As a father, how to improve my relationship with our 2-month-old baby?
My son is coming to 2 month+.
I have been doing the housework (pooping, bathing, wet cloth cleaning, feeding and etc, laundry).
I still fail at putting the baby to sleep after feeding and can't seems to improve my interaction with the baby.
My wife for some reason can sing him to sleep, I guess my voice sux and I feel she has better interaction with the baby.
She monopolize the child by having confinement at her place for first month and now I'm playing catching up.
May I know as a dad what can I do? is there a book to recommend me please?
Not very sure which tag to use.
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One thing that helped me was wearing my babies (one at a time!) in a sling or other carrier. One advantage is that he gets to experience the world with you since your heads are at about the same height. A second is that he gets used to the fact that being with you gives him a choice about whether to look out into the world, in at you, or just rest. So it is very comfortable. A third advantage (at least for us), I (father) could carry my kids much longer than my wife could. So there will be a time where you are the favored parent :-)
"How to help get a baby to sleep" has already been answered extensively here, so please read the posts on that topic.
As regards improving your relationship with baby, this isn't a father or mother thing as such - it is mostly around maximising interaction with your baby: touch, talking, cuddling, singing etc. So try to do as much of this as you can.
I found with my 11 month old that that him and I didn't develop a bond until around 6 months. If your babies mother is biological, then there is a very deeply seeded bond between your son and her. There's really no way to compete with a bond like that, and it's my opinion that you shouldn't expect to come anywhere close.
Trust me though, he's your son and you're his dad. Soon enough he's going to look up to you and love you like nothing you've ever experienced in life yet, assuming he's your first. To him, you'll wake up an hour early to go out and raise the sun for him.
From my experience, the best way to bond is to feed him, and hold him close to you when you do. Holding him and rocking him until he falls asleep works well too. Finally, what seemed to really do it for me, was to try and be there the moment he wakes up from sleep/nap. Then when he begins to crawl and play, always make time to play with him, talk to him, and show him new things.
I never used any books, and went off instinct, and it has seemed to work for me.
I hope my answer helped.
I can only give you an advice based on experience:
The baby at such young age doesn't recognize you or anybody else. He only recognize his mom from her voice, smell and touch.
Maybe your voice isn't nice but that's not the reason, simply you are a stranger to him/her just like anybody else but his/her mother.
So the advice is: give it few months
One thing I've found works is simply have the baby around when you're doing things, and explain what you're doing. They don't really understand at that age, but you can simply explain as if they did. So if you're cooking dinner:
"Now, seesee jr, we're going to add some paprika. Daddy likes a bit more paprika than most people, so we're going to add a bit more on this bit."
"And we need to keep looking at it and make sure it doesn't burn, or mummy will be upset."
"So let's get the vegetables and chop them up. Now this is a sharp knife and your fingers are incredibly tiny, so I'm just going to move you away a bit while I do this. Oh, don't look at me like that!"
It helps, because even if they're fussing, you're engaging with them.
I initially tried to copy everything my wife did to sooth and bond with our son, but the singing and other tricks really didn't work for me. Eventually, I found my own tricks and have trained my boy to enjoy them (or he trained me).
It took time and I only felt confident after my wife would leave the house, and I was forced to hone my skills. I started by making nappy changing as fun as possible.
Best of luck
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