Before my son was born, I wondered how long it would take before I asked a truly stupid question.
Other friends had told me their stories about asking that first dumb question. One friend confessed that they called the pediatrician’s emergency line the first night home from the hospital because their child was crying. “Yeah, they’ll do that,” the pediatrician chuckled, and hung up. Another told me that they misinterpreted the doctor’s instructions before leaving the hospital. They called the pediatrician the day after they got home, reporting back that they child had pooped three times when the doctor had told them to make sure their newborn pooped once. “We meant at least once, not only once!” the pediatrician laughed. Every new parent, it seemed, asked something stupid.
I was a new dad who’d never changed a diaper before. The only thing I knew for certain was that I knew nothing. I knew I was going to ask something dumb — eventually, at least.
It took me 45 seconds.
Ben was born, and the doctors called me over to a little scale where they were weighing Ben. I looked down at his tiny feet. They were black.
I hadn’t remembered reading anything about black feet in any of the parenting books.
So I asked them: Are his feet supposed to be black? Is that normal?
That’s when they held up a piece of paper with his tiny footprint on it. They’d pressed his feet in black ink to make the footprint.
It was the first of what would be many, many stupid questions.
But getting that first one out of the way really did help! With a baby, new stuff happens all the time, and I quickly became unafraid to ask, even when I knew the answer was going to be something obvious. I didn’t have to preface questions with, “I know this might be a dumb question, but….” I just asked.
I constantly remind myself: There’s so much I don’t know, and there’s no reason to pretend like I know everything.
Even when it feels like it might be a stupid question, I now just ask.
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That photo at top is of me the night we got home from the hospital. I’d changed about five diapers at that point. I didn’t have my technique down, but hey, I got better.