Beyond sleep deprivation and the apparent fatigue of getting a newborn, being a dad often comes with other hardships, few dads are ever prepared for or warned about. For example, as a sleep-deprived, stressed-out latest dad, who didn’t want to depart his wife and newborn for too long, I took meals where he could get them and infrequently found time to exercise, get out, or go to the gym. The result? My body suffered the apparent consequences, which included a good amount of weight gain.
Yes, these changes were temporary, but they may change into more everlasting unless I made a more conscious effort to eat higher, manage my stress, and partner with my wife to make sure we got higher sleep and exercise. Thankfully, once we worked together to prioritize our physical health, we each became much healthier and much more energized to maintain our kids.
Furthermore, having other men in my life, especially other dads, to carry me accountable and offer encouragement became essential. It’s not all the time easy to make time for outdoor friendships, but fighting isolation and maintaining fellowship with godly men, especially other dads who’ve been there, are there, and who’re fighting the identical battles as you’re, will be life-preserving and sanity-saving.
Of course, one other change that comes with parenting that few men are ever really prepared for involves the dearth of physical intimacy following the birth of our kids. For obvious reasons, most latest mothers have little or no interest (and even ability) to be physically intimate with their husbands during their recovery and infrequently beyond. And yet, despite the challenges and frustrations of temporary marital abstinence, God calls upon latest dads to again “surrender themselves” by shifting their focus from their physical desires to the needs of their newborn and wife.
Very few times in a wedding will a person have a possibility to serve his wife just like the weeks and months after she gives birth. Furthermore, within the absence of physical intimacy, many latest dads will grow of their love for his or her wives by learning to serve and take care of them in other ways when sex is off the table. Here, a season of abstinence becomes one other way God challenges and sanctifies latest dads.
Everything with children is available in seasons, and with regards to the struggles and hardships you’re facing immediately, they’ll likely pass and provides birth to latest ones tomorrow Learn, subsequently, to depend on the every day strength, patience, and peace of the Father. If you haven’t figured it out already, you might have limits. God, nonetheless, doesn’t. So my encouragement to you, latest dad, is to benefit from the moments you might have together with your newborn immediately. They could also be difficult and unsure, but our Father, in His love for you, selected you to be a dad to bless you, strengthen you, and introduce you to a side of His love as a Father that you would be able to now appreciate more fully as you enjoyment of your love on your child.
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