Mastering Fatherhood: Balancing Work, Family, and the Fourth Trimester with David Arrell

Join us on the Super Daddy Club podcast for a transformative journey into fatherhood with our distinguished guest, David Arrell. David, a father of two and a renowned Men’s Coach, is the celebrated author of "Welcome To Fatherhood," a pivotal guide for the modern man navigating pregnancy, childbirth, and the nuances of fatherhood.

In this enlightening episode, David will share his expert insights on achieving work-life balance and supporting your partner through the critical period of the fourth trimester. With his extensive experience, David offers a unique perspective on the challenges new parents face, including postpartum depression and the struggle to maintain personal identity amidst the demands of parenthood.

David's contributions extend beyond his book to a YouTube series and a masterclass titled “Balancing Act: Navigating Work & Parenthood,” further resources that listeners can explore through links provided in our show notes. Additionally, David co-hosts the Baby TALK podcast with Katie DaMota, focusing on early parenthood's trials and triumphs, and offers a wealth of strategies to empower new fathers on their journey.

This episode promises to be an invaluable guide filled with wisdom, strategies, and practical tips for couples looking to support each other and thrive during the transformative path of parenting. As we dive into discussions on the fourth trimester, balancing responsibilities, and navigating the evolving roles of fathers in modern families, listeners will gain a deeper understanding and tools for a fulfilling fatherhood experience.

Tune in to the Super Daddy Club podcast for an inspiring session with David Arrell that will equip and prepare you for the incredible path of fatherhood ahead. This is more than a conversation—it's the beginning of your legacy.

Chapters:

00:00 - Introduction and Guest Introduction

02:38 - The Importance of the Fourth Trimester

09:45 - Building Bridges of Connection and Support

12:11 - Transitioning from the Dude Zone to the Dad Zone

27:10 - Preventing Chaos and Nurturing Relationships

30:54 - Stepping Up: Moving from the 'Dude Zone' to the 'Dad Zone'

36:12 - Leadership in the Relationship: Being a Leader, Not a Boss

43:14 - Understanding Postpartum Anxiety and Mood Disorders

48:54 - Expressing Gratitude: Strengthening the Relationship

57:58 - Protecting Your Family: Being Honest and Open

Takeaways:

• Practical strategies for new dads include planning meals, decompressing before and after work, prioritizing 'me time' and 'us time', and implementing shift sleeping.
• By following these strategies, dads can prevent chaos and create a more harmonious and fulfilling parenting experience. Dads need to let go of the 'dude zone' mindset and step up to their role as a dad
• Expressing gratitude and appreciation for your partner's efforts can go a long way in strengthening the relationship
• Postpartum anxiety is common in new moms, and lack of support can contribute to postpartum mood disorders
• Dads can support their partners by seeking help from support networks and healthcare professionals
• Being honest and open about concerns is important for protecting the well-being of the family

