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StarTopic Parenting |ST|

enempi

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Hey everyone! Let’s use this as a place for parents, parents-to-be, and people thinking about becoming parents to discuss anything related to raising children. I've seen threads like these in other communities, and it always seemed helpful for like-minded parents to have a place to chat.

This is intended to be a kind and non-judgmental space. Feel free to share any fears or concerns you have, or just vent if you’re having a rough day. But also please share any positive, cute, or fun stories and experiences!

I'm not sure about the demographics of Famiboards, but hopefully we have some seasoned parenting vets here who can offer some insight and advice to those who are early in their parenting journeys, and it would be great if we have some expecting parents and parents of young children who can discuss the day-to-day with each other! Hopefully there are enough Famiboards parents to generate some discussion!
 
I'll start. My wife is 7 months pregnant with our first child, a boy. To be honest this was my primary motivation in making this ST :p I know I'm about to be thrust into a whole new world and will need plenty of support and advice, so it would be lovely to have mini-community here on Famiboards to plug into. I am excited and scared! I am mostly excited, but sometimes it can be easy to get scared when so much of what gets said to first time parents is so negative. Your life is about to end! Say goodbye to sleep, hobbies, sex, happiness! I know this is essentially true, but am I naive for thinking it can't be that bad? After all people continue to keep having children, hell most people have more than one. My wife and I have a really strong and communicative marriage and we both wanted this, so I'm going to be optimistic and believe that this next chapter will be a happy one, even though there will be challenges and the lack of sleep will be trying.

Thankfully her pregnancy has not been too difficult but she has reached the stage of physical discomfort and it's been hard for me to accept there isn't much I can do for her. I pretty much do all the chores around the house and try to make her as comfortable and taken care of as possible, but yeah, turns out having a person grow inside of you is uncomfortable. Nature is cruel and us men have it quite easy! We just started to get gifts from our registry rolling in and holy cow, where is all this stuff gonna go! I need a bigger house but that's probably a year away. I guess we'll just figure out once baby is here 😂

Would love to here some advice, input, whatever from people who have gone through this before!
 
Father of 3, a 15 (almost 16) years old, an 8 year old and a 9 months old.

My advice to you at this point is (specially during my new child experience ) . Be very careful of the due date. Have it well defined and stick to it, nevertheless if your wife feels that the due date is coming treat that with a sense of urgency. I don't know what your wife wants, if natural labor or Caesarean section, but we used CSection because it allowed us to schedule the labor just fine and avoid any risks.

When you baby is here, try to avoid sleeping with him in the bed and use a crib, i know this is a weird advise but many people likes to sleep with their child in order to promote bonding but this creates several risks. When your baby is sleeping avoid overflowing him/her with blankets, this also creates several risks, use your prediatian advise.

Create schedules for when you and your wife will take the chores and all that, allow your wife to rest and try for yourself to also rest.

Also , mother's milk is really important. Maybe your wife will have a hard time breastfeeding, mainly because your baby maybe will have a hard time sucking in, your wife my have a hard time creating milk etc, but you will need to keep trying. My baby (and us) got infected with COVID when he was 15 days old and breastfeeding protected her and my kid from the sickeness.
 
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The advice I give all new parents is this - get used to failure. You will feel like one almost every day if your life.

Being a good parent is about learning to manage failure.

That said for the past 1-2 years, my son, who is 11, was staying up all night on week nights, stealing electronics, stealing candy and snacks, not paying attention in class. Lying about it all. All while going through puberty and having certain urges and asking the teacher if he could take care of them in class. Then swapping his iPad for the school counselor's and watching youtube breast expansion videos - putting the school counselor in a very awkward position.

I had to install a keypad lock on my basement door that autolocks and put every electronic in the house down there like I was trying to hide alcohol from an alcoholic. A few weeks ago, he must have hit rock bottom, because he has been a good boy for weeks. Never cheating or lying and gaining back privileges. It was a horrible year, but thankfully, it appears to be getting better - lessons have been learned.

Another very important piece of advice - your child's personality is the result of random chance and no amount of nurture will change it. Learn who your child is and act and support accordingly. No amount of pre-birth training will prepare you because each child is completely different.
 
