The first night home
Hafiz and his friend Arif, father of a four-month-old, compare their first nights home from hospital: the silence, the fear, the feeding that did not work and the moment each realised nobody was comin…
Back at work after fourteen days
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Show notes
Two weeks and then the office
Most fathers in the region get days, not months. Daniel Tan went back to his engineering job in Singapore fourteen days after his son arrived. He and Hafiz talk about the double life of the first year: performing at work on three hours of sleep and feeling like a visitor at home.
- The first morning back and the lift that would not come
- Hiding exhaustion from colleagues, and why he stopped
- Feeling replaced by his mother-in-law and what that was really about
- The evening routine that gave him a role again
- The conversation with his wife that changed the tone of the year
A midwife answers listener questions next time.
Transcript
Welcome back to The 3am Dad Club with me, Hafiz Rahman. Today's episode is about something almost every father I know has done and almost none of them talk about, which is going back to work when the baby is two weeks old. My guest is Daniel, an engineer in Singapore, whose son was born on a Tuesday and who was back at his desk the Tuesday after next. We talk about that first morning, about running a team on three hours of sleep, about coming home to find his mother-in-law had everything under control and feeling like he had been replaced, and about the one honest conversation with his wife that turned the whole year around. If you are about to go back, listen to this first. You are listening on Witspeak Podcasts.
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