My husband had never been around a baby before ours. At my baby shower, he DID hold my best friend's son in the Bjorn for a while when we went to the zoo. That was his intro to babies...<br><br>
He's great. From day 1, he's held her, diapered (OMG, the memories of that first dirty diaper change in the hospital. Ha! He got the first dirty one, and it was, um, interesting. <img alt="" class="inlineimg" src="http://www.mothering.com/discussions/images/smilies/lol.gif" style="border:0px solid;" title="lol">), feeds her, changes her, plays with her, slings her (although that's getting harder for him now that she's getting heavier - he's got five busted discs), etc.<br><br>
He works from 8-8 each day (military...whoo-hoo!), but spends any off time that she's awake with her. He's the one who gets up in the middle of the night with her, and early in the morning. He almost always is the one to give her breakfast. If he gets home early enough, he takes the bath with her, puts her to bed, etc. On the weekends (he gets home at 3ish on Saturdays, off on Sundays), he takes her for a good 2-3 hour chunk so I can do my cooking/cleaning for the week, and then we kind of pass her off or watch her together the rest of the time. He's actually REALLY good with her.<br><br>
We have slightly different philosphies on stuff (I never let her watch tv, always feed her healthy, organic (if possible), natural foods, etc, while he couldn't care less about that stuff), but, in the end, we've agreed that if he's watching her, he makes the decisions, and vice versa. So, my daughter's watched a bit more of the military channel than I'd like ("Hey, Kath, I think she likes the airplanes!"), but, I roll with it.<br><br>
He has a co-worker who has a 2-year old, and we were over their house, and the husband asked the wife for help with the diaper change. Apparently, he still hasn't "learned" how to change a diaper on his own. Huh??? And now that his wife just had another baby two months ago, he avoids going home until after dark, and goes fishing on the weekends so he doesn't have to help out. <img alt="" class="inlineimg" src="http://www.mothering.com/discussions/images/smilies/irked.gif" style="border:0px solid;" title="irked">: That would SO not fly around here.