I'll start. My wife is 7 months pregnant with our first child, a boy. To be honest this was my primary motivation in making this ST :p I know I'm about to be thrust into a whole new world and will need plenty of support and advice, so it would be lovely to have mini-community here on Famiboards to plug into. I am excited and scared! I am mostly excited, but sometimes it can be easy to get scared when so much of what gets said to first time parents is so negative. Your life is about to end! Say goodbye to sleep, hobbies, sex, happiness! I know this is essentially true, but am I naive for thinking it can't be that bad? After all people continue to keep having children, hell most people have more than one. My wife and I have a really strong and communicative marriage and we both wanted this, so I'm going to be optimistic and believe that this next chapter will be a happy one, even though there will be challenges and the lack of sleep will be trying.

Thankfully her pregnancy has not been too difficult but she has reached the stage of physical discomfort and it's been hard for me to accept there isn't much I can do for her. I pretty much do all the chores around the house and try to make her as comfortable and taken care of as possible, but yeah, turns out having a person grow inside of you is uncomfortable. Nature is cruel and us men have it quite easy! We just started to get gifts from our registry rolling in and holy cow, where is all this stuff gonna go! I need a bigger house but that's probably a year away. I guess we'll just figure out once baby is here 😂

Would love to here some advice, input, whatever from people who have gone through this before!

What a wonderful idea for a thread!

I have a two-year-old daughter and we're thinking about having another one here soon. Trust me when I say: You will be fine. Yes, it's a challenge. Yes, it has cost me sleep (I woke up at 3:30 AM this morning because the wee one had a nightmare lol), a lot of hobby time (I remember not having a backlog), and in general forced me to undergo a radical change in how I live my life (I even had to quit my PhD and move back home from another country).

And I wouldn't hesitate to do it all over again. The challenge is worth it and you will rise up to meet it. Nothing in this world is as rewarding as this, even though it is difficult. You will be absolutely fine, as long as you just keep your head screwed on the right way around.

Pregnancies can be very different. My wife fortunately had a very easy pregnancy, too, but even so it's still difficult. Some of my friends have had absolutely horrible pregnancies and just can't bring themselves to have more children, even if they want to, because of that. So having a relatively easy pregnancy is a blessing that can't be quantified.

Since men can't carry children, like you say, the least we can do is making it as easy for them as possible: doing the chores, cooking - even helping them get dressed or out of bed during the last few days. It's very good you have that mentality and you'll also need it for a while after the baby is born. Wake at night so she can sleep, make sure the house is clean, take the baby out for long walks (I used to go to cafés, listen to Audiobooks, play Pokémon Go - whatever so that she could sleep between breastfeeding sessions). It's going to be difficult but it'll make life easier for her (especially if she gets post-partum and/or the kid gets colic) and be better for the relationship in the long run.

Also, my advice is to be ready to pack the kid's stuff away as soon as he outgrows it. Like, those first clothes will be worn a few times, assuming growth is average or more. Just have a plastic box ready to pack that stuff down into as soon as it becomes redundant. It might be emotionally difficult (Oh my god, his first onesie! etc.) but you'll thank yourself for it later. Same with stuff like playmats, pacifiers etc.
 
Also , mother's milk is really important. Maybe your wife will have a hard time breastfeeding, mainly because your baby maybe will have a hard time sucking in, your wife my have a hard time creating milk etc, but you will need to keep trying. My baby (and us) got infected with COVID when he was 15 days old and breastfeeding protected her and my kid from the sickeness.
This is an important point, but another very important point is this - if your child refuses to breastfeed - forgive yourself and don't beat yourself up over using formula. My first born REFUSED to breastfeed. Refused. We had a breastfeeding coach with over a decade of experience that threw her hands up in frustration and said - I have never seen this. My wife was devastated because our plan was to breastfeed - we had not mentally planned to formula feed. The person who was born demanded to be formula fed or he would have died of malnutrition. This was a result of his personality - as he has grown up we have discovered that certain things are just hard and he gets frustrated easily and becomes angry and gives up. That's what happened the first day he was born - it was too hard for him. Now, my wife could have pumped, but because there was no actual feeding going on it was extremely difficult to do without let down occurring.

Hence, make peace with failure and roll with the punches and forgive yourself often for not being the perfect parent.
 
