Now, I don't feel too much sympathy for these guys who have used their wall street fortunes to indulge virtually every man's desire for an entourage-esque lifestyle. But as I face impending fatherhood, I thought it more appropriate to share the nuggets of wisdom a good friend of mine shared with me about tips on fatherhood. He is a "work at home" father and is therefore, I would argue, more qualified than most to offer his insights:From Bar Harbor, Me., to Virginia Beach, there is a particular boy of summer who can be found preserving a postcollege life decades past his undergraduate days. While most party-oriented summer share houses are filled with single people in their 20s and early 30s, who seek weekends of beachside fun for several seasons before moving on to the more sober pleasures of marriage, a few share houses include men with more than 40 summers under their trunks.
These surfside Peter Pans survey each summer’s crop of young women on the sand like an incoming class of freshman co-eds on the quad. Theirs can be a bittersweet existence, where the highs of the evening’s party are occasionally doused by the recognition that matrimony and fatherhood may be slipping away with each relationship that dissipates on a cool September wind.
I don't know what you do with your free time now, but start coming to terms with the fact that you'll be doing a lot less, if any, of it when the baby comes. The most frustrated parents you see are the ones who haven't accepted that. As working stiffs, you and Aki will be especially bereft of "you" time. And, don't expect to get points from the kid for working hard all day to provide. Kids have no concept of that bread winner stuff, and they don't get it until they have their own job. That means you have to put in your hours of quality parenting after work and all weekend. Luckily, being a father is, by far, the best feeling in the world, and that feeling will carry you through even the stinkiest, stickiest most ear-splitting duties.
Stay informed, but don't even try to digest every piece of advice you read or hear. Find a good pediatrician, and trust their judgment, as well as your own instincts. It's nice if the doctor has office hours on weekends and holidays. Separate sick and well waiting rooms are a plus, but not a must.
Find a setting on your car radio that gets nothing but static, and make it a preset. When the baby starts screaming while you're sitting in traffic, crank up the static. It'll put his/her butt right to sleep faster than Ice Cube's jimmy. When you're not in the car, a Radio Shack transistor radio works better than any fancy noise machine, and it also gets ballgames.
Be consistent. The short-term consequences of failing to enforce a rule, because you're tired or busy or you don't want to cause a tantrum, are small, but the consequence of teaching your kid that your rules are negotiable will be disastrous as they get older. I say that not just as a parent, but also as a former juvenile delinquent.
Don't wait until the week before the due date to install the car seat. If the baby comes early, you don't want him/her and Aki sitting around the hospital while you're out in the parking lot wrestling with the damn thing. The same goes for deciding about circumcision...if it's a boy. If it's a girl, don't. Also, don't cheap out on the car seat...or the crib...or the mattress...and stay away from bumpers...and pillows...and blankets (except for a swaddle blanket, which I highly recommend).If it fits through a toilet paper tube, it's too small for a baby to play with.
Don't put off diaper changes. If you do, the baby may get diaper rash, and once they do, it'll come back again...and again...and again.Diaper Champs are better than Diaper Genies, because you can use regular kitchen garbage bags in them.
Babies don't get sarcasm. That's one I'm still struggling with.
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