{"id":3288,"date":"2009-01-06T20:25:05","date_gmt":"2009-01-06T20:25:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2009\/01\/06\/uncomfortable-question-fatherh\/"},"modified":"2009-01-06T20:25:05","modified_gmt":"2009-01-06T20:25:05","slug":"uncomfortable-question-fatherh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2009\/01\/06\/uncomfortable-question-fatherh\/","title":{"rendered":"Uncomfortable Question: Fatherhood"},"content":{"rendered":"

In response to my call for uncomfortable questions, Ewan goes for the jugular<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

what do you think your biggest failing as a father has been to date?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

See, this is the sort of thing I’m talking about…<\/p>\n

The answer is “I get frustrated too easily.”<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The first few weeks SteelyKid was home, I could get her to go to sleep by holding her curled up on my chest. It was disgustingly cute and heart-warming, and also, little did I know, a brief idyllic period. Starting around week 5, that stopped working, and I have yet to find a sure way of calming her down when she starts melting down, or getting her to go to sleep at all.<\/p>\n

If I catch the signs of tiredness early enough, I can get her to go to sleep in a sling around my neck (though there are signs that this might be running out), but I can’t put her down afterwards without waking her up, which is kind of limiting. If she’s gassy, I can usually keep her somewhat quiet by carrying her around in the “airplane” configuration, but she won’t go to sleep that way unless she’s screamed herself out, which is sub-optimal for obvious reasons.<\/p>\n

When she gets cranked up, nothing I do seems to work, and it’s really frustrating. I’ve kicked or punched a lot of inanimate objects while stuck with Screamy Baby, because she just won’t shut up<\/em>, and it’s maddening.<\/p>\n

Kate has better luck than I do, I think because she can outlast SteelyKid in a lot of things, and will stick with a given baby-soothing method for longer than I can stand. I try cuddling and gentle rocking and all that, but after five minutes of kicking and inhuman shrieks, I give up and go with “airplane,” and just hope to manage the situation long enough to reach either the next reasonable feeding time, or until Kate gets home.<\/p>\n

I feel like a heel for that, and I’m trying to do better, but that’s unquestionably my biggest failing to date. In twelve or thirteen years, I’m sure SteelyKid will be happy to provide a long list of greater failings, but for the moment, that’s my answer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In response to my call for uncomfortable questions, Ewan goes for the jugular: what do you think your biggest failing as a father has been to date? See, this is the sort of thing I’m talking about… The answer is “I get frustrated too easily.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","category-steelykid","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3288\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}