Another really important point - Post-Partum Depression

My wife had it pretty bad after our first born - not being able to breastfeed made it worse. Sometimes Post-Partum never goes away and can linger for years. My wife has struggled more with depression after becoming a parent and it's just part of who she is now. Because my son was so challenging to raise, my wife being in that really negative headspace, she developed resentments towards me. Resentments that took years to make peace with a decade later and with the help of therapy.

I don't say these things to scare you. I was an extremely active early parent - went to every class and wanted to be the best parent ever, but there are so many things you can never learn through books or a classroom. My son was lactose sensitive and we didn't know until the formula was coming out of his nose and he cried all the time after feedings - so we switched to a soy formula.

My daughter is allergic to eggs. Food allergies are no joke and something you have to be really aware of and on top of with a new person in your life.
 
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This is an important point, but another very important point is this - if your child refuses to breastfeed - forgive yourself and don't beat yourself up over using formula. My first born REFUSED to breastfeed. Refused. We had a breastfeeding coach with over a decade of experience that threw her hands up in frustration and said - I have never seen this. My wife was devastated because our plan was to breastfeed - we had not mentally planned to formula feed. The person who was born demanded to be formula fed or he would have died of malnutrition. This was a result of his personality - as he has grown up we have discovered that certain things are just hard and he gets frustrated easily and becomes angry and gives up. That's what happened the first day he was born - it was too hard for him. Now, my wife could have pumped, but because there was no actual feeding going on it was extremely difficult to do without let down occurring.

Hence, make peace with failure and roll with the punches and forgive yourself often for not being the perfect parent.

Yup, sometines breastfeeding is just not possible , so using formula is the only way, just keep an eye in avoiding your baby to get constipated, since formula provokes this on childs.

And also i was going to mention the Post-Partum Depression. Listen to your wife , if you did before, more so now.
 
Yup, sometines breastfeeding is just not possible , so using formula is the only way, just keep an eye in avoiding your baby to get constipated, since formula provokes this on childs.

And also i was going to mention the Post-Partum Depression. Listen to your wife , if you did before, more so now.
formula does not cause constipation
 
formula does not cause constipation

Yes it does.


Altought every baby is different.

In my experience with my 9 month old, we used a mixed feeding plan (formula and breast) and the formula always gave constipation and some other issues like reflux. We eventually had to use suppositories to make him poop after he spent more than 72 hours without doing it ( mainly when he was refusing the breast and had to use formula).
 
Yes it does.


Altought every baby is different.

In my experience with my 9 month old, we used a mixed feeding plan (formula and breast) and the formula always gave constipation and some other issues like reflux. We eventually had to use suppositories to make him poop after he spent more than 72 hours without doing it ( mainly when he was refusing the breast and had to use formula).

breast fed babies have liquid poops
formula fed babies have liquid/mush/pasty poops

breast fed babies can go 10 days between poops at certain ages, formula fed babies are usually more regular - but not pooping every day =/= constipation
constipation is hard poops

properly mixed formula would not cause that

9 month olds are usually fed solid foods by that point - starchy solid foods can definitely make poops hard
 
breast fed babies have liquid poops
formula fed babies have liquid/mush/pasty poops

breast fed babies can go 10 days between poops at certain ages, formula fed babies are usually more regular - but not pooping every day =/= constipation
constipation is hard poops

properly mixed formula would not cause that

9 month olds are usually fed solid foods by that point - starchy solid foods can definitely make poops hard

This is very strange for me since this is the first time i heard about it. Our pediatrician advised us for our baby that if he didn't pooped on 72 hours then to start giving him the medicine (not before, since it creates dependency on it for pooping) and makes sabse since my child was in absolute dismay after 72 without a poop, i don't want to think in babies not able to do it for 10 days.

The pediatrician told us , that even when the formula was properly mixed , the reason of the constipation was the type of formula we were giving to our child, which was special for reflux (more gummy than other formulas) but he advised us not to changing it since it would cause more issues. This was for the first 6 months , then we started with complementary food.
 
The pediatrician told us , that even when the formula was properly mixed , the reason of the constipation was the type of formula we were giving to our child, which was special for reflux (more gummy than other formulas) but he advised us not to changing it since it would cause more issues. This was for the first 6 months , then we started with complementary food.
some formulas for reflux can have rice cereal mixed in, which can definitely make poops hard!
 
some formulas for reflux can have rice cereal mixed in, which can definitely make poops hard!

