[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Daddy O podcast. I'm your host, Rob Burnett.
[00:00:04] Speaker B: And I'm your co host, Brad Bickerton.
[00:00:06] Speaker A: And we're the daddyos. We are both ceos and new dads, and we are diving into our dad life with some dad jokes like the name of this podcast. But welcome, welcome. Thanks for joining us. We are both ceos. Brad has extensive experience against coaching ceos. I am the CEO of a fintech company, and both of us realized that we are entering the fatherhood journey at about the same time. We both want to be high performers at both being ceos and being dads and being partners as well. I don't want to forget that. And we decided to document our fatherhood journey together by creating this podcast. So we are ignorant of many things, dad. So take all of our advice and musings with a grain of salt. We hope you'll join us on this journey, and hopefully you'll learn something.
So with that, on today's pod, you're going to hear about traveling with baby and getting out. You're going to hear where we both are this week in our fatherhood journeys. And if you stay tuned to the end, you'll hear our wins and fails for the week. So with that, Brad, how are things going in your world? What's going on?
[00:01:16] Speaker B: Things are great around here. New house is settling in, and we're starting to get used to some things. It's really fun and good, and yeah, we're just generally pleased and happy about life right now. And really stay tuned for my dad. Fail. It is epic. It is big. There's no way around saying, oh, I just kind of didn't do this right. I did something wrong and I needed to be helped out. So that's something that I can't wait to share on the theo watch. I've been talking a little bit. A couple of weeks ago, he started being mobile, and he's gone from mobile to full on crawling now. And so that's maybe a two week journey for him. He just hit seven months, and he's also able to pick himself up unsupported by a human, which is great, but there's all kinds of danger because he can't put himself down, and he's always looking to climb on things or grab things he shouldn't be. And so the level of joy and excitement and mobility is really high. And the level of we need to watch him has also gone up to really high. So we're pretty happy with all those things. And those are kind of the updates for this part of the dad journey for me. But, Rob, you're about three weeks in, and tell me what's going on. How are you? How's Arthur? How's it being a dad? What's going on?
[00:02:29] Speaker A: Yeah, we're almost three weeks in three weeks tomorrow at the time of this recording, anyway, by the time this podcast comes out, we will have past the three week mark.
Things are really good. We're doing really well.
No kind of crazy big development milestones yet. Arthur's just kind of awake and taking in the world and doesn't really care about us very much other than he wants to be fed and held and kind of comforted. But I think the big milestone is that he's already growing out of his first set of clothes. So those kind of zero to three month or the zero to one month clothing set is getting a little tight around his waist. And I've got a very cute and highly inappropriate picture of my son because he's on the changing table naked, and he just has this huge bowling ball of a belly and these skinny little legs sticking out of him. So he is gaining weight well, he's doing great, and we're just kind of waiting to see him kind of go from being alert to kind of start to track and see who we are and follow us and interact a little bit more. We know that's coming.
I'll talk about it more later on in the pod. But we just hung out with some friends who have a three month old, so they're just about two months ahead of us, give or take. And their little daughter is much more interactive, and you can see them getting bigger, and it's like kind of getting to look into the future. So that's really fun.
But the overall journey has been really good where we're kind of stepping out, venturing out into the world, starting to feel recovered, and at the same time, Arthur's starting to is constantly unpredictable. Right. When we think we've got something figured out, he changes the script on us.
So we're growing and learning.
[00:04:16] Speaker B: It's funny because I say almost the same thing to other people. And everyone who has children older doesn't matter if it's a year older or 20 years older than Theo. They go, yeah, well, that doesn't change.
They will constantly surprise you when they're 13.
It could be weeks, months, or years.
Well, that's great. Another thing that's going on in our household. So Theo is seven months old, so that makes us twelve months behind in getting on waitlists for schools. And it is not a joke that you need to get on a waitlist while pregnant. And it's interesting. And right now, we're choosing. There's a lot of stuff, what we can choose. But I thought for the audience, I'd just quickly go through two different private school theories. One's called Montessori, the other is called Waldorf. I'm not going to get too heavy into it, because you all have Google, but if you're listening to this, let me tell you what I've learned in my journey, talking to other parents and doing some research.
So think of it this way. Waldorf was made by the Germans, and Montessori was made by the Italians. And the schools follow the opposite of their cultural norms. So, german, cultural norm, individual, do your work. Rigid, formal, process oriented. So naturally, Waldorf is very loose and very hippie, and the kids are kind of all playing together, and there's animals, and they even go so far as to not really have too many sharp corners in the room. They call it softening the room so they'll hang things up so that there's not sharp edges. So the children can just kind of learn a playful style of coming into the world. And the second thing Waldorf does is they don't structure anything in education till the child starts losing their first teeth for their set of reasons. They believe losing teeth is about the time you can start saying, okay, we're now going to do a 20 minutes lesson in math, whereas before you're kind of just, hey, can you help me count these? And so that's their theory. A lot of people like Waldorf, but again, it's the opposite of the cultural norm of German. Montessori follows the same pattern, flipped. Italians are free, fun, and loving and culturally and laughing and smiling. And so the Montessori schools are actually more formalized and categorized. They let children one on one, you say, hey, what do you want to try and accomplish? And then they help you do that, and you pick where things go in the room, and you do the cleaning up. So it's more individual, it's more structured, and it's more rigid.
And I bet you anything that there's zealots out there who will tell you why one of those two theories is wrong or broken or bad. I can't tell yet. Sarah Beth, of course, has a phd in this stuff, so I get to defer to her. But just on this dad journey, the difference in those philosophies, because we are neither in Germany or Italy. So we're saying, which one will fit with Theo 18 months from now, when he starts twelve to 18 months from now. And that's the difficulty for me, is I learn these things, and then we get on these waitlists, and then the waitlists allow you in or out, but at different times. And once you get into one school, it's kind of hard to move to the other one. And they're half days, but you start with two know, and I don't feel the pressure of, if he goes to the wrong school for the wrong amount of hours before he's age five, that he's not going to get into Harvard and be the next Teddy Roosevelt. I'm not as concerned with that, but there is this weird amount of.
