26 days until I return to work. It’s funny, the emotional impact of the numbers on the countdown on this page have shifted in dramatic nature. At first, the concept of 75 days was an incredibly intimidating sum that I could barely wrap my mind around, let alone dealing with the first day in and of itself. I had no idea what to do with this journey I was about to embark on, and doing so for 75 days seemed insane. Now, the fact that there are only 26 days left is heartbreaking. This experience, so far, has been one that I can’t really put into words how lucky I feel to have been able to have. And this brings me to the word and feeling that I seem to come back to the most during everything so far: appreciation.

I feel an overwhelming sense of appreciation that I was able to take this time away from work and be with my daughter. We are looking into daycares now, and I read posts from expecting parents saying that they have to go back to work two weeks after the baby is born, and I can’t imagine what that must be like. I did go back to work after two weeks, and it was absolutely awful…and that was with my wife at home and knowing that I would have this time coming. Many dads might not even get those 2 weeks. For years I saved up personal and sick days, and am so unbelievably grateful right now that I did. On my days home alone I used to have a countdown as to how many hours I had to get through without messing up before she went to sleep for the night; now, last night when I put her down, I was actually sad it was already bedtime. I am appreciative of each day I have left during this period.

As we have gone through almost 4 months with Maddie, my wife and I often take a step back to also appreciate just how lucky we are to have such a good baby. I don’t mean this in a bragging, every parent thinks their kid is awesome way; I mean this in the fact that we have simply been very fortunate. We are fortunate in that my wife has not had any supply issues, and Maddie took to feeding very easily. Maddie also adapted to the bottle rather smoothly, despite the sound of things in the first entry on this site. Maddie sleeps – more so than I even want to admit on here as we approach the dreaded 4 month mark infamous for sleep regression. In fact, we know that all of this could change in an instant, and if so, we would still be immensely appreciative of this time so far. You see, a few weeks back Maddie had a rough night, and she cried about as hard as we’d heard from her for an hour straight until I was able to calm her down and she went to sleep. We tried everything we knew to get her to stop, to no avail. Eventually I sat with her in the rocking chair and sang “The Rainbow Connection” on repeat until she finally stopped crying and dozed off. This hour was just awful, because all you want to do is fix whatever is wrong. 1 hour. For many new parents out there, hell for many of our friends, this is a regular occurrence, happening daily if not multiple times a day. I simply cannot imagine that – this is hard enough as it is, and Maddie is an “easy” baby. Madison has had her bad days and nights – in fact, I am currently sitting up with her at 2am as she woke up about 3 hours after going to sleep and apparently doesn’t want to go back to sleep – but these are the exception, not the standard, and for this we count ourselves extremely lucky. Again, we are greatly appreciative of what we have here.

One moment of note – as it would happen, one of these bad days for Maddie came when my father and sister came down to visit. We had been out and about the whole previous day, and as a result, this day Maddie was somewhat of a wreck. That night as I tried to give her a final bottle before bed, she took it in extremely small increments, with hysterics in between. Once we finished, the hysterics only heightened. At this point my dad took out his ukulele – my sister and I bought him one for his birthday a few years back, and not only has he taken to it, he’s really gotten extremely good – and he started to play a bit. In this moment, Maddie stopped crying entirely, looked straight at my dad and a huge smile spread across her face for what seemed like the first time all day. This was a special moment, and one I hope to never forget.

For this, and for everything else that I have experienced in these past 4 months, and for the 26 days I still have before going back to work, I am endlessly appreciative.