Yup, hence constipation right?

Anyway, as randomengine said, not being able to breastfeed can have a toll on the mom which is also importan to address. At the of the day the pedriatian knows better and should be consulted first.

 
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Wow, great start to this thread! I really appreciate all the feedback and advice. My wife wants to breastfeed but we are trying to keep in mind that it might not go as planned and that is just fine. My wife reads a bunch of pregnancy groups and boards, and there is so much pressure for women do things the “right” and natural way.

The advice I give all new parents is this - get used to failure. You will feel like one almost every day if your life.

Being a good parent is about learning to manage failure.

That said for the past 1-2 years, my son, who is 11, was staying up all night on week nights, stealing electronics, stealing candy and snacks, not paying attention in class. Lying about it all. All while going through puberty and having certain urges and asking the teacher if he could take care of them in class. Then swapping his iPad for the school counselor's and watching youtube breast expansion videos - putting the school counselor in a very awkward position.

I had to install a keypad lock on my basement door that autolocks and put every electronic in the house down there like I was trying to hide alcohol from an alcoholic. A few weeks ago, he must have hit rock bottom, because he has been a good boy for weeks. Never cheating or lying and gaining back privileges. It was a horrible year, but thankfully, it appears to be getting better - lessons have been learned.

Another very important piece of advice - your child's personality is the result of random chance and no amount of nurture will change it. Learn who your child is and act and support accordingly. No amount of pre-birth training will prepare you because each child is completely different.

This is really good advice. Until baby is actually here it’s all hypothetical, and it’s easy to start imagining a future where we are perfect parents and our son is the easiest most well adjusted child that anyone ever raised. I appreciate your point that it’s important to give yourself some room to fail and figure things out as you go, and to not have too many expectations about how everything will play out. I’m going to try to remember to go with the flow with my son and not place too many expectations on him.

What a wonderful idea for a thread!

I have a two-year-old daughter and we're thinking about having another one here soon. Trust me when I say: You will be fine. Yes, it's a challenge. Yes, it has cost me sleep (I woke up at 3:30 AM this morning because the wee one had a nightmare lol), a lot of hobby time (I remember not having a backlog), and in general forced me to undergo a radical change in how I live my life (I even had to quit my PhD and move back home from another country).

And I wouldn't hesitate to do it all over again. The challenge is worth it and you will rise up to meet it. Nothing in this world is as rewarding as this, even though it is difficult. You will be absolutely fine, as long as you just keep your head screwed on the right way around.

Pregnancies can be very different. My wife fortunately had a very easy pregnancy, too, but even so it's still difficult. Some of my friends have had absolutely horrible pregnancies and just can't bring themselves to have more children, even if they want to, because of that. So having a relatively easy pregnancy is a blessing that can't be quantified.

Since men can't carry children, like you say, the least we can do is making it as easy for them as possible: doing the chores, cooking - even helping them get dressed or out of bed during the last few days. It's very good you have that mentality and you'll also need it for a while after the baby is born. Wake at night so she can sleep, make sure the house is clean, take the baby out for long walks (I used to go to cafés, listen to Audiobooks, play Pokémon Go - whatever so that she could sleep between breastfeeding sessions). It's going to be difficult but it'll make life easier for her (especially if she gets post-partum and/or the kid gets colic) and be better for the relationship in the long run.

Also, my advice is to be ready to pack the kid's stuff away as soon as he outgrows it. Like, those first clothes will be worn a few times, assuming growth is average or more. Just have a plastic box ready to pack that stuff down into as soon as it becomes redundant. It might be emotionally difficult (Oh my god, his first onesie! etc.) but you'll thank yourself for it later. Same with stuff like playmats, pacifiers etc.

