☕️ The Bad News About Coffee, Pregnancy, and Height

Dadpack Digest, V3.1

Dear Dads,

Congratulations, you made it through another October. Now the jack-lanterns are ripening into pumpkin pie, Elon Musk is the terrible father to an 11th child named “Twitter” and November is here. Welcome.

This week, you can pull up an adult beverage of your choice, or hide in the bathroom or car scrolling, and read about what could have a crucial impact on the height of your kid, a fun and socially awkward tip for taking family photos, and more.

We also have featured a new poll question of the week. If you have questions you’d like to submit – think, anything you’d want to ask a room full of fellow dads – let us know. Though tempting, none of the questions will be: are you working hard or hardly working?

We know it’s the first one. Keep up the good work.

This Week From Dadpack

• Bad news about coffee, pregnancy, and height: A bombshell study suggests that it might be a long, coffee-free 9-months for the next kid.

• Picking your kid up from daycare for the first time: Everyone says it’s beautiful and sentimental, but not enough dads are telling the truth about it also being hilarious.

• A simple trick for for getting your kid to smile in pictures: Be warned, mom is probably not going to like it and the grandparents won't be thrilled either.

• A fun present idea: It may be too early to start holiday shopping, but it's never too soon for dad jokes and husband bits.

• A sporty case against nepotism: A recent anecdote on ESPN is a reminder that football legacy families probably shouldn't work together either.

The Unfortunate Link Between Caffeine and Short Kids

Any dad knows that what their pregnant partners do with their bodies is their business, and giving unsolicited advice about what they eat or drink is asking for trouble. That said, you might want to “accidentally” forward the following findings to them, and then claim it was “intended” for one of your buddies who’s expecting.

That’s because new groundbreaking research published in the journal JAMA Open Network found that caffeine consumption during pregnancy can adversely affect your child’s height later on in life. The study tracked the development of 788 children as well as the caffeine consumption habits of their moms throughout pregnancy.

They found that when women consumed caffeine while pregnant, their children were notably shorter than their peers at the age of 4, and the height gap widened when researchers followed up at age 8. “This association occurred even with maternal consumption below current recommendations of 200 mg day,” study authors warned.

The scientists did not look at if these heigh disparities persisted later in life, and noted that these small differences in stature are nothing to panic over. However, more research needs to be done to confirm what this means in terms of the longterm risks.

“Though the clinical implications of an approximately 2-cm height difference are unclear, our findings for height are similar in magnitude to those of children whose mothers smoked during pregnancy,” the researchers added.

If drinking coffee while pregnant is on par with smoking while pregnant, there are ways to support your partner in weaning themselves off of caffeine. Past studies show that a growing number of men are cutting back on booze or abstaining entirely out of solidarity with there partners. A why not do the same thing with caffeine?

Sure, it'll probably suck to wean yourself off of caffeine over the course of two to three weeks to avoid withdrawal symptoms, like The Cleveland Clinic recommends. But it is a small price to pay to have a healthy kid who has a chance at being the basketball player you never were.

For more on kicking the caffeine habit:

Baby's First Complex Emotion

Dropping your kid off at daycare for the first time can be a stressful and emotional experience for parents, but the upside is you get the sweet absurd relief of watching your toddler's face upon your return. That's what father and filmmaker Al G. Sillah learned recently when he dropped picked up his little boy from daycare and captured it in a now-viral Instagram post.

The way he drops his toy and cries out of relief that his dad came back is worth the watch alone, but obviously an honorable mention goes out to the little photo-bomber in the lower part of the frame.

5-star performances all around, no notes.

Dad Hack Of The Week: Never Say Cheese

Getting children to smile for a picture is a fools errand. You likely wasted all of your calmness on getting them into whatever tiny, expensive outfit they'll never wear again, and whatever expression that they land on, screaming, crying or otherwise, is what it is.

Enter children’s book author and Pennsylvania dad Adam Perry with a modern day magic trick. When it comes to getting his son to smile, it only takes one simple, often socially unacceptable word: poop.

Sorry, cheese. You’re officially fired.

Gift Guide For A Smart Ass Wife Guy

In a top-ranking post in the Daddit community on Reddit, a guy by the user name of glastonbury13 posted about buying is wife the perfectly passive aggressive present: a book titled "How Not to Hate Your Husband After Kids" by Jancee Dunn. She might not love it, but she will get the message. And at the end of they day, you were supporting women in publishing. Who can stay mad at that?

Parting Paternalism: Don't Work With Your Dad

Some people might already know that it's a generally not a great idea to work with your dad, and while we're at it, brother, friend, or other people you share a close relationship with. Research shows that nepotism can erode company trust, which makes sense to anyone who's seen "Succession."

But it turns out, this logic extends to father-son football coaching duos. This past weekend on ESPN's “Sunday NFL Countdown,"San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan shared a story about getting in an epic fight with his dad when he was offensive coordinator for the Washington Redskins from 2010 to 2013. During this time, his father Mike Shanahan was the head coach.

What could go wrong?

“We both were seeing [the zone read] differently,” Shanahan told the roundtable. “I was seeing out of the pistol; he was seeing it out of the shotgun. The first day I installed it, I went a little more of how I saw it, and he was watching it, and I came in, felt so proud. I thought it was awesome."

His dad? Not so much.

“I came up like, ‘Hey, did you like that? What’d you think?’" Shanahan continued. "He goes, ‘It was the worst install I’ve ever seen.’ And that’s how he talks. I go, ‘Screw you, dad.’ I was so mad."

As for how the family feud went in front of their fellow coaches and players, "It got awkward, " Shanahan admitted.

In the end, it took a family vacation in Mexico and Shanahan's wife mediating in order to get the pair to make up. Moral of the story? Don't work with your dad, even if you are both really good at coaching football.