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Transcript

0:01

you you you Welcome to another edition of the Super Daddy Club Podcast. I'm your host Lendo. Today's guest, David Arell, is a guiding light for new dads and the celebrated author of Welcome to Fatherhood. As a father of two and a men's coach, David shares invaluable insights on navigating the first trimester, achieving work -life balance, and supporting partners through postpartum depression. His work extends from his impactful book to a YouTube series and a masterclass titled, Balancing Act, Navigating Work, and Parenthood, which you can find the links of in the show notes. Without further ado, David, welcome back on the show. Orlando, thanks for having me back as a guest. I'm looking forward to our conversation today. We got a chance to, as you mentioned, do a quicker run through for many of the topics that I talk about in my work, but the fourth trimester is when it gets real. As I joke, now you're a dad, now the baby's here, and all the guys are like, now I'm a dad. What's going on? So. This is where we're catching the guys that are really in the trenches. So looking forward to engaging with you and exploring the territory here with you today. So thanks again for having me back. Yeah, absolutely. And that's one of the things that I actually forgot from the first pregnancy to the second one. I forgot how I really got on the fourth trimester. And so, yeah, thank you for mentioning that very much. Now there's a couple of concepts from earlier chapters of the book that we're going to go back to, but I wanted to know if you could just break down why it's so crucial to. break from the three trimester model and add the fourth trimester in and really consider it. Can you kind of like dive into the importance of just those distinctions that we're making here? Sure, of course. Thank you. It's a great way to get things started here. So everybody knows that there's three trimesters to pregnancy, at least how it's normally talked about. The first 12 weeks, 13 through 28, and then weeks 28 through birth. And there's a lot of reasons it's broken down that way besides just the rough math of it working out. But the fourth trimester, Expression covers those first three months after babies born. And there's two things I particularly find really useful about framing this up as the fourth trimester that I'll speak to briefly here. The first is that human babies are born just so radically unprepared for life and their quote unquote real world. I always joke with my dad's about, you know, gazelles and giraffes and Buffalo, you know, they showed the. little baby giraffe being born and it's like, in six hours, the giraffe is standing up and in two days it's running with the herd. And we're looking at our little babies like this little blob can't do anything at all, much less get up and run with the herd. So the quick and dirty version of that is that, you know, human brains are the biggest part of our bodies at birth and require most of all of the energy and nutrients. And, It's a quote unquote evolutionary arms race between how big can we grow the brain and baby inside the womb where everything safe. And how big do we really want it to be and then what's going to fit out through mama's pelvis. To have the best trade off there as we know the infant mortality especially in the pre -industrial times was pretty bad childbirth was the leading cause of death for both mama's and baby's. prior to the more modern medical era where sanitation and safety has gotten a little bit more of a top billing. So that is the trade off. Can baby fit out and can mama survive? So these first three months afterwards, there's still so much growth that quote unquote should be happening inside the womb. There's anybody at the new baby knows new babies don't do anything really besides like sleep and eat and poop. And they're not really interacting with the world. They're not really seeing the world very clearly. They're not really present. So that's still an ongoing development that just happens outside the womb, which makes it the fourth trimester. So that's one part. The second part is that it is an adjustment for everybody. Like baby is adjusting in these three months to what does it mean to be eating? You know, they were, they were fed through an abel cord prior to being born, obviously, and they'd never been cold. They'd never been dry and, or then wet and then dry. And they haven't been wearing clothes. Like this is all a tremendous physiological adjustment to the brightness and the sounds and. having their digestive system actually working as opposed to everything going through the umbilical cord. But for us parents, it's an adjustment period also. And there's a lot of reality that cannot be read about or thought about that you need to be experienced. I joke with some of my dad's like, you don't learn about swimming by sitting on the edge of the pool, reading a book. It's only when somebody comes up behind you and shoves you in really quickly, now you're going to learn. As you're splashing and choking on the water and everything like that's the real world or, or anything else like. You don't learn about apple pies by reading about it. You got to bake them and eat them. So the experiential crucible of these first three months with new baby and new parenting and new everything is in a compressed evolutionary experience for parents also. So those are the two reasons I really like to use this fourth trimester rather than, baby's here. Now you're a parent. It's on a binary switch. It's a more of a spectrum and unfolding a growth element there. So that's why I like to speak along those terms. That's definitely a lot of changes that are occurring during that area there. Understatement of the year, Lindo. A lot of changes are occurring. Yes, they are. Yeah. And now you had also mentioned previously that you've noticed that this is where a lot of men are getting stuck. And so are there specific areas that you've identified like where do men start really struggling with this new adjustments? There's a million answers that question when do i think the main thing that picking up a thread we started weaving throughout our previous conversation. As i talk about my work is a lot of the dad instinct you know one of my favorite things to do when i was doing the live workshop to walk into fatherhood is as an icebreaker. What are you most excited about becoming a father what activities are you looking forward to and the guys would sort of invariably. Drift towards the sort of wisdom sharing with a three year old. Experience. I'm like teaching my kid to ride a bike or going fishing or playing softball or whatever these things are. And I would just sit there and kind of nod and they'd go around the room and I'd be like, okay, great. How old is your baby when they're on a bicycle? It's like, yeah, that, that, that's not what's happening. You got like a thousand days and nights between now and then. So we're talking infants and you can kind of see them like the little shock of realization, like, Yeah, I mean, holding my baby. Yeah, that sounds great. You know, so the dad instinct and this kind of again goes back to our collective human heritage, just the way it works as mammals. You don't see a lot of caretaking, nurturing, baby raising by men, by males, by the dads. It's a very like women carry the baby. Women nurse the baby. Other women are nursing their babies. So there's a sort of collective evolutionary history of us dads not being. 50 50 partners in very early parented 50 fit in a partner's when it comes to taking care of baby. And you can see this in our culture previously where dads are out in the waiting room, like high -fiving and smoking cigars and dads are working. So they go back to work and they come home and they kind of like house things and they sit down and it's just a very different reality now where us guys are expected to be very active participants in early parenthood. We want to be. active participants in early parenting. I know you and I personally, Lindo, previous conversations, we're all like, yeah, let's dad up. Let's do this. Let's, I want to be hands -on hands -in. I'm going to do all the things. But then our little dad instinct kicks in and it just like, like dust comes out. Like, I don't, well, what do we do? I don't know. Like, and this is where the struggle is. And the struggle is really for everybody. Like today's moms are not surrounded by a big network of other current and future and. Previous moms are not surrounded by sisters, aunts, relatives in the sort of like, you know, I would kind of refer to the village. They're not existing in the village. They're oftentimes separate from family, separate from friends or kind of having children in a much more isolated space than previous historical generations have. So the moms are struggling. We want to be there as dads were struggling. Nobody knows what to do. The entire question of what does it mean to be a good parent? There isn't the automatic answer of well, what everybody else around you is doing. Cause it's all you don't know and it's different. And there's like, you want to start a fight as you start asking parents, what's the best way to be a good parent. And you listen to all the different answers and everybody's all like revved up and takes it personally. So we're all kind of struggling in this space, especially the dads. You can look at what does that struggle look like, but it looks like a million versions of being in overheads, not