This is very similar to CEO eaten as making decisions without evidence, that you will only know if they were right or wrong after you know that they were right or wrong. And then the last thing on this rant, and thank you for being patient with me, is I did not have a good time in school. And I now know that it's because I was undiagnosed dyslexic, but I was diagnosed high IQ, and so they didn't know what to do with me. And what I was told through all of school, straight through college, was I didn't work hard enough and they never listened to me. When I showed them how much hours, time, or effort I put into work, they only saw the results of the work, and sloppy handwriting, bad spelling, sentences dropping off. Well, you just didn't edit your work, because for a normal child, that would have been true, but they ignored that. I can say, hey, I spent 3 hours on this, and it was supposed to be a 45 minutes project. And so I got so beat up in school, I still project those fears into helping Theo pick a school. And I'm acknowledging that right now, so that I don't fall into the cognitive bias of what was broken and didn't work for me in the relevant to the decision making I make for Theo in the. I'm not done with it yet, but I'm working on it.
[00:08:58] Speaker A: I think that's really fascinating, Brad, and I think at some point we're going to have to do like a full pod on picking schools and stuff.
We were that couple that, at least for childcare, we were on the list a couple of months before Arthur was born. Mostly because the way it works here in Oxford is the university that Laura works for has great systems. So it's, it's really no choice. We just go with them and you just have to get on the waitlist. But I do think that's a fascinating.
On your much deeper, more pressing topic is our own experience with education and our own experience, how is that going to shape what we do for our children, and how does that help us be better, and how does that help us fall into the same traps? And I think, Brad, I think for you, a topic that we probably do need to put a whole pod to. Something I'm reading about right now is how does your learning difference affect how you run your company, how you coach other ceos?
Because having different ways of thinking can be a great way to diversify teams, do all that stuff and build better companies, churning out better products more efficiently if you can embrace different ways of thinking. So I don't know how that Quite goes back to our little couple of month old children and where they're going to go to school. But there's something in that.
[00:10:27] Speaker B: It's interesting. One thing that I like the skill of coaching and observing and helping people be their best. That is what I've gained over the last seven years being a coach. And that's the other thing is you become pretty agnostic as to the person's wins and loss that they're theirs. Right. But you come very strong as to did I help you get there? And that's something I hope to bring into fatherhood, is not to direct Theo where he needs to go, but to be the person who's observing and helping and trying to get him there. And then last part and then we'll flip over to you unless you have follow up, is that about 65% of my clients are startup founders. And whenever I'm speaking in a group of startup founders, I say, what percentage of you have one of these problems? Broken home dyslexia, bipolar adhd.
And like 70, 80% of the hands will go up. And I say, yeah, the other 20% of you just haven't been diagnosed yet.
All of the people who have the tenacity to start and be a part of it, it's grit, it's guts, it's intelligence, but there's always some. I wasn't able to follow the normal path, always.
And then I had to find my own coping mechanisms and by learning that, it made it so that I could survive an entrepreneurial journey. So it's interesting that sometimes I call entrepreneurial ceos the island of misfit toys, but they still work and they still do cool stuff, but we're all got a little thing.
[00:11:55] Speaker A: Well, and I would expand that slightly as we kind of loop in more of our work experience. I would expand that slightly to not just founders, but if you're on an early startup team, yeah. The early employees maybe aren't quite as fanatical or aren't quite as big a misfits as the founders are, who are the real, were the real crazy ones. But I found my experience of building a team from, like, six to about 40 is that if you do it right, you can get a lot of great misfits or underappreciated characters because you kind of have to get scrappy on who those people are if you don't have a buttload of funding, which most of us don't.
And this is where I think being a dad can really help bring perspective. If you do it right, is okay if my son's different in some way, presumably like you, Brad, you were dyslexic but also high iq. How do I take advantage of that? And if you're looking at your employees, if you're sitting here as a CEO or as a manager or someone running a team, and you're looking at your employees, go, why don't they fit into the box?
You have to turn those eyes right back around at you and say, okay, there are some roles where someone just needs to fit in the box.
[00:13:08] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:13:10] Speaker A: And you need to hire people that can fit in the box.
Yeah, exactly. The accountants. I love accountants. We actually work with a lot of accountants.
Right, but you want them to be on it.
But if you're on a startup team of, like, ten people, almost everyone needs to wear multiple hats, and almost everyone needs to think creatively. And so as you think about schools, as you think about kids, when you have a child of your own, it's a great opportunity to go, okay, if I want his school to cater to him and make sure that they're getting the most out of him, how am I running my organization? So I'm getting the most out of my employees? Again, this is probably a whole other topic, but that's a little nugget for all you listeners out there. It's a great opportunity to turn.
[00:13:56] Speaker B: The.
[00:13:56] Speaker A: Focus back on your own company and say, how am I helping my people be the best selves they can be? Do I need to Montessori them? Do I need to ask them stuff? Or do I need to do a little bit of I forgot the other one now already Waldorf, or do I need to Waldorf them or something in between or create my own system?
[00:14:14] Speaker B: Love it. If that became part of our lexicon here, you probably need to Montessori, that business problem.
This one really sounds like a Waldorf situation. There's another one called Reggio Amelia that I don't want to get into quite yet, but those are kind of the Waldorf and Montessori, at least in this area, are the big buckets. But thank you for going on this rabbit trail with me. But Rob just kind of handing it back to you.
So Arthur's coming out of his clothes and starting to have this belly, and you're taking photos and stuff like that. But tell me about what's it like to have the baby, to hold the baby. Is he fussy? Is it hard to calm him? What's it like to. You said you would some travel with him. Would you put him on the back of your bike or what'd you do? Tell me a little bit about what the caring of Arthur is outside of the cave that you're.
[00:15:09] Speaker A: Yeah, good. Good question. So, yeah, definitely feeling we talked about in the last pod, feeling the love continue to grow, which is great. Getting a deeper connection, really finding that, getting kind of falling more and more in love with him every day in a really nice way. I really enjoying it, and I'm finding what's working for me. Right. So, like, the big thing, the a. I'm a fan of the sling, and so is Arthur. So we've got the sling. Everyone's probably seen, like, the baby bjorns and things like that. When they're really little, it's literally just a big old piece of cloth that you kind of wrap around yourself in a fancy way. And I can just slot them right in there on my chest.
