First Big Surprise of Being a Dad
So I had this idea of life with a baby that went like this: Baby is born and things are really tough. The first few weeks are insane, no one sleeps and life is completely hard. Then after this, things get easier and easier and we go on into our future.
Our reality went more like this: The first few weeks were hard. Then the second month was actually harder than the first because I started going back to work and we had to deal with that. Then the third month was harder still because the baby is still challenging but now we have a long term exhaustion setting in. I'm not sure how long this trend will continue but at this point we are wearing down pretty hard. It's amazing the small things of life that just don't happen. I have a stack of unread comic books growing slowly because I'm lucky if I can read one per week. I can't even remember the last TV show I watched on our DVR. I imagine things are getting recorded and then deleted as it runs out of memory but I haven't looked in weeks.
The other thing that happens is that for people like us in a town with no family, there is a lot more support in the early days. People recognize the emergency nature of the situation and bring food and run errands, etc. However you can't run like that forever and draw on friend karma forever.
I would have thought life would be different but there you have it. I wouldn't trade it for anything but the arc of how it is playing out is a big surprise to me.