knowing what to do, not getting support, being disconnected from our partners. and sort of like lost in the sauce of a lot of expectations, unspoken, unclear, a lot of felt pressure, real and imagined, and just being, feeling really isolated in all of that. And then, you know, struggling. That's the day -to -day experience of these guys that I often see in my work. So we're both having these two connected but distinct experiences. And as much as they seem to be disconnected, they very much need to reconnect on the surface level somewhere. And whether that's with us communicating our struggle with our own personal journey to our partner, or where do we begin to bridge the gaps that are occurring as a result of like these challenges that we're both experiencing? Yeah, like so many things, Lindo, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. And so that's one of the main narrative elements in my work is trying to connect with couples on the pregnancy side equation. And one of the things I'm very clear about is that, Hey, you guys are on different journeys. Like mom, you see the positive pregnancy test and you're like, I'm a mom, Insta mom. They start thinking about their diet. They start thinking about their cleaning chemicals and behavior changes or whatever. And they are in motherhood in that moment. Russ guys, we see that same positive process. Like, cool. I'm going to be a dad later. And that journey, that is the fork in the road. So many times you get asked the wrong question. Why are you not on her journey? Why aren't you with her? Or why aren't you with him? Baby's not here yet. Why are we talking about baby? It's five months from now. Like he's right. You don't need to go to the baby store all revved up. Like right now, for example, it's November. You know what I'm not doing? I'm not planning my vegetable garden. You know why? Cause it's November. I'll do that in April when it's the right time. So these are all the wrong questions. It's not, how do we close the gap? The question is how do we build bridges of connection and support and. partnership across the gap this is what parenting is all about. I've been saying a lot my work now like good partners make good parents so changing the conversation about how can we become partners along our respective journeys how can we stay connected. How can we keep an open attitude of collaboration and connection and communication across our journeys where you're good on your journey i'm good on mine are journeys will really tighten up. at parenthood because now the dad's holding his baby like, now I'm a dad. And mom's like, I've been a mom for seven and a half months ever since I saw that pregnancy test, welcome to the party, you know? So that gets a lot more intense. That gap closes considerably once baby's born for a lot of the guys. I'm sure you've talked to some people and they're like, wow, like they're literally like stunned that they're now a dad. It's been predicted for this day for the past seven months. So it's all about appreciating those differences, appreciating the different journeys. building those bridges of connection across them but then lastly for each partner to really ground down. End their own journey and like really nourish their own sacred roots are sacred individuality that's the journey i talk about with my guys from the dude zone to the dad zone. Who's the real you that you're bringing with you into the dad zone and how much of that stuff you been doing the dude zone. Is circumstantial or you can intentionally d prioritize. but really making sure you're still staying connected with your deeper, truer, sacred individuality to allow you now to more freely and easily build those branches of connection with your career, with your partner, or with what it means to be a parent in these other areas too. And if we can dive into the concept of the dude zone, the zone, that zone again, because there's times where I would find myself in a particular area and I could recognize it. And that was very important because now that I recognize where I am, like I know where I need to be at. So can we again, just break down those three concepts so people can get a better appreciation of them. Sure. And I love the fact that you mentioned by recognizing where you were. It helped you be like, wait, I don't want to be here. And I know which way to go and helped you orient out of it. So that's kind of what maps are for. Right? So the dude's own to dad's own mapping. And this is what I do with a lot of my coaching work is the dude's own is kind of where you are. pre -pregnancy. It's primarily your relationship with your partner and your relationship with your job, career, work, whatever that is. But then it's all the other stuff too. Like, what do you do for fun? What are the things you've always done? For example, I've played golf a lot for a long time. So that's kind of like part of who I am or how do you do your self care? Do you like going to the gym? Do you read? Do you like listening to classical music or do you like R &B? Like what's really you? God forbid your career and your partner disappeared. Who's the real you underneath of that? So that's the dude zone. Cause it's all kind of mixed together. The journey to the dad zone. And I'll get to the dud zones in a minute. Cause that's critical. The journey to the dad zone comes from re-examining and getting clear about what's really you, who these things are and which parts of them and how much of them do you want to bring with you into the dad zone so that you can continue to thrive and grow as you while you're also managing all the increased stuff that's going to come with the dad zone. So where guys struggle. Is in that journey from the dude zone to the dad's own as their partner is going through her pregnancy and she's getting bigger and her belly's growing and baby's growing and the nesting and all the things she's doing. We want to help, but we don't know what to do. She doesn't know what we need to do. We're on our own journey. And to the degree there's a lot of static and friction there, we're going to find ourselves in the dad's own are in the dud zones. And the two dud zones are what I call wimpy town and jerkville wimpy town is when I say you miss left. You're like i'm gonna be helpful and supportive and whatever you want here and you just tell me and i'll do it i'm gonna stop being me and i'm gonna make myself your little deputy i'm gonna be your sister and i mean you're pregnant i need to do all the things so. I'm gonna be waiting to do stuff to help you and those guys they lose all connection with their secret individuality and they get stuck in wimpy town. On the other hand of the guys who kinda miss right there in jerk they're like well i'm not pregnant. And we used to go out to the bar on Friday night and yeah, you should stay home. You're pregnant. Don't drink, but I'm going out. You want me to go to bed at seven o 'clock also, cause you're tired. Like, nah, man, like you do you, I'm going to do me. And they get kind of like, you know, a little aggravated or a little like frustrated and they're like really, they're staying anchored to the dudes on there. Like I'm me. I still am going to go play basketball with my buddies. Golf still happening on Saturday. Like you being pregnant, it's got nothing to do with that. And i'm still here for us but like. I don't understand what's other stuff and a lot of guys when you find yourself either one of those places either completely in jerk for what we tell you like wait i need to be moving to the dad zone. And so you're re -examining what does it mean to be helpful and supportive what does it mean to stay connected to my truth what does it mean to properly connect with mama on her journey and build those bridges a connection was it mean to team up and be a good partner here how have my. Interest and obligations as a good partner as a going to be a parent as a dad how do i need to start changing my relationship to my reality. That's the journey so that journey into the dad zone driving is when you're really staying rooted in who you are you brought those little things with you. Maybe don't play basketball everybody's every saturday morning but you still try to meet up once a month. Maybe don't go golfing for six hours be at the driving range for half an hour whatever that looks like to you. You preserved your sense of self. You're not just lost and like, I don't even know who I am. You're not overwhelming responsibilities, but by being grounded and connect yourself, you're able to rise to the occasion and be a good partner by being intentional and communicative about what that means and engaging your partner in those conversations. You're able to be professional at work and still meet your previous or revised goals at work and kind of thrive in that space where you're like, yeah, I'm really thriving on all cylinders. So this is the journey from the dude zone to the dad zone. and those duds own traps, you know, so often you'll kind of have one foot in one and one foot in the other. Like, I don't know what you want to do. Like just tell me and I'll do it. So you're like both defeated and angry at the same time. Obviously this is not a good space. Your partner doesn't want an angry helper. You know, she wants like, Hey, I'm here. What can I do? Let's do the things. Yeah. Let's go shopping for baby. Let's do, she wants somebody helping her drive the bus rather than somebody's pouting in the back seat. or like having a temper tantrum. So that'll be coming when you have a