And I take him everywhere in that. So we go for walks almost every day. I throw him in there, and he just curls up and he just falls right asleep, like, on my chest. And it is awesome. It's, like, so bonding, so connecting. It's not quite skin to skin, but it's just great. And I got a good dad win on that front that I'm going to save till the end, but, yeah. So the connection is growing. He is getting fussier, so I'm having to figure out a lot more. I'm having to pull out a lot more bags of tricks. And I think, again, this is something I mentioned on an earlier pod, but I think that's the thing I'm learning. There's a book I read called the Happiest Baby on the block that talks about the five s's for anyone who's heard of it. And if you haven't, they are. I'm going to butcher it.
[00:16:34] Speaker B: But shushing.
[00:16:37] Speaker A: Swaddling. Yeah. Tell me what the five s's are.
[00:16:39] Speaker B: I didn't actually know you're going to reach to these. And so I pulled them up because I couldn't remember anymore. Swaddling, swooshing, swinging, suckling and side or stomach position is this one. And so what is swaddling, Rob?
[00:16:54] Speaker A: Yeah, swaddling is basically so. Actually, we don't swaddle very often. I was actually ready for it. I was kind of into that idea. But he just doesn't need it. Doesn't work for him, but basically just wrapping him up real tight. There's good techniques.
[00:17:05] Speaker B: That was for me last week, we talked about, you're looking at a diaper change, like a pit stop. That was what swaddling became for me. I became very good and efficient at it, and we didn't need to do it for very long. But if you don't do it tight, if you don't do it right, it just falls apart. And then, of course, typically, I would swaddle them and then hand it back to Sarah Beth. And so the last thing you want to do is a half hearted swaddling job and then hand it back and then have to do it again. Very embarrassing. Yeah.
I don't know that there's other ways to practice, but it's not an aggressive thing. It's not like, violent. You're like moving the baby all around real quick. But there is an art to. It's tight because that's water.
What's shushing?
[00:17:51] Speaker A: This one has been our saving grace. So this is the biggest tool in our toolbox. So essentially what I learned is that the womb is very loud. Mama's heartbeat and all her organs and her blood flowing, it's all very loud. And so babies don't actually need. They don't need you to be quiet. So I think what I've learned is that a lot of people make the mistake of when a baby cries, they.
[00:18:16] Speaker B: Go, oh, quiet, quiet, quiet.
[00:18:20] Speaker A: And that's, at least in my experience, the mistake. Instead, I go loud. I basically try to out yell him, and I'll do it right in his. Essentially right in his ear, which sounds bad, but I'll just really loud. Right in his ear. And it's like an off switch. He'll turn off and go. And then if I come down, he'll sometimes squawk again. And I got to go battle him until I can get him to come down. But I basically try to bring him down using that. And that's a really good tool, and I've taken that tool and I've expounded on it. One thing we found is that he likes music. And Laura's funny, being classic mom, playing lots of nursery rhymes, things like that. He's three weeks old. He doesn't listen to lyrics anyway, so I figure I'm going to have a year's of nursery rhymes. Why don't I just listen to the music that I like? So basically, I have, like, Laura put together a labor playlist that we didn't really use. We've got our wedding playlists from a year ago. Like, all the songs, like all the jams that I like. So what I'll do is I'll crank that on my phone all the way up and pretty close to his head, and then I can crank it down and we'll just jam out for half an hour and he'll just be totally fine. As long as you maybe then incorporate some swinging or some holding or something.
[00:19:35] Speaker B: But even that's what I was told as well.
They're doing this because they're uncomfortable. They don't know what it's like not to be in the womb, and they just don't know what it's like to not be in the only place they've ever been. And so then they're crying. Well, in order for them to hear you, you do have to be louder. And that was something the pediatrician taught us day one. And then the next thing is. So what is swinging?
[00:19:59] Speaker A: Yeah, movement. They love movement. I was talking about the sling. They just like to move. So for us, the sling works really well. Walking. Some people like putting them in cars. Some people like putting them in a bassinet and rocking them. We just find that definitely like having him basically walking is his favorite thing and probably makes sense because Laura walked a ton when she was pregnant.
Don't know how much to connect those two dots.
[00:20:21] Speaker B: Swinging, too, is, again, it's not violent, but it's more forceful than you think. It's a solid swing back and forth, and you're trying to, I think, hijack their nervous system so that it can only pay attention to what you're giving them. Instead of be frustrated in this zone where they don't know what's going on. They don't have agency, they can't even control their arms yet. They're kind of just no idea what's going on. So you kind of swaddle them so that they can't move around by accident, and so that kind of calms that down. And then you shush them so you're louder than them, so their noise isn't what's making the thing. And then you're swinging them ARound. And then, of course, the last Thing, I don't like the side or stomach position. That s doesn't really make sense to me. So if it's OKAY with you, let's Just move on to the fifth.
[00:21:04] Speaker A: What I. I think that the idea there is that SOme babies, when they're on their back, feel like they're falling. They're not used to that, and it freaks them out. It's not been our experience with arthur. No.
But some babies like being on their side and over because otherwise they feel like they're tipping back and it freaks them out. But I think that my big takeaway from the five S's and having read that book while my wife was pregnant is not that they're a magic. They do seem to work. They seem like good advice, and you see that advice coming around. But I think the thing for me was putting tools in my toolbox because I don't have food.
We are doing exclusive breastfeeding, so I can't just pop a bottle in his mouth. And so I've got to learn him and I got to be better at it and I got to be more proactive about it, and it's really helped. So one thing we've been trying to do is actually Laura's wanted to get back to the gym a little bit, just doing some light exercise. She's doing really welL. She's kind of getting back at it. And so I'll try to take him for 45 minutes to let her mom have some mom time, go walk and do some pelvic floor exercises and all that stuff. And it's my mission to get mom that UNinterRupted 45 minutes.
[00:22:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:22:24] Speaker A: I'm not sure. I can't really promise her any more than that, but I can damn well try to get her that.
Okay, we're going to walk around. Oh, we're going to do this. Oh, we're going to try that. And you got to try a bunch of stuff. And I want to get into getting out with baby in the next segment, so we can save it for that. But I think the last thing I'll say, a little tip and trick here for guys. I made the first mistake. Sometimes he just needs to be fed, so mom's got to come. And we created a system because the first time he started crying uncontrollably in the gym, everyone's looking, which is always embarrassing, but I'll talk about that in the second segment. But I was trying to type with one hand on my phone like he is crying, come help me come down now. Which obviously just doesn't make any sense. So we came up with a one through five system. One is he's asleep, two is he's awake but calm. Three is he's awake and starting to get fussy. Maybe just wrap up whatever set you're doing and come down in five to 10 minutes. Four is you need to come now.
