I Know Everything There is to Know About Fatherhood

I don't want to be too blunt here but after a month of being a father, I know everything there is to know about fatherhood. Look, it's quite simple. People will tell you all these things, and the so-called experts will write books and articles, but here it is in 250 words:

1) Getting peace and quiet
Anytime you want to not hear your baby crying, you have a few options:

• Feed the baby
• Change the baby's diaper
• Wrap the baby up like a burrito
• Put the baby far enough away from you that you cannot hear her cry

2) How to feed the baby
It's really important that the baby gets the right nutrients, so if you can breastfeed, then do it. One difficult thing for me is that I am a male, so my body does not product the amount of prolactin necessary for breastfeeding. Trust me, I'd do it otherwise. So barring any major medical advancements in the short-term future, as a man, here's what you can do:

• hand the baby to your wife

3) Sleeping through the night
My brother had a daughter about four months before we did, and he complained about how little sleep he was getting. "The sleep, just wait, you won't get any sleep, she'll keep you from sleeping, no sleep, I'm so tired." That was not a direct quote from my brother but it might as well have been because...well, because he wasn't getting any sleep.
Well let me tell you something: he was wrong. Not only have I slept over 8 hours a night, my wife is apparently sleeping so well that she will sleep for up to 6 hours after I get up. She'll get up and say: "I'm so tired" and I say: "well maybe it's because you slept too much, sweetie!" She generally does not respond to that, which I guess means...I'm right?


4) Changing diapers
I can't stress this enough: toilet paper wasn't invented until the 1850s, and people were having babies way before then (since the 1500s). Changing diapers is a myth started by Pampers to increase sales, much in the same way that all the motor oil companies say to change your oil every 3,000 miles, or dairies will put an expiration date on milk. Look, I got my masters in advertising--you can trust me, it's all a big scam.


5) Making baby smarter
People tend to do this thing with newborns where they coddle them and treat them like they have to take really small steps and not force anything. In short, people tend to baby their newborns. Don't ask me why.
Let me ask a rhetorical hypothetical mythological question: If a baby pegasus walked up to you and said: "teach me everything you know", wouldn't you start with cumulative prospect theory? You have to challenge their minds while they are still expanding. They have all this stuff like Music for Babies and Baby Toys. If you had a ninth-grader, would you rather have him or her take ninth-grade English or tenth-grade English? Which begs the question: why not eleventh-grade English? Which begs the question: why not Spanish? Which begs the question: why not Esperanto? Which begs the question: why are we teaching people to use the archaic method of verbal communication? I'll tell you why: it's the diaper, motor oil, and dairy industries teaming up for profit.
Push your baby to learn. We watch SportsCenter every night and if she could talk, our daughter would explain the BCS to you in under 60 seconds. Her first toy was a Rubiks Cube. Her second toy was my HP 48G graphing calculator. Her third toy will be a box (she'll learn geometry).

So if I can conclude with one thought, it would be this: fatherhood is a breeze, just make sure you have enough batteries for your graphing calcuator.