kid. Don't worry, you'll get that experience. But let's not start with you as the dad showing up that way, you know? Yeah, absolutely. And to add on top of that, you're going to find yourself as a dad just trying different things. And that's where that frustration comes from, where you don't realize that you may have to readjust your golfing schedule a couple of times before you figure out what actually works with everyone's schedule and just not getting caught up in the moment and... giving up at the first thing that doesn't work and you find yourself in deep or moderate waters, depending on the situation again, right? Right, right. Now, what can be said about those two states? Because the Jurgville, I can see that come forth with anger, stress, not knowing what to do, not, you know, not being able to figure it. That can come about that. That can also come with just people's personalities and just the way they are. Right. And in my mind, I almost feel like, people may be prone to one side more than the other. What can be said about those characters with the comfort you for coaching? Like where are these men at when they come to you for coaching for the most part? Is there like a trend that you see there? No, I mean, well, first of all, you're correct. Most guys will have a tendency to kind of consistently miss more one way than the other. And there's, you know, a lot of different ways we can get into that. But a lot of times they're missing kind of both ways, even if they have their kind of preferred style, cause they're trying to, you know, First of all, the guys I'm seeing are the guys who really want to be a great dad. So generally those guys are going to be missing a little bit more into code on Wimpy Town. Cause they're just like, man, I'm trying all these things. I'm doing this, I'm doing this, and it's just not landing or it's not working. So the sort of defiant, more angry like, Hey, I'm just going to be me. I'm not having the baby you are. You're the mom. You need to be doing all this stuff. Those guys usually aren't going to. Be reaching out to me for connection for coaching for support cuz they're sorta like. That defiance doesn't often lead to also asking for help you know so i generally see more guys that are like. They really care they're really like deeply invested in doing the best job that they can. And to your point they are trying all these different things and they're just really struggling or they're winning. in the sense of their, you know, things are going okay, but they feel empty and overextended and just overwhelmed and existentially disconnected from who they are. Like I don't even know who I am anymore. Like all I'm doing is like, I work really hard all day and I'm killing myself at work because I got to put food on the table. And then I come home and soon as I come home, I'm like doing all the baby stuff. And I mean, she's home, but she needs a break. And so I do this, I do that. I'm doing dinner and I'm doing this other stuff and like, I'm just kind of doing, I'm doing my best at everything. All I'm doing is exerting energy. There's no recharge. There's no connection with themselves. And these are the guys are just kind of like, you know, they're walking the door and they're like collapsing that that's who I tend to see a lot. And those guys tend to be suffering more in the Wimpy town side of thing of I'm just trying to help, but she's struggling too. We're not connecting every conversations about baby or it's a fight. We're both under rested. We both don't feel supported. We each used to be each other's like, source of support and connection and nourishment. And now we're both on empty and we're both pissed off about it. And what's going on? What do we do? We don't even know where to turn. So that's kind of, I don't know if that answers your question specifically, but that's kind of what I see most often in my work there. Yeah, no, that totally answers it because I've just gone through that experience. It's all very fresh in my mind. And that's why I think it's so great that we're having this conversation now. There's that element of, you know, yeah, you're burning yourself out. You're going to work, you're coming back, you're. helping out with the extracurricular activities and you're trying to be there and be supportive, but how do you go about building a bridge at that particular point to help such an individual? That's a good question, because that's where so many of the guys I'm seeing, they're like, dude, I need help. What do I do? I'm tired of guessing wrong and then being penalized for it in my relationship or just in my experience. And so, you know, the first place I like to start with all the guys, as we call a dad's own blues buster audit. And so I'm like, okay, I'm going to ask you some. Where are you on these things? Cause these are all areas where choices you make can make a difference. So in my work, I call them in the book or whatever, I talk about the new dad blues busters is how they're framed out. But the first one, and I'll go through them real briefly here, Linda. The first one is food. Like, what are you guys doing for food? How is that being handled? Cause coming home and like trying to figure out what's for dinner when you're both hungry and tired is a bad plan. So let's get ahead of this. And so I talk about either. using GrubHub or DoorDash or picking stuff up or even better is like getting a crock pot or insta pot, kind of getting that started in the morning. So the food question is answered and it's answered by you rather than coming home and like, well, I don't expect her to do it, but I'm at work all day. So I guess we'll talk about it every night. And like that usually doesn't go well. If every night you're trying to figure it out and I like pulling what's in the freezer out, what's in the fridge out. So plan ahead and not only plan ahead, but do ahead. So that's the food thing. Second thing, I talk a lot about here is decompressing so a lot of these dads are rushing from work to home or home to work and they're not clearly in or out of any of these like sort of like modes of being. So i recommend just a five minute stop between. Home and work where you like pause and you like intentionally like okay. All that's true and now i need to be present for work and you kind of like click into work mode and then more importantly. for everybody else is when you get done with work. Pull over someplace, ideally someplace pretty like a park or trees or something that is going to give you your little moment of Zen. Don't go behind the convenience store or stare at a dumpster for five minutes. That's not really the best mindset, but you want to like decompress from work. Like what, what do I really need to stop thinking about? And like, let me be excited about being a dad. Let me click into dad mode. Let me rev up my little warm feelings and. get ready, cause I'm getting ready to come home and I need to be a dad. So that decompression, you can do this anywhere. It doesn't need to be only from work, but anywhere you're out of the house and you're not going to like just sit there. You can't do this in the midst of a mayhem of your house. Like I need five minutes for me. I mean, maybe worst case scenario you could, but like it's not going to easily be granted if it's the midst of like all the mayhem. So you do that on your own time to make those transitions times. The next one, number three is your me time. Like, What's your secret individuality what are those pieces of the dude's only wanted to bring with you like i talk about your snow bouncing back you're only bouncing forward see you never going back to all the things that used to do in your dude's own but you can bring some key pieces. Are key components of pieces with you to the dad's and so what are those things and are you doing that maybe you stay up late and you record the game and you watch it later or maybe. It's just driving and listen to the. you know whatever on the radio that's when you listen to a podcast on audio book to stay connected to what you like whatever is important to you you got an intentionally nourish that relationship. So you still feel you like to say on the airplane got to put your mask on first before you help somebody else this is the way to keep your own batteries recharge so when you are giving. You're giving from place of abundance rather than constantly on empty but you want to pair that with us time so what are the things you guys do that really charge a relationship. Is it going for a walk? Is it holding hands? Is it watching a show together? Is it bonding over food? My wife and I love going to restaurants and trying new food. Obviously you can't do that to the same degree once baby comes. Maybe you can, rather than going out to the new place, maybe you can order Grubhub from the new place and they bring it to you. So you're still finding ways to connect with your partner that is the previous relationship manifesting in the current form, even if it looks different. So that us time can be super helpful. Quick plug for the love languages. I talk a lot about that in my work. What are her love languages and are you connecting with her where she's going to feel it? So that's a good part of us time too. We'll bracket that and move on. One of the things I also like to talk about is the importance of shift sleeping. You mentioned evenings. So when possible, find time that you can each take turns being off duty. Maybe it's only for three hours. Like honey, you go to the guest room, or you go to the room