The Oxygen Mask: Ignoring My Own Health: The #1 Mistake I Made As A New Dad

If you search for “parenting mistakes to avoid,” you will find millions of results telling you how to hold a baby, how to discipline a toddler, or why screen time is the enemy.

The mistake of “Martyrdom”: destroying the vessel (you) that is supposed to protect the child.

But very few people talk about the mistake that happens before you even pick up the baby. It is the mistake of thinking you are invincible.

I am a COO and CDO at a high-paced MarTech agency. I am used to 14-hour days, managing revenue, and putting out fires. Also, i thought I could apply that same ‘push through the pain’ mentality to fatherhood.

I want to be honest with everyone reading this blog. The more you try to push through, the smaller the chances of you bouncing back with a complete recovery. 

At the end of the day, you are a human being. Yes, mental strength plays a major role, but biologically, you have to take stock of what is happening within your body. 

If it gets too late, and you are unable to take any action, the people who would suffer the most would be your immediate family. Nobody, I repeat nobody, wants that to happen. 

I was wrong. Ignoring my biological reality wasn’t heroic; it was a liability. Here is how grief, a liter of soda a day, and high-functioning anxiety nearly cost me my ability to be the father my daughter needed.

The Trigger: When Grief Meets Stress

For me, the physical decline didn’t start with the baby. It started with a loss.

Immediately after my father passed away, my body went into a strange lockdown. I was working 12 to 14 hours a day, carrying the grief, and managing high-stakes corporate decisions.

Being very close to my father, his death came as a huge shock to me. You are never really prepared for something like this. Being the elder son of the family, I could not grieve as I would have liked to. 

Staying strong, not crying, keeping the family together, and looking after my mother all meant I created this external, toughened shell. No one, including my wife, was allowed to look within as to what was really happening- chaos, struggle, mental strength depletion, anger, anxiety, and rage. 

• The Signs: 

I started feeling tightness in my chest. My muscles were perpetually fatigued, like I had run a marathon without moving from my desk. Sleep became nonexistent.

• The Diagnosis: 

Unlike many men who ignore these signs, I rushed to get checked. The results were a wake-up call. My blood sugar and cholesterol were hovering at borderline levels. My body was screaming.

The Realization:

One thing that I started very early, as soon as my daughter was born, was to make a stark difference between why I care about myself. 

Here’s the realization I came to. I need to care about myself because I have family members whom I love. 

I am also certain about the fact that without me, they would not be happy. 

Their life will not be as comfortable (from a financial and lifestyle point of view), or joyful (from a family point of view- I am the son of a mother, husband to a wife, and father to an eighteen-month-old daughter, and an eight-year-old Labrador). 

Once you are able to make peace with this, you are ready to take some concrete, actionable steps. 

The Reality Check: You Can’t “Manage” a Newborn on Empty

Then, my daughter was born.

This is where the parenting mistake became real.

I thought I could power through the newborn phase on adrenaline, just like I powered through a chaotic fiscal quarter. But a baby doesn’t care about your adrenaline.

I physically couldn’t keep up.

• I would get tired after holding her for 20 minutes.
• When she woke up crying at 2:00 AM, my body refused to cooperate. I wanted to help my wife, but I was so chemically depleted that I just wanted to hit the bed.
• I wasn’t an active partner; I was an exhausted observer.

I realized that by failing to maintain my own engine, I was failing the passengers. You need to understand that raising a child requires both parents. If you are the one tasked with the financial responsibility, that does not mean that your wife will not expect you to contribute to the upbringing. 

Yes, it cannot be a 50-50 sum game. However, you need to do your 25 percent. The more time you spend, the more socks you help your child wear, the more toys you pick up and put in the toy basket at the end of the day, will be enough for your family (especially your wife). 

You will also notice that the bond with your child will be much better. They will show it in affection, and that is a feeling which is incomparable to anything else in the world. 

The 4 Specific Health Mistakes I Made:

Looking back, I can pinpoint exactly where I went wrong. If you are a new dad or an expectant one, these are the specific health-related parenting mistakes to avoid.

1. Skipping The Start (The Breakfast Mistake):

In the rush of early morning emails and calls, I stopped eating breakfast. I treated coffee as a meal. This messed up my metabolism for the rest of the day, leading to energy crashes right when my family needed me in the evening.

You are in a rush every single morning, and breakfast takes the worst hit. If you want to ace your work, you need the healthiest meal in the world, a.k.a. breakfast!

Nuts, fruits, protein (eggs), some carbs for energy, milk (if you are into it), and a banana. That’s it. Nothing too fancy, nothing too expensive. Nothing that will drain your wallet. 

2. The “Liquid Stress” Diet:

I was drinking nearly a liter of carbonated, sweetened soft drinks (Pepsi and Sprite) every single day.

I told myself it was for the “sugar rush” to keep working. In reality, I was inflammation in a bottle. That sugar spike and crash cycle is the enemy of patience.