You got to put it down. And five is an emergency. And so our system one to five, it's great. I can text one number. She knows exactly what it means and she comes and it's been great. We've used it with in laws as well. It's perfect.
[00:23:37] Speaker B: This will now be a part of my life story for forever. That's brilliant.
Because we have the same things but we'd never categorized it. And then of course made it shorter. And one of the things that I'm becoming really good at is as soon as my 6th sense, dad sense, thinks he's about to pop, that has actually become true. And about to pop is eight to 10 minutes.
He's going to basically need mom. Whatever reasons, I'm tired of these people, I'm tired of dad or I want boob, whatever. And so that's your three.
And the reason this is so valuable is Sarah Beth is by nature, she's going out to teach her class. But then also, hey, let's start having a life. And I know that I can put him to bed and I can do this and I can do that, but if I could just give her that note, know, two, three.
It's so much easier for me to text that.
[00:24:34] Speaker A: And the ones and twos are important, right? Because she's up there wondering, what's he doing? One. All right, I know he's asleep. Two. Okay, he's awake, but he's just playing with Rob. I know it versus, oh, I'm sitting up there worrying, am I going to at any moment have to get off the treadmill and come down? That's why the ones and twos are important because you might think, oh, if it's not a problem, you don't need to text anything. No, you need to keep the partner informed, even if there's nothing to worry about.
[00:25:02] Speaker B: I love it too because I'll incorporate this next Wednesday, that while she's in the middle of class, she can just get a 2121. Then she texts me, hey, I'm on my way home. Three.
[00:25:16] Speaker A: It's coming.
[00:25:18] Speaker B: Yeah. The other thing that's different is that I have a high tolerance for him being frustrated if it's just he's frustrated, not angry, not hurt, not anything like that, but just struggling to go down. And we're still at the place where he'll only take a bottle for really one use, which is to know that he's not in food scarcity. He won't from the nanny or from myself. He won't take a sincere amount of food from the bottle. But if you give him some, as he's kind of in that, let's call it three mode, it'll oftentimes bring him back to sleep because he's like, oh, okay, I'm not going to get a meal, but there's not food scarcity anyway. Maybe I kind of lost my train of thought there, but I love it. And when we do show notes, absolutely. Let's write this into the show notes, for sure.
[00:26:08] Speaker A: And so the last thing I'll do here, and then let's take a break and come back with our b block, is that is one thing we've consistently found, is that in our partnership, Laura has a much lower tolerance for him being fussy, whiny crying than I don't. I'm sure some of that is, like, literally neurochemical, like the cries.
Your partner who's carried the baby has all kinds of different hormones and chemicals coursing through their bodies throughout pregnancy, birth, afterbirth, that just breastfeeding that we're just not going to deal with. We have our own things, but we're not going to deal with that partially that and partially just her nature of just not wanting him to suffer, which is probably a very nice thing, but we have much different tolerances. Whereas I don't have the boob to feed him. So I have to get more creative and I have to be more patient, and I have to be willing to let him yell at me a little bit in order to figure out what's wrong. And so I think just as a partner, that's been my experience, is just be aware that your partner might be a little quicker to be like, why is he crying?
We need to do something now. Versus, oh, he's crying. He's fine. He's just figuring himself out. You'll be fine.
[00:27:19] Speaker B: There's also the magic fairy dust that is mom, and I can't tell you how many times I've had him and he's whinging or crying, and I've done all the things, everything, right? He's exhausted. He's 35, 45 minutes past his nap time. His last nap was small. I've shown him that he can get some food. We're in the lily, we're bouncing, and he's just not having it. And then I take him out of the lily, and I start handing him to mom. And he reaches out, he smiles, and he starts giggling.
And what I learned is just being held by mom can be as influential or as desirous or the thing that he's lacking and complaining about. The same as food or wet diaper.
And so that's what I kind of put that on in.
I can do food whether he does it or not. I definitely can do wet diaper as much as I can, but I just can't be mom. Even if he doesn't need to feed sometimes. He just needs mom. And no problem. I'm a supporting character in that. I'm not the lead.
[00:28:19] Speaker A: We never will be. But our goal here is to be the best partners we can be. So why don't we take a break here? And when we come back, we're going to talk about getting out and about with the baby.
[00:28:27] Speaker B: All right, everybody, welcome back to the Backside of daddy O podcast, where we do all things dad, all things CEO. We combine them. We talk about when they work together, when they don't. And at this particular time, since we're both first time fathers, Theo's seven months and Rob's baby's almost three weeks. By the time you hear this, he'll be three weeks. We're still focusing quite a bit on what it is to be new fathers and have new babies and also intersperse our ceoness into that. But one of the big things that happens, one of the big milestones of having first baby, is when do you get out of the house? How do you do that? What's a diaper bag?
What is a changing table? What is it like to be on a train or a plane and look at other dads saying, yeah, I've been there. And so I know, Rob, you're starting to get out and about a little bit. I thought we'd just hand it to you and say, where'd you go? What'd you do? What'd you learn? What were the surprises? I know I'm question stacking, but please tell us your story.
[00:29:23] Speaker A: No, it sounds good. And I want to start this off by just saying one of Laura's former colleagues said it really well, and I can't do it better than him. So I'll just steal his words.
I want to make it clear that you get the baby you're given.
[00:29:38] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:29:40] Speaker A: You get the baby you're given. And so, while our story has been really positive and we've had a really good time getting out and about, I know tons of parents who haven't gotten out and about for a myriad of reasons, not the least of which is their child is just not going to let them for any number of totally reasonable reasons that are totally fine and totally healthy, but they make it harder on mom and dad. And so I really want to make it clear that anyone listening to this who hears about me getting out and about three weeks into the life of our child, I don't want anyone to feel bad because every child's different. We've gotten a very agreeable child in a lot of ways that makes this work, and no one should feel bad if it's been six months or eight months or a year and they haven't gotten out because everyone's a little different. Everyone's got different support, and every child's different and wants different things. So I wanted to.
[00:30:33] Speaker B: I'm going to go ahead and disagree with you. I think all these other dads are just chumps, and you're amazing, and they just should have really listened to this the whole time.
[00:30:41] Speaker A: If they had only listened to the podcast, it would all be fine.
