Newborn is in a very uncomfortable conditions for him. He used to be in a liquid environment. It was very noisy environment: there was a lot of sounds made by mothers body, digesting and more importantly heartbeat. It was dark there. But now he is on the air, he need to breathe, he hears silence with interruptions by some sharp sounds (in the belly sounds are different, I think there are no high frequences), and there are lights. Moreover first year baby experiences difficultes with thermoregulation of his body. Probably there are more things that trouble him, I'm not pretending to give you a full list.
Give him "heartbeat", give him a smell of his mother, ensure he is experiencing comfortable temperature, and he, probably, would get quiet. Try it with real mother first, let her take him, lay his head near her heart. If it works, get mother's dirty T-shirt and place it near nose of a baby. You can also try find some audio track, which makes your baby happy by sounding similarly enough to a heartbeat. The psychologist told a story of mother, who liked to walk near railways: her crying baby stopped cry every passed train, because he experienced noise level he used to. Moreover that was rythmic noise, like heartbeat. I don't think it is good idea to reach such levels of noise indoors at night, but you got an idea: do not make silence in his room, let it be some constant rythmic noise.
Though it does not work every time. Sometimes baby just don't want to sleep and get bored. But not in first few weeks: the first few weeks for him is a constant suffering of adaptation to a completely alien environment.
There are many languages (notably Slavic ones) that don't have articles. My guess is that the comment author is a native speaker of one of those languages and not English.
They seem like an unneeded extra, from the perspective of Slavic languages, where the information that they give is most often easily inferred from the context or the construction of the sentence.
I'm a night owl, so don't feel pressure to rush it, and just settle in for the long haul and relax and daydream myself, planning to finish my day once the kids are good and settled. My wife gets tired at night and spends the time tallying her remaining chores and work that needs finished before she can get to bed herself, and the kids then tend to not settle down.
It's harder now with our 3 year old, who uses mama's hair as her bedtime lovie.
Feeling the weight of your little baby in your arms is fleeting so try to really experience it.
After he falls asleep in your lap you can put on some headphones and look at your phone.
From now on getting off the clock at your dayjob is just hour #1 of your night job.
Obviously you can't just hide all your feelings, but I now try not to be as frustrated about things that I can't help.
I used to think that I would be able to get an hour or two of work done when he was asleep,but the result was never good. I was stressed out after my third month of paternity leave. For the remaining months (we get 195 days to use as we please at 80% pay in Sweden) I just called down and learned to be happy with my day if we managed to
1. Walk the dog for at least one 1-2hr walk
2. Have some kind of social inreraction with grown-ups.
I now just sleep/relax whenever he's sleeping. Good days he sleeps a good 3hr mid day, and those days I try to get things done, but depending on how the night was sometimes I just do 3hr of relaxing and doing things that I know are good for me.
We get 195 days/parent at 80% pay (my union has however negotiated an extra 10% if I take most of those days consecutive during the first two years after the child was born).
Then we get an extra 45 days/parent with something like 100-150 SEK/day.
Until this year there was an extra bonus when the parental leave was shared equally between parents, so we got an extra 15k SEK (~$2k).
I've heard this from a few people, and I don't understand it. The whole idea of paternity leave is to allow you to care for a newborn -- it's not supposed to be a vacation!
If the kid's starting to eagerly take bottles then pulling away screaming it could be reflux. If they're also screaming as if in great pain when placed in certain positions (say, in their crib instead of upright in your arms) it's really bad reflux, and/or it's been going on a while. All three of ours and like 1/2 the other kids in my circle of friends had issues with it. If it's bad and untreated it'll fuck up their esophagus (fixable, but it'll hurt 'em for a while) and make sleep training and feeding both horrible. Happened to our first, didn't know the signs and doctors at first were like "LOL it's fine first time parent, you're just an idiot", cleared up fast (better in like 48 hours, way better inside a week, even better with later ones where they didn't have esophageal damage) once we got meds. Get that shit fixed and feeding/sleep issues will be way easier to manage (they're impossible if you don't).
Newborn stage is way worse for women unless you use formula, of course. They're never more than like an hour from another feeding or pumping, seems like. Even at night.
On the bright side, be aware that to someone with three kids, temporarily only having to care for only one kid for some reason (others with wife, others with parents, whatever) basically feels like having no kids. So freakin' easy. So if you aren't having a good time now... god, don't have more, they're a multiplier on the difficulty. Going from one to two is rough. Two to three's not better. I hear it levels off after that but don't know first hand.
So know that I envy how laughably easy you have it. That should make you feel better, right? :-)
Seriously, the first one's a bit of a shock to the system, which I well remember, and I don't envy you. Good luck! 6m-18m is pretty damn cool provided you get the sleep stuff sorted out before then. So you have that to look forward to. Before they turn into horrible little entropy demons :-(
If you can, tag team. For at least a while, let the baby's sleep schedule be what it is, and just hand off every few hours so someone can sleep. If that's in the dark hours, great. If not, you'll be tired enough anyway that it doesn't matter.
Personally, I'm glad fatherhood is evolving. I love spending time with my son. I just tell myself to try and enjoy what I can, because at somepoint, it'll be different, and I will miss it.
Congrats on being a dad, btw.
I then used to take out the car seat with her so not to wake her up.
Hang in there!
EDIT it was a lot less like a joke originally. Apologies for the offense caused by missing that.
Thanks for the feedback. I made the list more outrageous so it's more obvious.
A lot of male comedians transition to family jokes after having children. This could be the catalyst for my stand up career!
I do it daily. I'm hilarious (to no one but myself).
I have bad news for you. Getting a newborn to sleep is child's play. Try getting two 5ish year olds off to school in the morning. It's basically impossible!
"dadmedians" Your kids will love hearing that about their dad, until they are older anyway and start to roll their eyes :)
Also, I took pictures of baby peeing on himself to show to his future dates. Can't wait!
My father deliberately didn't take those sort of photos for exactly this reason: he knew my mother would use them to humiliate my brother and I as we got older.
I imagine that faced with your first newborn, one might logically assume that there would be periods where the child slept leaving some time for other activities. In reality, the only "hobby" the new parent will want to engage under those conditions is getting some sleep.
I spend 100+ minutes every day changing diapers. Actually that's not true, most of my time is spent trying to put the stupid newborn to go to sleep. I thought paternity leave was going to be chill and maybe I can learn a new hobby, master javascript, or travel to Europe. Nope, more stress than day job.
I think fatherhood is evolving too. My father's generation almost did nothing and that was acceptable. That is changing. One of the women in a dual income family says "Mom handles input, Dad handles output."