Soft drinks don’t help. Energy drinks don’t help. It’s a momentary kick, followed by too many health woes. If you can try to completely eradicate sugar from your diet, and give this a month, you will notice structural differences in your health and well-being.

3. Late-Night Toxic Snacking:

Because I skipped breakfast and ran on soda, I was starving by 9:00 PM.

My dinner became a festival of fast food-deep-fried, preservative-laden junk that I could eat with one hand while typing with the other. I was feeding my anxiety, not my body.

KFC- yes please. Dominos Supreme Chicken- absolutely. China Garden- oh yes. 

Big mistakes. You fall asleep late because the heavy food is making your organs work harder to digest. You get up bloated, since the digestion was not completed. 

My brain would psychologically think of fast food as a reward for a hard day’s work. This went on for quite some time, and dangerous food would give me a sense of satisfaction. 

4. The Mental Treadmill:

My biggest mistake was invisible. I spent my nights overthinking. Stressing about revenue targets, client escalations, and things I had absolutely no control over. I was stealing energy from tomorrow to worry about yesterday.

This prevented me from sleeping calmly, putting my mind to rest. This also ensured that I was too distant every single time a family member wanted to have a conversation with me. 

I realised you cannot control what is going to happen, at least not in the way you are worrying about it at 1 AM. It’s best to close that chapter of that given day, give your body the much-needed rest it deserves, and fight to live another day. 

The Mental Toll: Identifying New Dad Anxiety

When we list common parenting mistakes, we usually list things we do wrong with the baby. But my biggest error was ignoring what was happening inside my own head.

I assumed the chest tightness was just physical fatigue. In reality, I was battling new dad anxiety and unresolved grief. Studies show that paternal mental health is often overlooked, yet it directly affects the child’s development.

I was “over-functioning” at work to compensate for feeling out of control at home. This is a classic symptom of stress in fathers. If you find yourself unable to switch off, irritable, or constantly worrying about finances despite having a safety net, you aren’t just “stressed”—you might be dealing with paternal postpartum depression or anxiety. Acknowledging this wasn’t a weakness; it was the first step to stabilizing my family.

The “Burden” Factor: How My Health Affected My Marriage?

One of the most critical parenting mistakes to avoid is becoming a liability to your partner.

When I was physically depleted—running on soda and sleep deprivation—I wasn’t just hurting myself; I was placing an unfair load on my wife.

• She had to handle the nighttime routine because I was too exhausted.
• She had to manage the emotional labor because I was too short-tempered.

My poor health created relationship strain and resentment. I realized that supporting a new mother isn’t just about changing diapers; it’s about keeping yourself healthy enough to step up when she is down. 

By fixing my energy levels, I stopped being a “second child” for her to take care of and started being an equal partner again.

The Legacy Mistake: Teaching What You Do, Not What You Say

As a COO, I know that culture is set by leadership behavior, not mission statements. The same applies to parenting.

I realized my daughter was watching everything.

• If she sees me drinking a liter of Pepsi, she will want soda.
• If she sees me stress-eating junk food, she will learn that food is a coping mechanism for stress.

The most subtle parenting mistake to avoid is failing to be a positive role model. I didn’t want my daughter to inherit my anxiety or my borderline cholesterol. 

Cleaning up my diet wasn’t just for my longevity; it was to set a baseline for healthy habits for kids. I want her to see her dad drinking water and eating almonds, so that becomes her “normal.”

The Turnaround: Getting “Fixed”

I decided to treat my body like a client project. It needed a strategy, a timeline, and KPIs.

I didn’t become a bodybuilder. I just became functional. Here is the routine that saved me:

• The 6-Hour Rule: As a new dad, 8 hours of sleep is a myth. But 6 hours of quality sleep is non-negotiable. I stopped doom-scrolling and committed to a sleep routine.
• Hydration Over Carbonation: I swapped the Pepsi for water. Lots of it. I aim for maximum hydration to keep the brain fog away.
• Functional Fuel: I introduced dry fruits (almonds, walnuts) and protein into my diet to sustain energy levels without the crash.
• Movement: My dog ensures I walk briskly for an hour a day. I added 10 minutes of stretching. It’s not an intense gym session, but it gets the blood moving.

My Priority Now? Self-Care For Others:

There is a lot of pressure on dads to be providers. We work hard, we take the stress, and we try to be strong.

But one of the critical parenting mistakes to avoid is thinking that self-care is selfish. It isn’t.

If you don’t fix your sleep, your diet, and your stress, you will be the dad who watches from the couch because he’s too tired to play. Don’t be that dad. Put on your own oxygen mask first.

Additional Reading:

• Provider Panic: The Financial Anxiety No One Tells New Dads
• The ‘Dad Bod’ Myth: Why My 18-Month-Old is My New Personal Trainer
• I Was an Anxious Dad: Why I Ditched Caffeine and Screens to Reclaim My Energy?