[00:30:44] Speaker B: Yeah, I think you're hedging too much on how great you are. And Laura should be lucky that she's got the greatness of you and that Arthur would only be the child that he is after 20 days due to your effort. And that. And if you believe that, just like if you believe your company's entire success and failure is based off of the massive rock you push up the hill every day.
Yeah. Look in the mirror and let that ego go down with block or two, I'd say, okay, check our egos at the door.
You got to bring some ego in. You got to bring some confidence.
[00:31:22] Speaker A: That's what I want to convey, is everyone should be confident, and it's going to be big and scary, but you should be confident, and you should do everything you can to support your partner, to help them be confident, because there's a lot of big, scary things. But basically, my message is, you got this, and you can and should get out as soon as you can because.
[00:31:42] Speaker B: It'S awesome and baby steps as well. But literally, literally, this fits in the category. And some people like this or not, but it's the known unknown. You know, you're walking into. This is the first time I have been out of the house with baby without mom or with mom or on a journey or the first time I've left baby at home. It's not a full state shift, as know. You go from England to Spain. And the language is different. It's. No, we walked around the block next week. Let's walk around the block twice.
Right. And so incrementally changing those known unknowns so that they become more and more knowable. And then the other thing is, it's kind of worst case scenario, planning, going out with baby.
The worst case scenario is you got to change a diaper and he's going to be fussy. And that's kind of a pretty handleable worst case scenario. I mean, yes, you can write horror stories in any way you want, but the normal course of living.
The worst case scenario is I should have only walked 10 minutes from home. I walked 15. Now I've got a crying baby for 15 minutes back. That was not the day for it.
[00:33:00] Speaker A: Exactly. And so I want to talk about. So we've been lucky enough to get out of the house basically almost every single day since we got home from the hospital, which was day two. I'm not sure there's a day we haven't left the house, which we're really proud of. We didn't set out to do that, but it's been really helpful. So it started with a little walk to the coffee shop, grabbed a coffee, came back. Hint if you're a regular at a coffee shop, they will notice when the pregnant woman is not there and the baby is. Instead, we got some free coffee. It was awesome. Shout out missing bean in Oxford.
Take advantage.
And then. So we've done that.
We learned that the baby was better in the morning and afternoon, not so good in the evenings. So we avoided dinners. We've done a lot of lunches and breakfasts. If family wants to come around, things like that.
But I want to talk about two things. Just because they happened recently and they're good, right? So today we took our first day trip. We went and visited a friend who has a three month old, and we took a 1 hour train journey each way. And it was a little bit big and scary, but we know we've got an international flight coming up, so we're like, well, let's try this out. So train was good because we were going to drive originally, but being stuck in a car seat has a whole lot of problems that are tough. And if you're in the United States, a lot of car seat time. That's a whole can of worms that I don't really want to get into. But we planned as best we could, right? We put him in the sling. We tried to know when we were going to feed him. We tried to bring as little as possible, but change of clothes, diaper bag, brought the pram, as they call it here, the stroller. And we went and did it. And ultimately it went really well. He was actually awake for most of the train ride down, looking out the window, having a great time. We had a great lunch with our friend and he got to meet his little friend Emma. And then we took the train back and he slept most of the way home. And we're a little tired. But it was such an empowering experience to know that we can go out in the world and it's going to be okay. He can handle it. We can handle it. And I think the two big lessons here are. One is we know that essentially in order to be the functioning human beings that we are, we know we're going to have to do an international flight soon, like 8 hours. Yes, we could stop doing that. But I'm an American who lives in the UK. It's just not reasonable for us not to travel.
And so it was really good for us to go and do basically a dry run where, like you said, worst case scenario is like a 1 hour train journey with a crying baby versus if the first time we get out is right there at the end on a big international flight, a lot can go wrong. You don't learn all the mistakes. And then the second thing I would encourage everyone to consider if you're working with a small child is there is no more forgiving moment than those first couple of weeks when they're really small.
Everyone thinks they're adorable, everyone thinks they're cute, they're tiny.
The whole world is on your side. If they're crying a little bit, no one really cares. Now, if you have like a toddler who's throwing a tantrum, people can start to get mad. But no one really blames the super tiny babies. So number one, right, get out early when everyone is going to give you a free pass. I know it feels scary and intimidating, but everyone's going to give you a free pass, basically. And in fact, tons of people come up and go, oh, can I look at your baby? Can I look? Can I say hi? It's awesome.
And then the second thing that this is a little bit of the entrepreneur in me. It's a little bit of fake it till you make it a little bit of just have confidence to try and own the room. If your baby is crying and they're really small, if you just smile and you're like in a crowded room and you're like, oh, baby, what ails you, my little child? Are you hungry?
If you just make a joke out of it, everyone else is cool. Everyone understands, and if they're not cool, they're a jerk and let them go pounce hand. But if you just own the room and be like, I'm dad, I don't have boob. I'm just going to have to talk this child down because they're crying and I don't know quite why, but I'm calm and I'm collected and I got this. Everyone thinks you look good. It doesn't matter if they squawk or squeak or full on crying, they look at you and go, oh, he's got it. If you freak out and they're like, quiet, quiet.
Yeah, you'll lose the room. People will wonder if dad's an idiot and they'll wonder why the heck mom left baby with dad.
What an idiot dad. Idiot fathers are. There are plenty of them, right?
So own the room, right? If you're listening to this podcast, hopefully you want to be a high performer in some way, shape or form. You want to be a good partner. Just laugh and smile. If your baby's crying, it's good. And it's amazing how it will disarm the room and everyone will go, oh, it's cute. They're little, they're crying. It's okay.
[00:38:01] Speaker B: I love he hasn't. Arthur hasn't found his voice yet, both his ability to use it or the decibels that he can create. And lucky for us, Theo figured out his voice at about five months. But it was playful. But he was making really loud noises, mostly at home. Just, wow, I can chirp really loud. And the fear that I have is that sometime we'll be out and he'll not be chirping really loud, he'll be screaming and yelling. But honestly, most of his crying is pretty temperate, I guess I would say he is definitely letting us know he is not happy and he is missing something or wants something. There's no question he's communicating. But he has yet to figure out that if he goes up a notch that I cringe or the whole plane would look at us and we haven't had that problem yet.
