of love, with some sweet saying like, “Ohhhh, do you want to do some daddy hugs??” which makes me feel so great! Well played, Anne. Well played.

[A brief note to my female readers: Please refrain from your inevitable comments about breast feeding, giving birth, the physical demands of pregnancy, blah blah blah. I get it. Anne does not deserve to be the butt of my jokes. Well, she can get her own blog, damnit. Because when she hands me our child in the name of love, but actually intended for me to have to touch shit with my bare hands, then I get to blog about that. Also, this never happened. Most of you know that, I’m sure. Anne is a saint. (But just to be conservative, I just purchased Annecomplains.com and AnneComplainsAboutRob.com. Suck it, Anne!!]

Lesson 5: When it comes to parenting, most people are completely insane.

The other day a friend posted an article on facebook about rear facing car seats. First of all, who cares what other people do? Second of all, I freaking read the article and all the comments. Third of all, the comments were the most amazing thing I’ve read in my life. Here’s a summary of the comments:

Person 1: A friend of mine recently switched the seat to front facing because her daughter was screaming so much that it caused her to get in 250 accidents. When we switched to forward facing, she never had an accident again and the kid went on to the Nobel Prize for Car Seat Safety. Do you think this is okay?

Person 2: @P1 – If your kid is less than 15 and is facing forward, you are a terrible person. I hope you rot in hell.

Person 1: @P2 – Oh really? Well you can’t argue with results and my friend’s Nobel Laureate daughter is so much safer now.

Person 2: @P1 – She might be safe now, but if you hit a pothole, her head will probably pop off. #RearCarSeats4Life #YouMurderousBitch

Person 1: @P2 – You probably realized it by now, but my friend is really me. I lied to you because I was embarrassed. Sorry I lied on the Internet.

Person 2: @P1 – I am calling child protective services. You’re a whore.

Person 1: @P2 – I hope your kid can sit forward facing in High School, assface.

Let’s put this in some perspective. When people argue about child rearing on the Internet, logic goes out the window. It’s completely acceptable to use the small sample size of 1 child as a valid defense to an argument. If someone says, “it’s bad to give an infant alcohol,” another person thinks it’s okay to respond with, “yeah, but we gave my son a little vodka in his bottle every day until he was 3 and he became a neurosurgeon.” Just because it worked for A kid, doesn’t mean that it’s the right thing to do. As Wayne Campbell once said upon receiving a gun rack for his birthday, “I don’t even own a gun, let alone many guns that would necessitate an entire rack.”

Seriously, go read the comments. I am obsessed: http://csftl.org/rear-facing-car-seat-myths-busted/

Lesson 6: Blogging is Hard with a Kid. When in Doubt, Just Show Pictures.

I’m trying my best!

The post is over, how does that make us feel?

The latest round of personalized thank you notes

Posted on January 4, 2013 by Rob Pollak

Planning on getting another round of these done today. I know you’re all patiently awaiting for your drawing. I wish I could get these done faster, but (and this should be obvious) I am meticulous about my work.

Epididymis Isn’t a Greek Philosopher and Other Lessons I Wish I Learned in Health Class

Posted on January 3, 2013 by Rob Pollak

I learned a lot about life in 9th grade health class. I learned that condoms go on bananas, drugs are bad, and girls immediately get pregnant if you look at their boobs instead of their eyes.

Through a lot of trial and error — and one horribly embarrassing conversation in which I insisted that the Fallopian tube was part of a trombone — I now realize that health class didn’t teach me everything. Particularly when it comes to pregnancy. That’s because a wrestling coach who was coerced into teaching one semester of health may not have been the best person to teach me.

All of this is just a long winded way of saying that my wife Anne and I have spent the last few years trying to have a baby. It all started when we realized that there were times when kids could actually be cute. (Overalls, yes. Spit up, no. Sunglasses, yes. Afterbirth, no.).

And since the entirety of my knowledge of human biology came from that health class, I was surprised at how difficult it was to add a little one to the family. Believe me, after we pulled the proverbial goalie, we gave it a valiant effort:

As it turned out, you don’t get a baby just by watching clips of trains driving into tunnels, geysers erupting, or fireworks exploding in midair. The real process involves way more than that. For many people, it can take years, involves elaborate scheduling, and includes a monitor that measure ovulation on a 3 point scale. If you pee a 1, you watch reruns of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. If you pee a 3, well let’s just say that one time Anne peed a 3 while she was in Delaware and I was summoned across three state lines. It was perhaps the greatest moment of my life.

And for us, none of that seemed to work, so the process involved asking for medical help in the form of in vitro fertilization (IVF). As if pregnancy wasn’t already scary and overwhelming enough, the IVF process is complex and intimidating. When Anne first called to set up an informational meeting, the nurse walked her through the schedule of an entire IVF cycle, our child’s birthdate, the theme for his first birthday party, the song he’d dance to at his wedding, and the massive inheritance he would receive from the proceeds of my million dollar blog.

If you’re freaking out at the level of oversharing that’s happening in this post, don’t fret. My intention in writing this post is to remove the veil of secrecy that prevents people from talking about this process and to help others navigate it. Because, for me, it took a while to realize that the lesson from high school Health class — that pregnancy is easy — turns out to be wrong. Pregnancy and fertility are way more complex and terrifying than I had ever imagined.

Orientation and Background Testing

If you also didn’t pay attention in your high school biology or health classes, then you may be in for a surprise when you start the IVF process. Thankfully our experience began with orientation, which consisted of an extremely patient nurse walking us through an interminable powerpoint presentation.

After the orientation we were herded into the blood room. I call it that because it’s the room where women go to provide vial upon vial of blood to a staff of nurses who constantly ask for their birth dates. That first day, I watched a nurse remove 25 gallons of blood, one 2-ounce vial at a time, from Anne’s vulnerable little arm. The experience looked terrible, and I thanked my lucky stars that I didn’t have to participate.

A moment later, however, the nurse asked me if I was Jewish. She probably had racially profiled me based on my massive schnoz, superior intellect, and yamulke tan. I answered yes, but was unprepared for what happened next. She sat me down in the chair, alcohol’ed up my arm, and stabbed me in the vein with an olympic javelin sized needle.

Moments later, when I came to, a group of amorphous blurs in scrubs were shoving smelling salts in my face. My shirt was sopping wet with sweat, and I had achieved a level of paleness that bordered on translucent. Our IVF experience was off to a great start!

Because I had thoroughly embarrassed the family, I was pleased to find that, from that day forward, my only responsibility was to hold Anne’s coat. Anne, on the other hand, was the subject of constant examination. Most of which involved a small army of doctors sending the Hubble telescope into areas of Anne’s body that she would be uncomfortable having me mention on the internet.

Up next: Part 2 – Actually, there was one other thing I had to do… My trip to the Boom Boom Room (Follow my facebook page to receive an update when I post)

Even more personalized thank you notes.

Posted on December 31, 2012 by Rob Pollak

There’s no greater way to end a year than by thanking more and more of my loyal readers.

More personalized thank you drawings for my amazing and talented readers

Posted on December 30, 2012 by Rob Pollak

I’ve been working furiously through the holiday season to get to each and everyone of my devout readers. Many of whom will never see these since they ignore my posts. Regardless, I hope that you enjoy them and try not to get mad if I haven’t gotten to you yet. It doesn’t mean that I don’t love you, it merely means that I haven’t figured out an offensive yet somehow still inoffensive way to say thanks. Your time will come (except for the one person who “unliked” me since yesterday. I hope that person suffers a horrible stubbed toe today).