Interesting how I am writing this entry at 2 in the morning on the first day of 2020. Well, it is the start of a new year so i definitely hope things will turn out for the better this year. December 2019 was a miserable month, as things have been chaotic after our helper left abruptly on the 4^th. My wife and I stayed home for the rest of the month watching over our newborn, after we tried recruiting nannies to alleviate some of the stress but in short, they were most…ineffective. It was not easy, especially since our child needs increasing amounts of time to accompany now that he had begun rolling and extensively using his arms and legs…and his voice.

There are two things from my experiences last month that I really wish to relay to all the stay-home  husbands who are soon to become dads:

1) Choosing and securing your nanny (if you need one)

If any of the dads require a nanny to be at home to take care of your child, do have the nanny take a day to do a trial run with your family. It is important to have yourself actually observing how the nanny does her work e.g. feeding and bathing your child, to check her attire and presentation; her proficiency; and especially how smooth she is with your family. For us, we tried out 6-7 nannies but found many of them are not good at feeding my son, which for me was an important consideration.

The second thing with nannies is that if you find one who has good synergy with you and family, secure them with a contract (they should have prepared one themselves). This is important because if you do not seal the cooperation in writing, there is a chance they quit in very short notice. For us, the first nanny we hired did exactly that – she called on a Tuesday morning an hour before the assigned work period to tell us she quit, which was shocking in the lack of professionalism and left us in a bind, especially as I had a meeting later today day. Though I managed to postpone the meeting, the damage was done.

This brings me to the third point on this – start early to find nannies / confinement ladies. The ones who are good tend to have a lot of clients lined up, stretching several months ahead, so best to start at least 1/2 year early. This also highlight a distinction between the good and the average quality nannies – the good ones have a lot of work lined up, while the not-so-good ones don’t and rely on agencies to help them find clientele.

2) Burnout

Whether or not you hire additional help to assist the family, eventually the constant care required together with lack of rest will lead to burnout. To clarify, burnout is different from stress:

• stress are the issues that put you under pressure, increasing anxiety and making you tense;
• burnout is the exhaustion resulting from prolonged stress period, leaving you feeling drained and losing interest and motivation to keep on the fight

You can think of the difference between stress and burnout like between an economic shock event and a recession. In most cases of stress, because it is about being overwhelmed, as long as you can find a way to work them out, the stress can be kept under control. However, with a burnout, the damage lingers on longer and the feelings are downhill – disengagement, loss of movitation, detachment are all symptoms.

After a month of having me taking care of most of the baby-related tasks at home, day by day, week by week non-stop, i began to feel the effects on me and I could not effectively alleviate it by relaxing because there was no time for it. Knowing about it keeps it in check, but it will take me a while before returning to previous conditions. So for all you dads-to-be, when the time comes, make sure you keep a watch on yourself and to have methods to help yourself when you begin to see the symptoms.

With this, I will wrap up for now. In later posts, I will cover these two topics in more detail, but for now, I rest. To all you stay-home husbands and stay-home dads, I say “Happy New Year and may 2020 to be better than 2019 for you all~!”