You do bring up, though, a couple of tips from my side that we learned over the time on the longer car journeys, especially when he was younger, seven months. He was younger than seven months at one point. His problem was that he felt alone in the back of the car. And what we learned is a lot of the things we do are about 45 minutes away. Good friends live 45 minutes away. Denver is 45 minutes away. And what we learned is on the trip out, he's usually pretty okay. Maybe he'll fussy getting in the car seat, maybe he'll fussy starting the car, but then a couple of minutes in, he'll calm down. And the rule of thumb is if they cry for more than 19 minutes, then they're missing. Something's wrong. They're awake, they need food, they need diaper change. But under 19 minutes, they're probably just getting.
[00:39:41] Speaker A: Where'd the 19 minutes come from?
[00:39:42] Speaker B: It came from our sleep coach. She says that there's this science and 19. Why didn't you just say 20? I don't know. Maybe she's trying to make it sound more sciency. And our sleep coach again, remember, her first name is patience.
[00:39:56] Speaker A: That reminds me of sales tactics. When you pick a pricing, when you pick a number that's like very specific, people remember it and they assume that there's good reason behind it. So it might be 20 minutes, it might be. But if you say 19, it's a really good one to get people to really commit to it.
[00:40:09] Speaker B: That's why I'm committing to it right now. I have not read the supposed journal articles that she's read.
[00:40:14] Speaker A: Right.
[00:40:14] Speaker B: And all the coaches and stuff. Well, when you read the literature, did you read the literature? Are you just telling me stuff right now?
[00:40:21] Speaker A: You know what?
[00:40:21] Speaker B: What you're telling me helps. I'm going to say yes to that 19 minutes. I am not going to double check your work, but we've learned over and over, especially when he's fussy in the car, that, I mean, I just literally, I do this anyway, whenever I leave, I kind of note the time and I just kind of add 19 minutes to that. And Sarah Beth might get a little pretty frustrated at the ten to twelve minute as there's kind of a crescendoing of his crying. And then almost invariably, because we know to change his diaper before we go on a car trip, and we know to try and give him some food before a car trip. So we've kind of done the big things. And then inevitably, in that 15, 17 minutes, he's still whimpering like he's trying to tell us, but he's too tired. To kind of like, I'm trying to complain. I'm just too tired to do it right. And so that 19 minutes is good. But on the way home, no matter where we were, he had a big adventure.
We drove somewhere, and like we did pre Thanksgiving a little bit ago, and we talked about this on one of the first episodes of the pod that we left before dinner, intentionally, when we took a dinner home with us. But he got to see more people than he'd ever seen in his life. And these people all, they're my pseudo family. They've known me for years. They're happy to see him. They're cooing and all. He was exhausted. And the smart move, and this is the tip, and then I'm going to tell the story, is how we got to it. The smart move is have mom sit in the backseat.
She can hear me. My voice booms loud enough. I can hear her actually better when she's behind me. And Theo gets to not only have something handed to him if he needs something to play with, he also gets to see mom and be shushed and cooed with mom. So do not ever hesitate, especially on the ride home, just to gently say to your partner, would you like to sit in the backseat?
The way we learned this, actually, just.
[00:42:04] Speaker A: For the record, I didn't even know it was an option to both sit in the front seat.
Now, we have much shorter car journeys, but we never don't have someone sit next to him in the back. So for any dads out there who are like, I just thought you had to.
We just do that. We never even thought to both sit in the front. But anyway, carry on.
[00:42:24] Speaker B: So the story for us, he was coming up on four months old, I think it was four months old, and she had a big speaking event in the middle of America, Manhattan, Kansas. And in order to get there, in order to do this right, we had to go together. And it's a Monday, speaking. She's keynote speaker at noon on stage, followed by doing a workshop from 115 to three. So it's a big chunk of time. It's in a different city, all these things. And so the only way we can do is we're flying from Denver to Dallas Fort Worth, and then DFW to little regional Manhattan, Kansas. We go to Dia, and first off, we have to go through different lines. Not going to get into that story again. And we meet up at voodoo donuts. We've talked about this, and that's when we realized that our flight was delayed. And then it was delayed. So much. We were going to miss the second flight. So the earliest we could then arrive in Manhattan, Kansas, was 11:45 a.m. The day of the speech.
So we're sitting there in voodoo donuts thinking, what do we do? Say, well, it's an eight hour drive. So we go out with baby everything. We go out of the airport, we get our checked luggage back, and we get in my car. And we have nothing prepared for a long car trip, of course, but we have a car seat, credit card, mom.
[00:43:41] Speaker A: And this is why you take the baby steps early on, because you never know when you're going to need to take an emergency eight hour car trip.
[00:43:46] Speaker B: Oh, my gosh. And so we didn't know where Theo was going to be in this. And we're a little kind of confused and maybe frustrated, and there's actually a loss in this. I did something kind of stupid, but what we learned mean, she and I love to talk. She had to practice her speech. And he was really good. He got kind of tired of being in the car seat. Maybe every 3 hours, pull over to a rest stop, come out, walk around in circles for a little bit, hold him like, let him feel you, and change his diaper, give him some food, and then he's a little baby. That's kind of all he needed. And he would even just sometimes be rocking and rolling, goo goo and gagging at mom's eyes while in the seat. He was a champ on that tour. The place that I failed is I tried to take a bachelor trick and apply it to family. And the bachelor trick was this. Years ago, in 2012, I did something called the Camino de Santiago, which is an 800 kilometer, 500 miles walk through Spain. And over the days, it takes 35, 40 days to do it. Over the days, you start creating new patterns that help. And one of the patterns that help that I put in all of my big trips for life is get the first hour out of the way as quick as possible.
Right. Just kind of like in the morning, get your first ten emails done before your first cup of cup.
[00:45:02] Speaker A: Why?
[00:45:03] Speaker B: Because you've done that task, but your brain kind of resets when you stop and you have your coffee and your food and everything. So it kind of feels like you truncated the day.
Totally works when you're 32 years old backpacking through Europe. And so that's what I said when we got in the car in Denver. I said, let's just get the first hour. Let's just get on the road and go. The mistake that I made is there is nothing between Denver east to Manhattan, Kansas. I mean, nothing like we would have been happy for a Walmart, right? There is truck stop food and nothing else. And so that was my big mistake, is I should have paused. And, hey, let's gear up for this inevitable eight hour journey, and let's buy the snacks and the water and whatever it else, because we weren't expecting to do a drive. And so that was my mistake. We get 1 hour away from Denver. I'm like, okay, good. We got an hour in. Now let's find a good place. Let's go to a Walgreens because I need some allergy.
