When your baby is born you will likely be housebound for a while. That means that you’ll be home to help your wife and tend to your wee one. This is awesome, sure you’ll be pretty sleep deprived, but it’s still awesome. There’s nothing better than gently hugging on your son or daughter, and on your wife for doing all of the work. It’s an incredible and sweet experience.

What you’re going to learn quickly is that you won’t be going out any more, forget about your bowling league, after work drinks or baseball team. It’s simply not in the cards for you to be entertaining yourself after work. Speaking of cards, you can forget about poker night too. Instead you’ll be in your home, a lot.

I was given this tip from a colleague when we announced we were pregnant with our first child, Sam. The tip is to stop watching movies now.

The tip is a really good one, assuming you enjoy good movies. Please tell me you do, don’t tell me you liked The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. If you did just stop reading this post now, because it’s clear that you could be entertained by watching spit-up dry, there will be plenty opportunity for that.

The idea is that by the time your baby is born, you’ll have an arsenal of good to great films to watch. The early childhood days are filled with your baby either sleeping, pooping or eating. Surprisingly babies aren’t nearly as much work as you expect, except at night when you were planning on getting some sleep.

You’ll be spending loads of down time at home, so you want plenty of good entertainment to fill the time. If you’re nearly a dad, or you’re a new dad, and you’re reading this yelling “Doh!”, fear not.

There’s always decent video sites like www.hulu.com. I’m not sure of other international options for good online entertainment. Any suggestions?

Photo by: TheMacGirl*