Lessons Learned on my Paternity Leave: Two Months with my Daughter

I have been fortunate to spend the last two months with my daughter. I have learned so much about her and will cherish the memories that we have shared forever.

At first, I was nervous to take this amount of time off, even though I work for a company that not only grants a long paternity leave but encourages fathers to take the full amount of time granted. My company also encourages me to take my allotted leave at any time within 12 months of the birth of my child. This enabled my wife and me to stagger our leaves, with her taking 3.5 months off, family covering us for a month and then with me taking two months of leave, to get us to the end of 2019.

I author this post not to speak about my company’s paternity leave policy, but rather to share with you the lessons I have learned about my time with my daughter. 

Learn to unplug.

The enormous efforts of my team have  allowed me to unplug during this time and fully immerse myself in caring for and tending to my daughter, Summer. My teammates are some of the most caring, selfless and hardworking people I know. Being away from them for a couple of months only underscored these sentiments and made me that much more grateful for working with them. It also showed me that I am not irreplaceable, and I have seen how my teammates have stepped up in my absence. 

Learn to be a beginner again.

In the months leading up to my paternity leave, I was unquestionably as busy as I have ever been in my career. I was traveling at a breakneck pace, managing a bunch of large projects and large scale client events, and to top it all off, co-leading a large 100+ person event for my role in our Boulder office. I hadn’t come up for air and I was sprinting for several months, only to hit mid-October and be handed Summer, and forced to learn an entirely new skill set overnight, with very little training. As an established professional, I know what I’m doing at work, but at home, I had to get comfortable with being a beginner again. At first, that hurt. It’s hard to not know. But I had to take a breath and get ready to learn. 

Preparation is everything with a baby. You should have a contingency plan for every scenario to keep your sanity.

I failed early on. In only my second day of paternity leave, I took her in our jogger to Wicker Park (one of my favorite neighborhoods in Chicago) in a steady, cold rain with no food and her improperly dressed for the conditions. I had the bright idea to then take her up on the 606 (an old elevated rail line that has been re-purposed for running and biking paths) where I would (selfishly) get in a jog. My luck ran out as she burst into a fit of tears and shrieks early on in the run, while I was a good mile from our condo. I hustled back, but not after she had lost it in a full fledged episode. I learned that I couldn’t bank on hoping that she would be “good” for the next two hours. I needed to prepare for the worst case scenario and plan ahead diligently with the proper amount of clothes, food and a backpack full of all the essentials, including a warm pair of gloves (which I highly value now that we are into December).

Growth is being comfortable with being uncomfortable.

Throughout the last two months, we have planned several trips. Just three weeks into my leave, I piggybacked off of my wife Meredith’s work trip to Washington DC. Upon packing up Summer’s endless possessions for our 3-night stay in DC, I had persistent doubts about why I was pushing it with a newborn. Why did I feel the need to volunteer us to join her work trip, which included me flying home alone with Summer at the conclusion of the trip? The night before leaving I remember telling my wife that it would have just been easier had we let her go alone, and we stayed in Chicago.

We had a blast in DC, and Summer did well on the flights. We have since taken Summer to Philadelphia for her baptism and for Thanksgiving, which marked the 7th and 8th flights of her young aviation career. We had to be comfortable with being uncomfortable, and as my wife said, we had to be ok with getting to the airport two hours ahead of our scheduled departure, due to checking bags and getting Summer and her variety of belongings through security. As someone who has TSA precheck and flies for work often, I travel light and fast, so this was new to me. I had to accept these new challenges and routines, and getting out of Chicago and into new cities forced me to adapt and grow quickly. Full disclosure that the best of humanity comes out when you are traveling with a newborn. Even more of the goodness comes out when you are traveling solo with a newborn, which I have had the unenviable task of doing twice in the last 6 weeks.

Get outside and in nature

On rainy or particularly cold days, I could sense when Summer was getting fed up with the same playmat and exersaucer routine here in our condo. I could get her to lunchtime, but I knew that if I didn’t get her outside and into a more stimulating environment, she would feel cooped up and become fussy. As the Scandinavians say, “There’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes.” Even in light rain and chilly conditions, I bundled us up, and we went for walks to hear the leaves rustle on our tree-lined streets and to see school-aged children outside of the several schools in our neighborhood.

I also took three separate day trips to Starved Rock State Park, which is about an hour and 40 minute drive southwest of Chicago. This state park is known for its steep sandstone canyons formed by glacial meltwater. My sister tagged along for these trips, and we encountered more waterfalls and canyons than human beings seen on the trails during each of our three trips. We hiked nearly all of Starved Rock State Park through these three visits. Summer loved the cold, crisp air, the trees and the waterfalls hitting the various pools at the base of the canyons. She was alert and skipped naps to take it all in, which played to our favor. She would inevitably crash for the entire length of our drives back to Chicago.

We all have our places where we are 110% in that moment and don’t let life’s problems invade our thoughts. Starved Rock is one of those places for me, and I would like to think that Summer’s growth and development has been enhanced in hiking through this beautiful landscape.

Pro tip: If you plan to take your baby on hikes, walks or anywhere where streets are not paved , we highly recommend an Ergo baby carrier.

Cooking can be fun…if laborsome

I would never consider us foodies. We cook, but we’re the couple that has searched (more than once) ‘easy recipe for two’ while in the Jewel in the produce section and inevitably clicked on and chosen one of the first search results that popped up on our phone.

We have become more thoughtful and intentional with our meal prep now that we have a newborn to attend to. My recommendation is to do what works for you and saves you time. I actually don’t mind browsing a grocery store on a Sunday, with a list in hand. We have supplemented our weekend meal prepping with Instacart deliveries as well, to fill in the gaps between grocery runs. I have combined these grocery runs with several weeks of Blue Apron (2 meals per week), which I scoffed at for years as a solution that people turn to who don’t know how to cook. Let me tell you — Blue Apron is a labor of love. They send you the raw ingredients and detailed instructions. Get ready to sweat over creating pastes, purees and other concoctions that I didn’t know existed. Although prepping every Blue Apron dish took the better part of an hour, each and every dish they sent us was really good to great. I enjoyed putting together these fairly complex dishes during Summer’s late afternoon nap, to have dinner ready around 5:30pm.

Remember that ‘Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.’ (Ferris Bueller, 1986)

I thought of this quote as I started this post. As much as I have enjoyed the adventures with Summer, I have enjoyed the little moments as much as (or even more) than the larger excursions. Making Summer smile or laugh unlocks a deep happiness that I never knew existed. I could make her laugh over and over again, and somehow and for some reason, I still try to make her laugh for the 21st time. I can’t have enough and I don’t think I ever will.

These moments sustain and fill me with so much joy. These day-to-day moments are what I’ll miss when I return to work this week, but are also are what will sustain me during those difficult days when I know I can come home to her perfect, toothless, gum-filled smile and her radiant blue eyes.

I have filled the last two months with memories that will last a lifetime. I have also learned to slow down, take a look around and savor these small moments with Summer. Even if those moments include a poop-filled diaper in the middle of an airport, followed immediately by her peeing across her changing pad onto my pants. She will have moved on to a new phase, and with it, leave this phase behind. I look forward to the next stage, as Meredith and I both become full-time working parents, but I’m enriched by my days spent with my daughter. She and Meredith are the light of my life.