Oh, yeah, let's go to things. Oh, Mountain Dew is basically all they have. So that was my taking a bachelor trick and applying it to family and a fail. And that's also the story of the longest trip that Sarah Beth and I have taken with him. And the success, mostly on her side, in doing that.
[00:46:18] Speaker A: Well, I love that you were able to do it and pull it off. Oh, yeah.
[00:46:21] Speaker B: And she crushed it at that speech.
Just my last little shout out to my amazing wife. They're turning the video of that and some other things into her first speaker sizzle reel, and it's impressive to see who she is from that.
[00:46:37] Speaker A: Anyway.
[00:46:37] Speaker B: Cool. So that's traveling with baby. Any other thoughts? Did I cut you off? Do you have other bits do you want to say about travel?
[00:46:44] Speaker A: Nothing. With travel, there's no magic. It's just be patient, give it a shot, be confident. And then the last thing I want to share is yesterday was Valentine's day. We didn't do anything big, but the day before was the last night that my mom and my sister were in town kind of visiting and helping out. And so they had kind of asked, actually, can we babysit? Can we hang out with Arthur on our own? And we're kind of like, yeah, okay. Yeah, we're feeling it. So they were at an Airbnb, and, like, 5 minutes down the road was one of our favorite hubs. That was quick, kind of burger joint. So we're like, all right, let's do a Valentine's Day dinner, just Laura and I. So 18 days into this, and we basically gave him a big feed, walked him over to the Airbnb in the sling. So we basically fell asleep, handed him off to grandma and Auntie Margaret. And then we're like, we taught them the number code, the one through five, and then we to. It's one of those places where you kind of order at the bar. It comes quickly. It's totally fine. So we walked over like school kids. We practically wanted to run because we were just sure he was going to start wailing. But we walked five, 7 minutes to the pub. We ordered our food.
It came, we sat, we ate. Laura had a beer, which was, like her first one in a year.
And we had dinner together. And we mostly talked about Arthur and being parents for the first time. And it wasn't particularly romantic. And we were kind of on edge the whole time. But every 15 minutes, my mom or sister texted us pictures of Arthur asleep. So we got to the end of the meal and he was still asleep. And we're like, should we go get dessert somewhere or something?
[00:48:35] Speaker B: Don't push the envelope, man.
[00:48:36] Speaker A: Yeah, we didn't push it. That was Laura. She was smart. She's like, no, I don't want to push it. So it was basically a 45 minutes dinner. Not because we rushed super hard, but it was a quick spot. We walked back and basically we opened the door and my mom was like, go away. I want more time with my grandson.
And, yeah. So we hung out for half an hour in the Airbnb, and then he woke up and he got a feed, and then we took him home.
But it was about as kind of low risk as you can get in terms of getting out, just the two of us. But to, like, a proper meal out at a restaurant and the amount of confidence that gave Laura was huge. And me, too, that we can do this and we will almost certainly do a date night again, that will be a disaster because he'll won't be able to feed or blah, blah, blah. But getting that win in under our belt, when family was close, family wants to help, and we set up everything. We kind of controlled all the controllables. Close, quick restaurant, you pay at the beginning, so you don't even have to wait for the bill. If we need to run, we could just run and leave our food on the table.
We just set it all up. And the result is that 18 days into this, we've gone on a date. And I know people who've gone years, a year or more with not going on a date with their partner, and I talk about this a lot, is I care deeply about my partner and I think the chosen relationship of the two partners who've decided to be together and reproduce, that's an important relationship and shouldn't be neglected.
So this is how we've decided to do it. And so putting my energy out into the world here, if you're listening, is like, you can do it. Control the controllables. Do what you can do, but get out there and encourage your partner to do the same. And take baby steps because someday we've got a wedding coming up, we've got things we've got to do. And someday you're just going to have to get in a car and drive for 8 hours and you're not going to be ready for it. And so the more wins you can put under your belt and the more things you can learn and the more better prepared you can be, better off you're going to be. We think our son's well attached and he likes us and we're doing good. And he wasn't freaking out and he wasn't distressed and it'll be good for him if his parents are happy and healthy and have their own lives. So that's my bit on that. That's my experience.
[00:51:03] Speaker B: It's a beautiful bit.
So just two quick things, then we'll go to dad wins and fails.
[00:51:08] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:51:09] Speaker B: One just tip or trick is to calm yourselves down. Order the togo box with the food.
Right. And so, hey, you can just tell the restaurant, oh yeah, we're new parents and we might be here for 10 minutes, we might be here for 45, but can you please bring a box and a check when you do? And they don't mind at all if everything's going great. And then you call them over and you get a second check for the dessert.
[00:51:36] Speaker A: You might get a free beer out of it.
[00:51:38] Speaker B: And you might get a free beer. So that's good. Our journey has not been that easy and I'm not sure we've only one time left Theo with anyone. And that's the nanny. Well, sorry, he's with the nanny often, but only one time did we have her stay late so we could go out to dinner together. Other times we just bring him with us because we like him, but there's also some attachment. Him to us, but also us to having him with someone else. And grandma's. Maybe they got a different energy than a babysitter and we'll find out more about that later. But I want to help get us into dad's wins and losses because we're hitting time and keep going.
[00:52:21] Speaker A: Yeah, we're hitting time. The last thing I want to say too is just date nights are good, but also take your baby out, go to dinner with them, go to lunch with them.
[00:52:28] Speaker B: That's great.
[00:52:29] Speaker A: Have a great time. Show them the world. I love it.
[00:52:32] Speaker B: Let's get to dad wins and fails. Sorry, I keep saying it wrong, but hey, Rob, why don't we start with you? Because I love my dad. Wins and fails. It's all one story. And so why don't we start with you today?
[00:52:41] Speaker A: You're going to be great. So the dad win was definitely last night.