and you sleep for three hours and put on your white noise machine, I got baby. And then you take turns. Our first baby was a pretty good sleeper. And I'm a night owl. My wife is a morning person. So it was easy for us where I was the on duty from 8 PM to 2 AM where I would be up and I would be with our son, a hundred percent. He's on his little rock -a -taut next to me and I would, she was pumping by now. It was like three months after he was born. So this is like trailing into the fourth trimester, but that way we each got six hours of sleep. good solid that we were not constantly under nourished both in the food department, but also under arrested in the sleep department. Last quick thing I like to mention, I skipped over this earlier. After you decompress, now when you get home, you need to tag in. And that means you're like, Hey, I'm here. I'm dad. I'm ready. Home is no longer where you show up and you like drop your briefcase or you take your backpack off and you're like, you go to the fridge and you crack a beer and you sit down, you decompress. Like now you gotta do that in the car, maybe not the beer cracking obviously, but that transition. Cause when you come home, you're like punching the clock and hey, you survey the room. Are they taking a nap? Great. Get that dinner started. Is there some mayhem? Hey, I'm going to grab baby and go do a quick change. Why don't you do what you need to do? Get a drink of water, have a glass of wine, grab a shower, whatever. I'm on duty. You can be off or whatever that looks like. But that tagging and that owning, Hey, I'm here to help. When you walk in the door versus, I'm here to relax. wait, why can't I relax? Well, cause you have a new baby. That's why. So those are the six parts of the new dad blues busters. Again, sorry for the few minutes there, but it was important to sort of spend just a minute on each of them to kind of unpack them and lay them out. it's very important. Thank you for taking the time to do that. I think of things like when taking a break actually means taking baby away from mother's side. Cause mothers have a hard time disconnecting from their baby. I mean, they spend so much time with baby all day that I'll even remove the baby monitor. I'll take that with me. And, you know, and I have to remind myself of these things. They didn't just come back to me right away, but I'm like, wait, no, this is actually not giving her a break. If let's say you come home, it's her time to go to sleep, but you're still within the surrounding areas where she can hear baby cry. So it's actually important to move away from her, going to your own space with baby and also start really finding. your own little rhythm, because that's something that you also gonna have to start developing. And I think we spoke about this last time where that blues, that's when we fail to do all of these things. I had this thought here that I wrote for later, but I'm just gonna reintroduce it now. I started looking at it, I'm like, I'm trying to prevent chaos on the other way of looking at it. The opposite side of just trying to embrace the moment and. you know, be there and all this. You're also trying to prevent chaos because when you fail to do these things that we're talking about, chaos ensues in terms of like people who are communicating with no sleep, people who are communicating and they're underfed, people who are communicating or engaging with each other with the wrong expectations and whatnot. And so in a way you're also trying to prevent any sort of chaos from coming forward from not doing these things. And, you know, I kind of hear about some of the fathers, some of them was in my surrounding and they come home and it's, you know, take that break and play video game or take that break and do this and that. And that doesn't work because now it's like the food is not made. Now you're angry. I mean, it's just, what are your thoughts on like looking at it as a, you're also trying to prevent chaos in a sense from happening. I don't know. It's a little bit hardcore of choice of terminology, but thank you all for tuning into another episode of the Super Daddy Club. If you've enjoyed our journey today and want to be a part of our growing family, make sure to hit that like button and subscribe to our channel. Your support means the world to us and it's what keeps this club going strong. Don't forget to share this episode with other Super Dads and Super Moms you know and join us next time for more adventures and insights. Remember, every like, subscribe and share helps us create content that celebrates and supports dads everywhere. Until the next time, stay super. Imagine being on any team and there's somebody who's not really dependable, carrying their weight, contributing to the success of the team. Nobody likes that person. So your relationship as dad in a relationship with a mom and a baby, you are a critical member of the team. It's just the two babies got zeroed responsibility here, you know, and mom literally, you know, as we all know, she just had a baby. So you need to be, it's correct when dad's like, well, I'm expected to do so much. Yes. Yeah. Yes. That's what being a dad is. You're expected to be a dad. That's what you're expected. This is the job description and apologies if nobody read it to you, but that doesn't change the fact that this is the job description and you trying to hold onto the dude zone is why you're struggling and your struggle. And this is again, tough love here, which I don't need to spend too much time on, but like, You need to let go of that shit and step up and man up and be a dad like that's what's expected of you correctly. And you are struggling because you're not getting support on what that is you're not getting any clarity what that is you are. That's vague and punitive the reality of like why don't know what i'm doing and everybody's yelling at me about like that terribly sucks. I wanna move out of the yeah you do need to man up. Just say that yes and then move into let me help you you know. And that's where getting more clear about like dropping the dude zone mindset and shifting over to the dad zone, taking care of yourself, grounding into that sacred individuality, being understanding what is helpful. Look like it looks like getting the food started in the morning. It looks like decompressing on your way home from work and then tagging in the moment you get there. It looks like doing your you time things like Xbox, but not instead of helping as a teammate. But later. When you is your time and prioritizing us time in your partner and you know trying to work on that shift sleep. So that was been a minute on here under you touched upon it of. Father's don't mother you implied father's don't we were gonna do things our own way and we should and that's our chance to learn how do we see the baby. What's our relationship with baby look like feel like it's gonna be different at times the mamas and i want to percent recommend that however. All of that is so much easier for everybody. If you start with what I call getting shared agreements around baby basics with mama. And here's the question. How are we going to handle the diaper changing or how are we going to do diapers? Are we going to do cloth diapers where you're like rinsing the shit out of cloth all the time? Or are we going to do disposables, which costs a lot more money? Like how are we going to manage childcare? How are we going to do? feeding how are we gonna do breastfeeding since you're doing it all but i wanna be a good teammate i wanna support you in your efforts what does that look like so as you get those early shared agreements. And you demonstrate in front of mama that you can actually live up to your end of the agreement that you don't start freelancing on how you gonna change baby after you just said you do it one way they do it a different way. So as you build a shared agreement and you show that you can meet what you agree to do again it's about you it's not about her rules it's about your agreement. with her, then she can trust you. And then when you have baby, she's like, good. We're good. Not well, what's this crazy guy gonna do now? Like the other day I looked at him and they're running around the backyard and he's like, you know, has baby under his arm, like a football and like, what the hell? I don't like that. And that could just be you being in the dad's own, having your own relationship. But if she doesn't trust you there, then when you have baby, she's not relaxing. She's more anxious. I used to screw this up all the time with our first born because I was thriving in my own dad's own and I'm holding him like a little football guy and we're at an event with some friends of hers and I'm playing ping pong with one of the other guy's sons who was there is about eight or whatever. So I'm holding my son in one arm and I'm like literally playing ping pong with the other. I'm not going to drop my baby. I mean, if anything, I'm dropping the ping pong paddle and I look over and there's like eight people watching this thing on TV. My wife is aimed at me. She's not watching the thing. She's not hanging out. She's just, she's terrified. I'm going to drop the baby. Cause I'm like over there being active, playing ping pong and you know, getting time, like a lot of what I talk about is based on me screwing it up. so I was totally not thriving in the dad zone there. She's anxious. I need to be reassuring her rather than activating the anxiety by continuing to be like, what I'm good. I was a little