29 August 2025 · Eric Richfield
Commercial Director · Father of four
How Dads Can Bond With Their Baby
I've done the first year four times. That sounds like expertise. It's closer to a small experiment with no ethics approval. Tommy came first, twelve years ago, and I spent most of his early months as an enthusiastic assistant. I fetched things. I held him when handed him. I was waiting to be asked, and I couldn't see it at the time.
By the time the twins arrived there was no waiting to be asked. Two of them, one of me, for most of the evening. Being the only available adult is a good teacher. Fathers needn't wait for twins to arrange it.
This is what I'd tell myself in 2013, in the order I wish someone had said it.
Why it often feels slower
It usually is slower, and the reasons are structural. Your partner had nine months of physical acquaintance with this baby before you shook hands. If feeding is by breast, one of you has a several-times-a-night reason to turn up. Paternity leave in most countries is a rounding error. And a newborn arrives preferring the voice and the smell she already knows. Not yours.
None of that is permanent. None of it predicts the relationship you end up with. Most fathers who describe a delayed connection put it at three to six months, when the baby starts visibly responding. Smiling, laughing, grabbing your face on purpose. It's common enough that it should be said out loud. A lot of men assume they're the only one who felt little at six weeks and conclude that reflects badly on them.
It doesn't. A six-week-old isn't much of a conversationalist.
Take a domain, from week one
The best thing I've learned across four children is the difference between owning something and helping with it. Owning it: you know how it works, you notice when it needs doing, nobody has to ask. Helping: a willing pair of hands on somebody else's plan. It keeps you at arm's length for months.
Pick one thing and take all of it. Bath time is the obvious candidate. Warm, physical, daily, one adult and one baby. The bedtime routine, or a set part of it, works as well, since repetition is what makes a routine recognisable. You want to be the recognisable part.
Nappies at a set time of day are unglamorous. They're also contact, eye level and conversation. The night wake that isn't a feed, winding, changing, resettling, is yours to own outright. One outing a week, alone, no handover instructions, no checking in. If bottles or expressed milk are in the picture, take one feed and make it permanently yours.
More for the other parent
What builds it
Repetition, mainly. Least romantic answer available. Also the correct one. Bonding isn't an event that happens and is then complete. It accumulates on ordinary Tuesdays.
Skin-to-skin isn't only for mothers. It settles babies and regulates their temperature whoever provides it. Talk constantly, about nothing. Narrating what you're doing is how she learns your voice belongs to someone who turns up. Carry her. A sling gives hours of contact in a day you were having anyway.
Respond to the crying. The link between distress and your arrival is exactly what's being built. Get your face in close, twenty to thirty centimetres, exaggerate slowly, leave gaps for a reply she can't yet make. As she gets older, play physically. Fathers tend to play rougher, and it does real work: coordination, risk judgement, emotional regulation.
The things that prevent it
None of these is deliberate. All are common. I've done every one, several for months at a stretch.
Waiting to be asked is the first and the worst. It cements one parent in charge and the other assisting. Being corrected and stopping is the second. It gets its own paragraph below. Doing everything jointly is the third. Two adults hovering over one baby produces far less connection than each having sole charge for a stretch.
Then the phone during contact time. Babies are very good at detecting divided attention. Taking rejection personally. A baby who prefers the other parent at eight months is doing something normal.
The correction one deserves a word. Constant correction is corrosive and the usual response is to stop doing the thing. That suits nobody. If it's happening in your house, say so while you're both calm. A nappy fastened slightly wrong isn't a problem. A father who's stopped doing nappies is.
Paternal mental health
About one in ten fathers gets depressed in the first year after a birth. It's badly under-recognised. Nobody asks, and it doesn't look like sadness. It looks like irritability, withdrawal, or a sudden enthusiasm for staying late at the office.
Numb, persistently angry, disconnected after several months, finding reasons not to come home? Take it to a doctor. Common, treatable, and it responds a lot better early. I know it isn't the sort of thing one brings up. Bring it up anyway.
The long view
Involved fathering in the first year predicts better outcomes for children years later. The mechanism is unglamorous. Presence, responsiveness, repetition. Unremarkable weekday evenings do the work.
Tommy is twelve and communicates largely in sarcasm, which I'm told is my fault. He still comes and sits next to me when there's football on. I'd like to claim a strategy, and it was about four hundred baths.
This guide is general information, written to help you understand a topic and ask better questions. It is not medical advice and does not replace your own doctor, midwife or paediatrician. Anything that worries you about your baby belongs with them.