Thanks for this. I know the whole “it’s difficult but rewarding and worth it” bit can be a little cliche, but honestly hearing stuff like this is really nice and reassuring. Probably the most frustrating part of this whole pregnancy is how quickly people shifted from “when are you having kids? kids are everything!” to “you’re pregnant! Haha! Say goodbye to your life!” It all comes from older relatives too. I had extended family visit us a few months ago, and my cousin has a 2 year old and was so happy for me and just gushing about how wonderful being a parent is. It was all my aunts and uncles telling me how sorry I was gonna be and how my life is gonna be over hardy har har 😐. People do this a lot. It never feels like it’s trying to be helpful or prepare me, just being obnoxious. Like I’m not naive about the challenges, but first time parents have no experience so it’s nice to hear people say nice things about parenthood instead of sowing seeds of doubt. Thank you for your comment!

And yeah, as for chores and stuff I am definitely of the mindset that it should mainly fall on me. Especially since my wife will likely have a C-section. I mean she is literally growing and birthing our child, the least I can do is clean up the house and cook some dinners. That’s really nothing compared to what she is going through, and her pregnancy has not been that difficult. It is kind of sad how low the bar is for men in these situations. My wife reads a lot of pregnancy groups and like half the posts are women complaining about unhelpful or antagonistic husbands. It’s sad.
 
Wow, great start to this thread! I really appreciate all the feedback and advice. My wife wants to breastfeed but we are trying to keep in mind that it might not go as planned and that is just fine. My wife reads a bunch of pregnancy groups and boards, and there is so much pressure for women do things the “right” and natural way.



This is really good advice. Until baby is actually here it’s all hypothetical, and it’s easy to start imagining a future where we are perfect parents and our son is the easiest most well adjusted child that anyone ever raised. I appreciate your point that it’s important to give yourself some room to fail and figure things out as you go, and to not have too many expectations about how everything will play out. I’m going to try to remember to go with the flow with my son and not place too many expectations on him.



Thanks for this. I know the whole “it’s difficult but rewarding and worth it” bit can be a little cliche, but honestly hearing stuff like this is really nice and reassuring. Probably the most frustrating part of this whole pregnancy is how quickly people shifted from “when are you having kids? kids are everything!” to “you’re pregnant! Haha! Say goodbye to your life!” It all comes from older relatives too. I had extended family visit us a few months ago, and my cousin has a 2 year old and was so happy for me and just gushing about how wonderful being a parent is. It was all my aunts and uncles telling me how sorry I was gonna be and how my life is gonna be over hardy har har 😐. People do this a lot. It never feels like it’s trying to be helpful or prepare me, just being obnoxious. Like I’m not naive about the challenges, but first time parents have no experience so it’s nice to hear people say nice things about parenthood instead of sowing seeds of doubt. Thank you for your comment!

And yeah, as for chores and stuff I am definitely of the mindset that it should mainly fall on me. Especially since my wife will likely have a C-section. I mean she is literally growing and birthing our child, the least I can do is clean up the house and cook some dinners. That’s really nothing compared to what she is going through, and her pregnancy has not been that difficult. It is kind of sad how low the bar is for men in these situations. My wife reads a lot of pregnancy groups and like half the posts are women complaining about unhelpful or antagonistic husbands. It’s sad.
Regarding the breastfeeding bit, I’d just like to add that it is very important for you to keep that doubly in mind. It’s great that you have both adopted the mentality that, if breastfeeding doesn’t work out, that’s fine - because it absolutely is! But, even knowing so, it can still be emotionally difficult for a mother if she feels “she can’t feed her baby” and if she were to get postpartum depression, that can exacerbate that. It’s a very primal feeling that can be hard to dismiss even if you know you should. Just be prepared to have to remind her that it’s okay, because even if she knows that, it can be difficult to feel it if your emotional state is all over the place. But, of course, hopefully breastfeeding goes well, there won’t be any postpartum, and this won’t be a problem at all!

“Parenting is difficult but rewarding” is probably one of the biggest cliches in life, hahaha! But I think it’s one of those things that are a cliche because they’re simply true. Not for everyone of course - we’re all different - but like you say, if it wasn’t rewarding most of us probably wouldn’t have any children or at least not more than one.

The whole “Oh, you’re in for it now!” is interesting. My wife and I discussed it a lot as well during her late pregnancy and after our daughter was born. Our conclusion was that it is a bit like overstating a point to make sure it gets across. “No, it probably won’t be horrible, but maybe if you expect that, then you won’t be disheartened when it gets difficult.”