bit in jerk felt that point. I'm like, I'm not going to drop my baby. I mean, you're going to worry, but. What am I supposed to do? Just sit here and like wrap us a bubble wrap. Like I'm just playing ping pong. It's not like I'm playing football or bull riding or something crazy. It's like, this is literally like a non-contact sport. But anyway, that's the point is that as you establish that early shared agreements, you establish that trust that allows all of that to go much better, including your father's don't mother efforts as you are playing with baby and learning your own style and you and baby are developing your own relationship. So that all grows much better. and the fertile ground of trust and shared agreements that does and like, what's he doing? What's she doing? Why is she worried? All that kind of stuff that creates a static that we all spend time in one way or the other anyway, but let's minimize it, you know? Yeah. That element of her developing trust is very, very true because she's spending the whole day with a baby. Let's say when you come in, you got to drop a little bit of that ego, even if like, and I speaking for guys like myself, that trust element, what I found help with that was again, dropping a little bit of that ego and going into the realm of student instead of being like, I'm the teacher or I got this and you watch me. Cause that's not going to build that trust element that's even going to cause. Yeah, that, that, as you know, that probably didn't work too well, did it? Well, and just real quick, Linda, that's why I like to really emphasize like for a lot of guys, it can feel like we're either going to do it my way or we're going to do it your way. And this is that. Bad binary thinking of it's either black or white yes or no this or that. That's why the language can be really important here it's like what's our way how are we going to do this. This is the bridge building the kind of asked about that talked about like. This is our way is the bridge between your way and my way or between your journey and her journey like this is where shared agreements coming to side by one would do it her way or she's gonna get mad if i do it my way. Let's not. Fight that let's just eliminate that from being part of the conversation what's our way what are we deciding here. And if you're smart you can frame that up so that she can lead like a like you said dropping your like hey. How are we gonna do diapers then you can say show me what you think you know you're here all day what works like why would i think i know better when i've been gone all day show me how you're doing it let me see if i can do it. And later you can evolve adapter change it if you. feel like you want to do it differently, that's cool. But don't start from a place of, well, I don't like that, or I want to do it this other way. Just, this is again, trust now establishes freedom later that's earned rather than trying to fight for freedom now. And all you're getting is separation and distance. You want freedom within the relationship, not freedom as distance out of the relationship. Again, some of these distinctions seem verbal or minor, but they're very different. Like I coach up my dad's. You don't need to be the leader of the relationship, but you need to be a leader in the relationship. You're not the boss, but neither is she. You both can be leaders in the relationship by owning what's true for you, offering what you feel is a reasonable engagement request or suggestion. But again, focusing on the team, like leaders in the locker room, you hear about sports teams, whether it's soccer or football, baseball, whatever the sport of cricket, there's people on the team. They're all players we have leaders in the locker room these are the people that are like really trying to lead by example what does it mean to be a great teammate. How do we elevate the play of those around us not i'm great look at me so again change in that conversation. To where you're emphasizing we are our relationship our baby. Our future together these are the small linguistic changes it can have a massive difference in the quality of the relationship. and that felt sense of teamwork, that felt sense of support, and that felt sense of thriving that we're all looking for as parents. It's not about just you thriving in the dad zone, but when you are thriving the dad zone, part of the definition is that you're helping your family thrive as well. Mm -hmm. Man, so many bridges there. That was really, really beautiful. So I kind of get on these rolls a little bit. No, that was great. Left to my own devices, I could talk for an hour and a half a week. I'm always trying to cut myself off. Sorry if I get a little excited at times. No, no, we can go, we can go forever with this here. There's a lot of knowledge to like unpack and unravel for people here. I think it would be a great time to kind of like segue into mother's anxieties versus father's anger. Because again, what results out of not doing a lot of these things that we're talking about is frustration, you know, disconnection and whatnot. And mothers, and if they're like level five anxiety before pregnancy, during pregnancy, there may be seven and after pregnancy, it doesn't necessarily go back down. But then you also speak about the rage that we men experience. And you spoke about it in light of baby shaken syndrome, but I feel like that may be an extreme and we do have momentarily, we have those episodes of rage and they come out of us either being frustrated and not managing our emotions or they come out of us just what is there about that rage? Can you speak on that? And also maybe. dive into the anxiety that mothers experiencing and how we need to be aware of that. Yeah, for sure. It's a great question. I'll speak briefly about anxiety at first because this comes up early in my book. It's big idea number five, right? When you find out that you're pregnant is that there's a lot of anxiety that's going to come up for that. Now a new mom, she's like, my God, what am I eating? What's going on here? What are these cleaning chemicals? What sushi or cheese or which cheese and why she's properly. very attuned to what do i need to do to protect my baby that's the question that's always in mind that when there's not a clear answer can lead to the anxiety of like i want to protect my baby what do i do especially when we're isolated as we are now in the so -called nuclear family there's not a lot of support we don't have the village of support we used to you'll hear people say like it takes a village to raise a child to raise a family it's true it does. We don't have that village. So for many modern women, as they discover they're pregnant and they go through this pregnancy and they're being under supported by the culture, under supported by the demands placed upon them, whether it's a workplace and no parental leave or low parental leave, you guys up there in Canada have much better policies than we do down here in the U S low community support, very medicalized approach to pregnancy. The main person you've gotten a lot of support from ideally up until this point, your partner, he's still in the dude zone. He's like, cool. I'm going to be a dad later. And so the anxiety really just sort of like blossoms and flourishes and flows all along through pregnancy, especially as we get closer to the due date and all the hormones. And you know, a lot of the guys are still like, I'm doing great. Right. And she's like, no, no, you're not doing great. What's going on here? You get into that new space of having a baby. And again, that same lack of support. is the number one predictor of postpartum mood disorders. Whether it's postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety, or any of these sort of more extreme versions of normal new baby blues, very strict correlations between the amount of felt support, whether it's through individual relationships, a community, family, whatever. So that's where all that kind of comes from. Because again, how do I protect my baby? And if she's looking around and not getting a lot of support, that anxiety is going to spike and stay up, which can manifest in a number of different ways. Us guys on the other hand, our sort of response to being frustrated, which is often what happens when we're trying to support a partner or we're trying to do things and like she's mad because we didn't know that we weren't supposed to cook inside with garlic like we always do. And she walked in and puke and now she's mad at us. Or, you know, we're all struggling. We start getting frustrated. We're like guessing at what's going to be helpful. And we're guessing wrong. We're asking her, she's like, I don't know. And so we're not getting. clear directives like, okay, if you just tell me I'll do it. I don't care what we have for dinner. Like what I care about is you're not upset and you're not mad at me. And obviously part of us is like the more she's upset, that's probably not good for baby growing inside of her. So I need to cool my jets over here. Like just tell me and I'll do it. This isn't about me being right. This is about finding a way where we're doing better. So that failure leads to shame slash frustration and shame is that like, man, I feel like I'm really screwing this up. Then that turns into frustration quickly and frustration rises up as anger. And there's a lot of reasons into this about like the way masculinity is treated in the modern world. There's a million definitions of toxic masculinity. Not many that