For the first time we go to bed early. I think I said this, it was like 730. Laura was exhausted and she actually had a little bit of a block duct. Anyone who's helping breastfeed, it makes you feel a little feverish. You actually feel quite ill. So she was exhausted, feeling ill. I basically put her to bed at 730. But Arthur was very fussy. He hasn't been fussy very often. So basically I got in bed, he wasn't having it. So I threw my sling on over, basically nothing but my boxers and I put him in it. And I spent about an hour and a half basically walking around downstairs with him in the sling. And I basically put on a movie and headphones and kind of like watched it on the table as I walked back and forth.
And he eventually, after about an hour, he was calm the whole time, so he wasn't crying, so he wasn't keeping Laura up. And then after about an hour, he fell asleep. And so I very slowly kind of walked him up to bed and I put him in his bed and he was kind of up. But then I turned on the white noise machine and I was shaking him and I basically got him to go down. It took about an hour and a half, but that whole time my partner was asleep, so she got like an hour and a half extra sleep that she needed and I actually didn't need as much.
And I got to calm my son down, which was awesome and it was good. Dad. Suntime. And I got to watch a movie I had been meaning to watch forever. So all wins. Super awesome.
It's been really great.
I think our dad fail for the week.
I'm so lame. I don't have any good ones yet. And I apologize to our audience because I am not perfect, but it's just all mundane.
I think that plenty of pooping, plenty of ruined clothes, plenty of pee over everything and ruining and having to change twice.
Yeah, that's the big stuff. And then our baby's got some baby acne. We haven't washed him yet and so that's maybe a fail for the two of us, is we kind of want to let him keep building his flora and fauna and all that good stuff. But he's looking quite like an angsty teenager at the moment, so we have to clean him up.
[00:54:54] Speaker B: Well, yeah. I mean, he's 18 days, 19 days. So he's a teenager.
[00:54:58] Speaker A: That's about right.
[00:54:59] Speaker B: Yeah, sure. That's how math and time calendars work.
[00:55:04] Speaker A: He's a day teenager.
Brad. You got a good story. I'm waiting to hear it, so why don't you fire away?
[00:55:11] Speaker B: Oh, man. It's funny. I'm really enjoying telling this story, and now I'm having the trepidation of even telling it because I messed this up. So last Thursday night, kind of end of the week, starting to cook dinner, do things. I'm on theo duty. Who's got Theo? That's a very common thing in our family, trying to hand him off, and we don't always do that. Right? And he's in the kitchen doing what he does, which he kind of romps around the kitchen, which is really nice because we can see him, we're close, and he's crying, and so. Okay, well, do you want a different toy? Do you want something else? No, he kind of wants to be picked up. I pick him up. He still cries. This is weird. Usually it's binary. And then I put him down somewhere else, and then he walks over to his high chair. He crawls over to his high chair, and then he starts crying, and then I pick him up, and then he's crying, and I go, he wants to be in his high chair. He wants to eat real food. He's actually expressing a desire. I want food, and I want cool. So then I note that to Sarah Beth. She's doing something there, and she's tired, she's pooped. It's not cranky, but just kind of in her head. So I know what we've been feeding him lately is baked broccoli and cauliflower. He likes it. It's easy to hold on to. He kind of grazes on the sides of it. And so I pull two different bins of it out, and so I open the first one up, which is a mix between cauliflower and broccoli, and I test it. Yes. This is just nothing on it. Good. Give baby some. He likes it. Chews on it, throws on the floor. We kind of have a three floor rule. He can throw something on the floor three times. And then I say, okay, well, you know what? Maybe he wants a different piece. So I go into the second bin, and I take some cauliflower that had looked like it had been a little bit burnt, but that's fine. And I give it to him, and he's happy, everything's good. And he picks it up, and I'm kind of doing something else, and then he just starts crying. He is wailing. I'm like, oh, what's up, bud? Like, you didn't like hundred and one or you want to be home? And it didn't take me long, but I realized that little bit of a burnt part were the crushed red pepper flakes I had put on the cauliflower a couple of days before.
And that second bin was all super spicy hot.
And when I realized that, because I took it from him and I tested and I went, oh, no, that's not good. How do you communicate this? And Sarah Beth, love. Yeah, I've got a bit of an emergency and I need some help. What's going on? Theo's crying. Yeah, I gave him the cauliflower with the crushed red pepper flakes on it, and she goes, oh, no. And she immediately reaches for him. He's on the other side of the island, so she can't get him. And then she goes, oh, let's get him some water. And I say, sweetie, you don't give water for spicy. He needs milk. In other words, he needs you. Like, everything you were thinking, everything you were doing, everything you were cooking, I have screwed it up. And now you need to save me from this screw up, because that's the solution, is you.
So I think, so far, that is my biggest dad fail. It's sad and it's embarrassing and it's funny and it's tough.
[00:58:25] Speaker A: That's brutal. And we were actually talking about that stuff today. We are going to hurt our children in some way, shape or form. Right? We'll drop something.
I had a dad fail. I was looking at my phone, which I shouldn't have done while he was, like, sitting on my legs. And then I slipped and dropped and my phone landed on his head. Yeah, but it's mostly just some shock. But definitely, we can't be perfect. We're going to have them. It's going to happen.
[00:58:53] Speaker B: Highly imperfect dad moments. And, yeah, I checked batch one and then I just assumed batch two, and that was wrong. So then the interesting thing is it didn't actually take long for the milk to do its job and to soothe him. I was a little worried he was going to have heartburn or also it could be an allergen. So now, all of a sudden, I'm on watch him duty, and I've also hijacked Sarah Beth's time and thinking and everything at the end of the week.
So then the win comes back to back from that is, I then gave him a bath. The first time I gave him a bath, just all on my own. She's usually been in the room or she does it more than I. And then I was able to that night. So maybe 45 minutes or an hour after the crushed red pepper flake fail, I was able to put him all the way down, full on asleep out. And so that was my win on that same day. So it's broccoli, bath and bed, and there's a mixture of wins and fails in there and all together. And, yeah, you just have to stare in the eye of your imperfection sometimes.
[00:59:58] Speaker A: It's good. That's why we're doing this. We are certainly not perfect.
All right, well, thanks, Brad. Thanks for sharing. Thanks, everyone for listening. If you made it this far, we really appreciate you. If you have comments, questions, or suggestions for the show, please email us at
[email protected] and please, like, subscribe. Follow us. We're everywhere. You can get your podcasts. We're soon to be on. Bye. Follow us and share it with other dads. We're building a community here. Well, Brad, thank you. As always. I appreciate you. Thanks, everybody. Take care. Bye.