It’s cool if your wife is having a caesarean but I’d still like to talk about (for a lack of a better word) “regular” labour to illustrate a point: A modified manifestation of the above is telling first-time pregnant women how painful labour will be. It might be true - after all, death during labour was relatively common before modern medicine and still is where there aren’t enough resources - or it might not: My mum noticed that my wife have gotten pretty anxious for labour (like that helps 🙄) because everyone had been telling her horror stories about labour. She got annoyed with all our relatives and then say my wife down and just said “Listen, yes, labour is painful. But when I had my three kids, it was painful like the most difficult exercise you will ever do in your life, not like seething agony.” I don’t know if it is true or not, obviously. But it did calm my wife down a lot 😂 . And labour ended up being relatively easy for her.

Another thing to keep in mind here: Because labour can be very difficult, you will often hear the worst stories. Because they can be in fact be absolutely horrible (days of contractions, severe tearing, complications, stillbirth etc.). But a lot of them just aren’t. However, you’ll not hear those stories as often. The reason is pretty simple. When my friend needs to talk about how she was in labour for three days, got preeclampsia, had to have an emergency surgery etc., my wife doesn’t answer “Oh, how bad. I was in labour for six hours and the baby came less than 15 minutes after my water broke in three pushes. No complications.” It’d make her a massive fucking prick and a very bad friend, no?

Just… listen to the stuff people tell you with a spoonful of salt in your ears, I guess.

Including what I say, since this is such a different experience for everyone. 😉

Re: your last paragraph: Yeah. It’s super sad. But the only thing we can do is to be the change we want to see in the world and be positive role models. And you’re on the right track for that!
 
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My wife was in labor for over 36 hours. We went completely natural. No epidural and minimal pain meds. My wife is a warrior. Started getting contractions Friday during her nursing final and baby was born on Monday. The baby crowned over the toilet, and she had to waddle over to the hospital bed.

Our second child was also natural, but she had an epidural. At that point she had nothing else to prove to herself.
 
We just found out my wife's brother and his wife are also pregnant, which is exciting! They are about 6 months behind us, so it's cool to think about future holidays and how my son will have a cousin around his age. Crazy to think in just a couple years there's gonna be couple babies running around at Christmas. I'm really excited, the holidays definitely lost a bit of their luster when everyone grew up and there were no children involved anymore.

Seems like we know a lot of people and friends of friends who are pregnant, I guess it's that time :p I'll be 30 soon and it feels like there's a split between the people I know that they're either still clinging on to the college glory days or just fully embracing getting married and starting a family. Most of my closest friends are still unmarried, and no one seems close to having kids, which is kind of sad but I guess someone's gotta go first, and things can always change quickly.
 
I’ve got an 18 yo son about to go to college. I got a 13 yo daughter who’ll start HS next year. I also have a 2yo daughter. So I’ll be going at this for a while still. Lol

I love being Dad though. It’s my favorite thing in the whole wide world.
 
I want to revive this thread that I made when we were expecting, my son is now earthside and 7 weeks old! He has been a true joy. He has really been a pretty easy baby, sleeping 3+ hours from the jump and really only being inconsolable when hungry. He’s sleeping 5-6 hour stretches at night now so the sleep has been totally manageable. He just started smiling at us a ton the past couple days which has been magical! I love this baby so much

It’s true what they say about becoming a parent being completely transformative and amazing. It would be hard to explain to myself back when we were still expecting. I remember thinking a lot about how my life is going to change and being worried about how I would feel about it. I was kind of expecting to have a “okay this was worth it” moment but it’s not like that. When I first held my son it was just like game over, he’s my whole world. So while my life has changed a lot and I have less time for video games etc it feels totally inconsequential and not something I ever think about. I don’t really ever ‘mourn’ my old life because being a parent and holding my son is just amazing. I am excited for the next stages!!
 