easily come up for a lot of people like, well, what's healthy masculinity? What are we supposed to be doing? Our cultural programming around what does it mean to be a good dad has shifted and it's fractured and it's not clear. So we're like. We don't have easy role models or like an automatic role model where we just do the things everybody else around us is doing. And we're being congratulated because what else will we do? You know? So we're sort of like lost in the sauce here too, which leads to frustration, which leads to anger. And then again, you know, back to those new dad blues busters, having the same argument about food every night is frustrating. That's going to lead to anger. Being underfed is going to lead to a dysregulation, which is going to lead to anger. Being under rested. Is gonna lead to emotional physical dysregulation what's gonna manifest as anger short temperedness going from one obligation to another where everybody's mad at you is gonna lead to frustration anger so for a lot of us especially modern men who've grown up not really being given full access to the normal healthy range of human emotions. Being coached as young man on how to stay connected with our emotions to be able to express them. and healthy reasonable manner and having a articulate vocabulary both inner so we can talk about what we know what we're feeling and then outer so we can express it and then having that expression welcomed and supported and nourished and assisted. A lot of men default into anger. That's the single safe emotion that you're allowed to have as a man is to be angry. So there's a lot of, again, this is the briefest survey, but there's a lot of complex phenomena that combine to where A lot of new moms experience a lot of anxiety and a lot of new dads experience a lot of things that kind of come out as a diluted anger because they're just beat down. So they're like simmering with like random sort of steam outburst where they kick the door or they slam the car door or they, they go out in the garage and they yell and they shake their fist for five minutes and they come back in and there's varieties of unhealthy anger expression as well. But it's very common for a lot of new dads to be simmering and for a lot of new moms to be sort of like. quivering with anxiety on a subconscious level and the men are simmering with anger. And like, what kind of awesome relationship can we expect to have happen between and including these two simmering, quivering, under rested, underfed, stressed out, under supported people that have a new baby that is a bundle of needs that often manifest as poop or screaming. It's not a really great situation as I framed out, which is why we want to do a lot of things to prevent that. but then address systematically the causes that lead to that underneath it. Absolutely. And, you know, this whole time that we're talking, I keep getting this talk that comes back to my mind and it's that the small things really make a difference because for everything we forget to appreciate each other. We forget to just let the other person know like, Hey, I appreciate what you're doing. I appreciate your work. I appreciate the research and effort and time that you put into this and that. And you'll see that that's a good way to break the ice around tension. It's the small things that really matter. The other thought that I had, I encountered this lady at work and she's a mother of four. She expressed to me how she has been dealing with postpartum depression for two years. And now husband had to take a break off work to help her take care of their children because now she's on her way to a mental health hospital because of the postpartum depression. It's just gone that bad, but there's also this element of. The community around her not really understanding what she's going through. The resources being super duper strained, especially because of COVID. So it's like a lot harder to get professional help. And I guided her towards some of our episode and I did point out to her, your man is probably suffering from postpartum depression as well. Because as we've learned, another big predictor of postpartum depression is whether or not your partner is experiencing postpartum depression. And it goes back to that analogy that I've. mentioned before where it's like, if you're in a room with somebody who's depressed, it's only so long before that energy flows back to you. And so if I can frame a question around that thought there, what are avenues that people can pursue of my immediate family and friends don't necessarily understand what we're going through and it's hard to open up there. It's hard to access professional help. I mean, cultures like yourself probably help. Yeah. What are other recourse that people can go to to help themselves in these situations? That's a great question, Lendo. And so what I'll briefly speak to the first thing you said, and then I can come back to this and spend a little bit more time and care in the space of that question. So you mentioned gratitude and you mentioned previously my website has a bunch of resources on there. One of which is a whole, a whole bunch of different blog posts I've written about different things. One of which is called gratitude, the sixth love language. I'll share that link so you can put it in the notes of the show for anybody who wants to read it, but the whole gist of it. is we talk about the five love language gary chapman's book will make sure you get proper credit for this. Definitely direct your listeners to check that out there's a little test they can take with their partner ideally like what are your love language is it physical touch words of affirmation. Yes quality time you know there's things on there so knowing what your partner's love languages and you're spending your effort and energy in those channels is gonna get you more appreciation connection. Like don't buy somebody a gift if their love language is quality time and don't take them for a three hour walk if they would have preferred flowers and a card and a kiss. Like you're doing it wrong, you know, you're spending more energy in effectively by not using the love language your partner really resonates to. But gratitude is the sixth love language and those little moments of gratitude can go such a long way. Like you said, that little bit on a Saturday can be so important. Say your partner's like really struggling with breastfeeding. Like don't. offer a suggestion, what do you know about breastfeeding? And say, I'm just blown away by how dedicated you are to this. And I know it's hard, but I'm so impressed about how important this is to you. And so yeah, we're in this together. Let's see what we can do here. You expressing that gratitude for her care, for her connection, for commitment. Anything you can say positive about her as a mother, A, it's smart and B, it's super helpful and super impactful, especially if you found a way to really land it to what she's really doing. So like, She's happily nursing in the corner with a little smile on her face. Don't think, I'm going to not disturb her. I'm going to walk away. Just pause and be like, babe, wow, I can just, I can feel the love that you and baby are sharing in this moment. I'm so glad you guys are able to have this connection. I know I'm not going to be able to breastfeed the baby and I'm not jealous. I'm just, I'm really just basking in the love I feel. And I'm so happy that you're the mother of our baby and that I get to be partners with you in this adventure together. This is awesome. Something like that. where you're like really feeling it is like that's worth cleaning the house 10 times or whatever else you were going to do. You know, so just spend a little bit of time honestly and compassionately and heartfeltly expressing gratitude for what you're seeing in the moment. And that should be pretty easy to do, assuming you're like watching, you know, so definitely want to emphasize that now back to the bigger challenges that we face individually in our culture as individual human units that are having babies or being new moms or new dads. And the lack of support and what that creates. So a quick tip for prevention. This is in my work is big idea number 11 for the postpartum space for this fourth trimester dads. We have two mantras. The first one is lavish sisterhood, limit support. This is how you take care of your partner. Lavish sisterhood is all the things you can do to sort of recreate that village that we don't have, whether it's. Going the extra mile to make her friends or family that are visiting feel welcome and supported and take care of. Whether it's initiating FaceTime calls with her mom and you're like, hey, hey Mary Ann, how are things going? Like the baby's sleeping, look how cute they are. And you're doing your part to like invite the sisterhood that we don't actually have as easy connection we used to, to be part of your experience. The more that she's feeling the support of a sisterhood, the less likely she is to end up having Postpartum anxiety postpartum depression these other postpartum mood orders limiting stuff that's everything else. Thank you cards the cleaning whatever this fourth trimester whatever you can do to sort of insulate isolate but insulate your partner from all the stuff is gonna also make her experience better she's able to focus on adjusting the motherhood helping baby adjust to the world and adjusting everybody to all of that. And she's not thinking about like, we got to write all those thank you notes for the