I never planned to be a stay-at-home dad.
At first everything was going fine. My son Colin slept through the night, he ate like a horse, and he made the 40th percentile in all my pediatrician's categories: head circumference; quantity and viscosity of drool; general odor; overall resemblance to baby in diaper commercial; etc.
Then around 9 months Colin's crawl got less pathetic and he suddenly started to notice when I was out of sight. Now he follows me from room to room, weeping and clinging to my legs. He won't calm down, and I don't know what to do. I'm not Doctor Spock.
How did I end up here?
"Here" is Bermuda, the tiny island nation way out in the Atlantic 800 miles off the coast of South Carolina. "How" is the Recession.
When I graduated from Brooklyn Law School in 2009 the legal profession was coming unglued. Big Manhattan firms were laying off hundreds of attorneys. I had to take attorney temp jobs, trapped in windowless rooms shoulder-to-shoulder with recent graduates from Columbia, NYU, Georgetown, even Harvard - things were that bad. I hated the work, and after three years I was ready to pull the plug on my career.
So when my wife was offered a six-figure job with a Bermuda-based insurance company, I said "Let's do this." Now I've got a beach and a baby. The beach is alright, but the baby freaks out every time I walk from the living room to the kitchen.
What am I supposed to do?
THE INTERNET SAYS THIS IS NORMAL. Parenting.com quotes a Sara Abbot Psy.D. (licensed baby-whisperer). Abbot says separation anxiety starts around 8 months: "Literally, it's like, boom!" she says. "They understand you can leave[.]"
But they don't know you're coming back. The New York Times says it's a survival instinct that kept our early ancestors alive. A Dr. Alex Barzvi tells you not to distract your kid and sneak out of the room. Show me the parent who hasn't done that.
A lot of these articles focus on how to drop your baby off with a sitter, but that does me no good: I don't have a sitter. The Times says this can go on for two years(!). Great. He'll stop screaming when Hillary is President.
I can't wait two years. Here's what I've tried:
SECURITY BLANKET
Result: Eh. According to Dr. Julie Lumeng, he's probably too young to form an attachment to any particular object. Apparently babies aren't sentimental.
BOTTLE AND TV
RESULT: Oh yeah, this works - but talk about a moral hazard. I can't let him do this all day. He can self-medicate with food and TV when he's in grad school.
HOLDING HIM EVERY TIME HE FREAKS OUT
RESULT: Not sustainable. He quickly gets bored and squirmy when I hold him, but he screams when I try to put him down. Who knew babies were unfair?
HERE'S WHAT'S ACTUALLY WORKING (more or less): sticking to his routine. Nap-meal-exercise-snack-nap (or whatever you're doing; again, I'm not a doctor over here). Kidshealth.org says babies 6-12 months of age need two proper naps during the day, and Parenting.com quotes Dr. Karen Ruskin as saying babies "develop a sense of safety and trust when they have good, solid routines."
This seems to be true. Colin is much less needy when he's just had a nap.
Yes, he's still going to be outraged if I leave the room. But after a couple of screams he tends to get distracted by something (usually the computer charger) and rambles off exploring on his own.
(Note to self: do not buy the kid expensive toys; a $10 extension cord will suffice).
Check out the original post here.