I want to revive this thread that I made when we were expecting, my son is now earthside and 7 weeks old! He has been a true joy. He has really been a pretty easy baby, sleeping 3+ hours from the jump and really only being inconsolable when hungry. He’s sleeping 5-6 hour stretches at night now so the sleep has been totally manageable. He just started smiling at us a ton the past couple days which has been magical! I love this baby so much

It’s true what they say about becoming a parent being completely transformative and amazing. It would be hard to explain to myself back when we were still expecting. I remember thinking a lot about how my life is going to change and being worried about how I would feel about it. I was kind of expecting to have a “okay this was worth it” moment but it’s not like that. When I first held my son it was just like game over, he’s my whole world. So while my life has changed a lot and I have less time for video games etc it feels totally inconsequential and not something I ever think about. I don’t really ever ‘mourn’ my old life because being a parent and holding my son is just amazing. I am excited for the next stages!!
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I have long wanted to share my experiences and observations regarding the use of pacifiers. With our first baby, we were breastfed all the time. The second baby partially ate formula, so there were no pacifier problems. The third one constantly demanded the breast even though I didn't have milk anymore. The problem is that he has pacifiers, but he threw them away. We started using a range of personalised dummy clips to get him to like his own pacifier with his name. But no, he stopped using it altogether to spite us. Instead, he started eating regular food by himself. It's a fact that a child can do things to spite his parents but come up with good results for us.
 
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Oh yeah, I’m allowed to participate in this thread now!

He’s latching ok! He’s pooping ok! He’s already back to his birth weight 2 weeks in and he’s already trying to lift his head up and lay on his side more than I’m comfortable with.

We welcomed him into the world at the end of April and he’s already my favorite thing about it.

M8WhIj7_d.webp


*My wife was monitoring the entire nap. I’m not that careless and don’t really move while I sleep anyway.
 
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My daughter was born last month. 9lb 6oz when she arrived, so definitely not a small baby. Her mum stuff an incredible job throughout the labour.

Four weeks in, she's been absolutely amazing. She sleeps plenty, and only cries when she's hungry or getting her nappy changed, which has made things a lot easier than we thought they would be.
 
In my opinion, the most important thing in parenthood is to set a worthy example for your children. Your children will not be able to become respected members of the community if you do not strive for this. Or I can give such an example to my mother, who is 78 and already very ill. We have a big house, so we moved my mother to live with us, arranging the house for an older person's needs to prevent falls. I believe that in this way, we give our three-year-old son an example of caring for those who need it and, first of all, caring for loved ones because I think it is important.
 
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I had my second daughter in the beginning of April, 4 weeks premature. It was a rough start but is going well now - for her, that is. Turns out, you do not get to sleep a lot with a 6-week-old and a 3-year-old together in the same small flat.
 
I had my second daughter in the beginning of April, 4 weeks premature. It was a rough start but is going well now - for her, that is. Turns out, you do not get to sleep a lot with a 6-week-old and a 3-year-old together in the same small flat.
I understand your pain bro, I have the following:
6 years old
4 years old
3 years old
And our lovely 11 month old daughter

After the third one, you become like this "care free parent" (for lack of a nicer term). You can not control everything, just what is really important. Priorities need to be set before going on your day.

Babies = get your shit together. You ain't a mommas boy anymore.
 
Oh a thread I can also participate in too! I’m 39 and I have one daughter. She is 12 years old, and am about to go fly into Portland (she lives with her mom/my ex girlfriend) to pick her up for summer break. Very excited!! I got her into games young, so we always play together and she is now at the point where she can trounce me in Splatoon lol

My wife doesn’t want kids, which is fine by me, one is enough, and she and my daughter have a fantastic relationship since she was 1 years old. We hope one day she will decide she wants to live with us full time, and it would be great. Her mom would probably throw a fit, but honestly she would be way better off with us.

Great thing about this year is that it’s my turn for the Christmas holidays, so I’ll get her summer and then a few months later Christmas and New Years :D
 
I and my wife want to take a child from the orphanage. We told our parents about this, and their answer upset us. They said the baby from the orphanage is a heavy burden and that we have to have our baby. We fought with them. My wife has been depressed for weeks. I feel like I have to do something and make some decisions. I have already found a suitable agency https://fosterplus.org, and I plan to contact the agent this week. I think my wife will be glad I take matters into my own hands. Parents' opinion is very important to us, but it is our life, and we decide what is best for us.
 
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For anyone waiting anxiously for the toddler stage, they are cheeky buggers.

Me: “If you go to the store today, could you pick up some more deodorant?”

Daughter (3): “Yes, mum, and if you go to the store, could you pick up some toys for me too?”
 
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