random pile of stuff that showed up because people wanted to get on a registry or whatever. So that's the first mantra. That second mantra that you alluded to earlier is protect and serve. That's our role as dads. And a big part of that is being like the number one witness to what's happening with our partner. As you go to these early baby checkups, part of the checkup, they're going to have mama fill out a postpartum depression screen, or they're going to ask how she doing. How are you doing and how often do you feel these feelings? Well, you need to be the honest respondent to those questions. Also, this can put you in a bind. I'm noticing my, my wife, for example, is really depressed. She's listless. She's slow to respond to baby crying. She, I don't know when the last time she took a shower was, you know, she's not really eating that much. I'm not quite sure how much baby's getting breastfed. Like these are all like flashing red warning signs. So you go to the pediatrician's office and she says, I'm fine. I just feel a little tired. I haven't been as hungry as I usually am. My energy is a little low. Like that sounds like, okay, normal. And you're over there going a little tired, a little low, like no. So the bind you feel like, do I need to speak honestly to what's actually happening? But I also don't want to like sell out my wife and be like, no, you're actually, you know, like pulp fiction, you're actually pretty far from okay. Like this is not good, you know, But you need to do that. This is what stepping up looks like. You're protecting your family by speaking honestly to the pediatrician. Maybe not in front of your wife, maybe in front of her, maybe off to the side of like, look, doc, I'm actually really kind of worried. Like this is what I've been seeing. Is this indicative of a bigger problem or is this still within line of expectations? Cause again, you're not the expert, but you just need to report accurately what you're seeing and honestly express any fears, concerns or trepidations and maybe having about what's going on. Ideally you have. some qualified personnel that are also helping you, whether it's a postpartum doula or additional health workers. I know up there in Canada, you guys again have much more robust systems. So if you've gone through a midwife, you're having midwife check -ins. Again, midwife is much more qualified to know your partner and to be able to get a better sense of range of like, is this within the normal range or does she seem to be really outside what I would expect her to be like as a new mom and could be engaging her more frequently in those types of questions. So. It's a tough place to be in for sure. Ideally, you know, you're taking care of yourself with your new dad blues busters. You're staying rooted in your sacred individuality. You're trying to do your best to thrive in the dad zone. And part of that is being willing to be the one asking for help or like initiating those phone calls or, you know, reaching out to a dad coach, me or any, and then there's a million other guys out there would be great resources. Also, like this isn't me trying to show for my work, but like there are people out there that want to be supportive. understand the new dad space, have been there experientially, have experience helping other new dads, it can be a resource. Maybe there's a new dad meetup group. Maybe there's a new dad Facebook group that meets at your playground. Like there's opportunities out there. It's really, again, being a leader in your relationship for these guys, you gotta take ownership of like, nobody's gonna come save me. I need to save myself. I need to reach out to this new dad group. Like, hey, can I come meet up with you guys? I'm new, I'm kind of struggling. Be willing to be vulnerable, be willing to take that step. This is what leadership in your life, in your relationship looks like is that you're in charge of yourself and you're in charge of finding and accessing these resources for yourself, also for your family, a leader in, not leader of. Having those conversations with your partner, encouraging her to reach out to her friends or her network or other new moms that she may already know. to see what kind of challenges they're having, what kind of support they're able to access, who they've reached out to that's been helpful and who hasn't. But again, it requires action, it requires ownership, and it requires that connection and communication and being willing to step up into these challenges rather than just sort of like, well, I guess I'll try again tomorrow or like shirking away from the responsibilities. This is what I mean when I say man up, not just suck up your emotions and pretend it doesn't hurt. That's not what I'm saying. It's like, own the responsibilities, own these opportunities and take care of yourself so that you can protect and serve your family by looking out for the bigger picture. Wow, this is such a great show. Thank you so much for that because we did spend a lot of time really breaking down what it means to serve, but it was great how we're able to connect this into the protect element because that was going to be my last question, but you fully answered it regarding how the protect element fits into today's society where. man as a protector may come off as, Hey man, hold your horses. It's not 19 whatever, but there's still very much a role for that. And you did such an excellent job at breaking down that role and like really defining it. We've covered a lot of ground here. I just wanted to leave the floor to you to maybe let us know about what to expect from upcoming work of yours. I know you've been converting the book into YouTube lectures and that's coming. So yeah, just a shameless blog. Let us know what people can find your work and what they can expect from you moving forward as well. Sure. Thank you. And the YouTube is a good reference. We'll make sure we put the YouTube channel link in the show notes. Also, I'm in the middle of building out the full video course of the Welcome to Fatherhood material. And it's going to be, I think it's about 75 little videos ranging from three minutes to 10 minutes each, organized according to trimesters and according to my dad tips, my big ideas, all the stuff that I talk about in my work and how I have it organized, but in bite -sized video format and a lot of the early versions of the individual videos are available for free on the YouTube channel. So you can get a sneak peek of what's coming in. You know, one of the ones I recommend the most is, and all my work is dad tip number seven, dude, hire a doula. For any of you guys out there that are on the fence about it, please do. It's going to make your life so much easier and your partner's too. So get on board that train as she brings it up. Like, yeah, great idea. Let's go. One of the videos on my YouTube channel is that video. And it's one of the most popular ones on there. It's a good sneak peek of what to expect in the course as a whole. Once that becomes available, it'll be fully on the website to be purchased in total. And there'll be some coaching packages are built into that as some of the tiers of offering also. So whether you want some help working on your map from the dude zone to the dad zone, Articulating what that looks like for you. What are your dud zone risks? What are the things to watch out for? And then when you find yourself drifting into the, one of the dud zones, what are some action steps that you can take given the givens and the unique circumstances of your life, your partner's life and your relationship, that'll be part of what's in there along with some other like more extensive coaching beyond into the fourth trimester to build some sessions in there. So a lot of that will be available. But I'm really excited about the video series coming up, Linda. I'm glad you mentioned it because so many guys these days, they're not really interested in reading a book, frankly. It's like, you know, they're, I hear from their partners, I bought them your book, David, and it's sitting on the bed stand with the other four books I bought them. And I don't think he's looked at any of them. I'm like, yeah, here's my surprise face. He's just not going to read. The podcast is out. So we talk a little bit about that stuff, but the audio book is out. Again, it's just the video format, I think is where I'm going to meet most of the guys today. And I'm very happy to put big chunks of that up for free on the YouTube channel so people can get a sense of who this crazy guy you had on your show is who talks in 18 sentence paragraphs and 18 minute run on sentences. Like, yeah, that's me. That's what you're going to get. But I keep it real. I'm a hundred percent earnest about everything I say. I've learned from my own follies. I share those follies with you because laughing at me is fun for me and you. So a lot of good stuff on there. No, absolutely. Absolutely. You heard it all from the man himself, David Orell. Thank you so much for coming onto our platform. We'll have all the links for people onto the show notes and probably Super Daddy Connect, which we're going to be, well, we already released, but we'll definitely make a segment for it and make sure people go through it and they can find all the stuff that is just so resourceful. So yeah, again, thank you for coming onto the show. Thanks, Lindo. Always a pleasure to wrap with you guys. I appreciate the invite. Absolutely. Thank you. Hey everyone, we'll see you on the next one. you That was great. Yeah.