On Jiu Jitsu and Fathering a Six-Month-Old
In the middle of a sweltering Bay Area heatwave, in the middle of some of the worst wildfires on record, in the middle of a global pandemic, my wife and I have decided to brave the elements with our six-month old son for a rare (for us) socially distanced backyard gathering in San Francisco.
Our son was born the week before COVID lockdowns, and as a result he’s only had a handful of car rides, most of which were to the doctor’s office two miles from our house — there’s really nowhere else for us to go. With at least an hour in trans-Bay traffic ahead of us, this is going to be our greatest voyage by an order of magnitude.
As we approach the line-up for the Bay Bridge toll booth, the air is so thick with smoke that we literally can’t see the water beneath us, bringing traffic to a dead stop. Owen has been making a steady stream of adorable baby coos since we left the house — honestly, he’s having the time of his life — and though things are pretty grim outside, the first 15 minutes of this adventure have been a success.
Just as we pass the last exit before the bridge his bubbly infant chatter shifts to a familiar guttural grunt. “Oh no,” my wife says, “he’s taking a shit.”
This is a bittersweet moment for us. As any parent will tell you, your infant’s bowel movements are the apex of your daily story arc. Add the fact that Owen recently started eating solids and has been constipated for a few days — it’s hard not to be excited for him. I’ll spare you the gorey details, but this is a classic stage 5 blowout and requires immediate and decisive action before rendering his carseat permanently uninhabitable. The baby needs to be changed NOW.
But what do we do? There is no shoulder, no way to turn around, and no exit for at least 40 minutes.
We do a rapid risk/reward analysis, ultimately deciding that my wife is going to change him in the back seat of a moving (basically parked, but whatever) vehicle. She leaps into action, unbuckling, unsnapping, unstrapping, whipping, sanitizing then rapidly repeating the process in reverse. Everything goes off without a hitch other than some butternut squash-colored smudges on our clothes, and we proceed with the day.
Something about this felt shockingly familiar; searching for an escape against certain doom, navigating competing interests in real time, silencing your intuition and trusting your technique, this felt like human chess with sudden life and death consequences. This felt like jiu jitsu.
While this story may seem like a funny example, jiu jitsu is and has continued to be an incredibly useful teacher for me in these first six months of fatherhood, here are just a few examples:
Lesson 1
The game is always evolving — whether you’re ready for it or not.
Let me know if this sounds familiar: You learn some new technique from a seminar or instructional, come back to your gym and totally impose your will on all your old training partners. This lasts about a week until they figure out a counter and you’re forced to find a counter to their counter.
The same holds true with babies. The Jolly Jumper, the ollie, the stacking cups, even, and I hate to say this, bouncing them to sleep in your arms — these are all just temporary tools to sooth them. As soon as you get into a rhythm with one, it changes, and you have to find something new (or recycle something old).
While this can be frustrating (and exhausting), it’s important to remember that this is actually a great thing. Your baby (just like your jiu jitsu game) is growing, learning and advancing — and so are you. Hey, just a few weeks ago the IBJJF announced that heel hooks will be legal in 2021 — everything changes, fam.
Lesson 2
It will consume you if you let it, and that not always a good thing
Before we had our son, my wife and I were plotting out what our first few years would look like; Who would work? When would we start daycare? How often would I be able to get to the gym? etc. and my wife said something that really stuck with me, “I want to be more than just our kid’s mom” — meaning she still wanted define her life on her terms, not just by her role as a parent.
In jiu jitsu (and life), we often find people who mistake having a hobby for having a personality. Though it may sound harsh, in parenting we often find people who mistake having kids for having a life. Full disclosure, I struggle with this one — especially during quarantine.
Just like with jiu jitsu, it’s incredibly easy to fill your life with it. In fact it’s super rewarding. Our society views people who are solely committed to this craft as honorable. Get a few months in and it’s honestly damn near impossible to remember things about yourself independent of being a parent. You can easily go weeks or months without doing something just for you. Just like with jiu jitsu, this is a perfect recipe for burnout, and unlike jiu jitsu, you can’t just quit after you get your blue belt.
You need to show up for yourself just as much as you show up for your family, the perspective will make you a better parent. It allows you to come back fresh, and excited to roll hard again. This also means you need to step up and encourage your partner to do the same, occasionally picking up some more responsibilities.
Lesson 3
You don’t have to be in good shape to start.
Having kids, like starting jiu jitsu, is a powerful force function for getting your shit together. There is never a perfect time to start either. While you might not have everything you think you need (financially, physically, or socially), you will learn to use what you do have, adapt to make up for what you don’t and grow to get the things you actually need.
I’m not going to say that having a lot of money isn’t helpful for the first six months of your child’s life. I’m just saying it’s not critical, or as my friend’s mother put it, “babies don’t know that they’re poor. They mostly just need love, clean diapers and food.”
Lesson 4
Yoga really helps
This shit is hard on your body and soul. 20 minutes of stretching, breathing and chanting by yourself goes a long way.
Lesson 5
Be nice
For years there was a higher belt who would tap me at least six times in a round. It would be so bad that my professor would yell across the gym, “Again?! Come on man, he’s not going to want to come back!” like it was my first day training.
But after every roll, this higher belt would smile, shake my hand and find something to compliment me on. It made a huge difference. Every time that I would see him at the gym, I’d make sure we got a round in, even if it meant he was wiping the mat with me for six minutes. I understood that ultimately, he was invested in helping me get better, and so long as he wasn’t malicious, the process was pretty tolerable.
If you can find it in you to be nice to your partner — even when you’re sleep deprived, covered in sour milk and trying to soothe a teething infant while getting peed on at 5AM — your journey will be a lot more enjoyable.
I’m not saying to repress your emotions or deny being frustrated, just saying that you and your partner likely want the same thing at the end of the day, and simply not being an asshole in the heat of the moment made things a lot easier for me.
I don’t pretend to be any kind of parenting black belt, these are just some things that I wish I would have known six months ago and a useful way for me to look back and think about where I’m at as a parent right now. If you’re reading this, you’re probably doing a great job, but sometimes you have to change a shitty diaper in a moving car.
See you in six months. Oss.
