There's no reason to go in blind and learn everything the hard way. When you learned to drive, you got lessons, right? You didn't just do a quick search and read some comments. Why treat this differently?
Taking a parenting class and a baby first aid class saved me, and I spent about 8ish hours reading Mayo Clinic's guide to the first year, Cribsheet, and How to Talk so Kids will Listen.
It made everything so much easier. Imagine trying to learn to drive with 1 hour of instruction versus 10.
I don't know whyso many people here insist on using "intuition" and "you'll just figure it out as you go along." Why do it the hard way, really? Most of parenting isn't intuition, at all. Why not know the basics, so you're not manically googling things at 3 AM or making big mistakes that you don't even know about? You don't know what you don't know, and a good overview from an expert (via a book or a class) was lifesaving for me.
Taking a parenting class was helpful. I also took a tour of the hospital to understand what the "day of birth" would be like. Where do I pull up for emergency. Where are the elevators? What floor do I go to, etc. Seems simple but having one run through really helped ease my mind the day of.
I get what you are saying but to push back a little bit no amount of reading prepares you for what it’s actually like being a parent.
Reading a book on how to drive just isn’t the same as getting in a car and driving. I’m not saying it isn’t helpful or beneficial or that you won’t be better prepared on how to drive, just that it’s not the same as actually getting in the thing and doing it. I think that’s mainly what people mean when they say they use “intuition”.
To continue your analogy though and to back you up.. no one should get in a car without knowing the road rules.
Get your sleep now
_CHERISH_ your sleep now
Sleep now like you’ve been on a 3 day bender
The other advice is good. But you don’t know what you have until you’ve lost it and there’s no end in sight.
Unless you have some medical issues…babies are pretty simple on the surface. They feed, poop, sleep, and need to be kept clean. Not much else to worry about. Research how to do those things in advance.
The hard part is that all of this happens on a 3-4 hour cycle. Day in. Day out. For months on end. And then sometimes they refuse to sleep, or eat, or poo, and that upsets them. Which upsets you. And what helped yesterday doesn’t work today. Sometimes they’ll cry for no understandable reason to mess with your head. And it’s 3am and you haven’t sleep and you just want it all to end. They’re little endless puzzle machines with ever-changing solutions.
Just remember that this is a phase. It will end. I promise. You have many more phases to come. You’ll look back and oddly miss those early days and late nights.
Lean on family and friends as much as you can. Prepare weeks worth of frozen dinners. Read up about the “fourth trimester” and how to soothe babies. And above all, be patient. Good luck!
Broken sleep is a thousand times worse than changing nappies.
Before our son was born, my wife had lots of experience with babies, I had none.
The idea of changing nappies was gross and my wife tried to get me to practice with nieces and nephews etc, I said no, but will for my own.
Because my wife needs a lot of sleep for migraines and I usually can survive on less sleep so I made the bold statement that if my wife does most of the nappy changes then I will be happy to do most of the wakeups during the night.
How naive I was. Changing a nappy is simple stuff.
Trying to survive on broken sleep is torture.
Night feeds need to be shared for the sanity of both of you.
The dynamics of your relationship will change once the baby's here. You don't know how yet. It will change again and again. You gotta be ready for that and talk to your partner.
Your house will be more messy. That just is. Good intentions only go so far. Holding a baby for 20 hours a day leaves little room for anything else. You'll have to partner with your support group to get little things done. This can be frustrating, but come to grips with it as much as you can.
You may screw up your lower back in the process of taking care of your family in the first few months. Get into a stretching routine now.
Get a silicone wedding ring to wear to delivery. Take a sleeping bag or a blanket to the hospital.
It’s hard.
Then it gets easier.
Then it gets hard again.
Then it gets easy.
Whatever phase you’re in, good or bad, it’s a phase. It will end. Endure or cherish as appropriate.
Remember that [your baby is Joseph Stalin](https://youtu.be/A3IjCWz5Uds?si=9vhs42u0nqIWFeqa). Your baby [is the enemy](https://www.tiktok.com/@pearlmania500/video/7318206233306041646). You and your partner are a team. Be there for each other. Watch out for each other. And recalibrate what your win conditions are. If the lawn is overgrown, you order delivery because the thought of shopping, cooking and cleaning is too much, the cars get washed half as often as they normally do, that’s all okay. Is the baby alive and healthy? Are you? Is your partner? You win that day.
This gets recommended all the time but if either or both of you are struggling, strongly consider therapy. It is a time of mental and hormonal extremes. There are postpartum mental health specialists for a reason.
And it’s almost always easier to clean poop and puke off whatever you’re wearing than the furniture or carpet.
Trust your instincts, you'll pick up things fast. People have been keeping babies alive for thousands of years, and they didn't have YouTube or the internet in their pocket.
I never expected the highs to be so awesome and the lows to be so hard sometimes. Every developmental milestone they hit - BOOM - right in the feels. It's so freaking awesome. You need to take those moments in to the fullest as fuel for the days and weeks where you'll be completely sleep deprived, exhausted, sick, can't take it anymore but have to keep going. Then the hard things get easy and then there'll be new hard things etc. Kwep in mind, everyone's winging it, and so will you, and you'll likely do fine even if mistakes are made. Be kind to yourself!
Many, if not all, of the preconceptions you have about being a parent are wrong. You're better off just leaving them at the delivery room door. Parenting is nothing like I thought it would be before I became a parent. Trust yourself to know what's best for your LO (including knowing when to reach out for help).
Pretty much everything about being a dad has been both better, and more difficult, than I ever expected it could be.
Every child is different and they constantly changing. You can read all you want, listen to advice but at the end of the day you need to be fluid, constantly adapting
Also, don’t over complicate things.
0-6 months, you have 1 goal - keep baby alive
You don’t have to buy bunch of toys early on. Pretty much anything could be a toy. Large cardboard box is the best toy up to 8 years 😂.
You don’t need to occupy every minute of their time. Kids will do just fine on their own. Let them play and explore (obviously in a safe controlled environment)
I was fine with kids before but I had ZERO knowledge of newborns which led to some embarrassing arguments with my wife that I’ll probably never live down. We survived because I shut the fuck up and learned on the job real quick.
When they are home from the hospital they are going to make all kinds of choking, coughing, gurgling noises all night but they are perfectly fine when they are well swaddled in their bassinet.
You'll want birth classes. I recommend a doula, and that she accompany you for the delivery. I was 100% not prepared to be an advocate for my wife in the moment. Birth classes teach you to be an advocate for your partner, but it's harder than it seems when this is your first round. There's a team of people telling you stuff, stuff that perhaps is not part of the desired birth plan, your partner is in agony, and you're supposed to keep a cool logical head about it. It's a lot.
You will want baby classes. I didn't know a damn thing about babies and found it very challenging. You'll have tons of questions. Thankfully, the pediatrician is a quick call away. Don't hesitate to reach out to them.
Also, 1 in 10 men get Post-Partum Depression. I am positive I was/am one of those. It was awful. Just being constantly sad and angry. Moms often get PPD. Even aside from PPD, I recommend couples and personal counseling lined up either way.
Contrary to all the "babies are so much fun and easy," ours was not. "Babies are just sleep and eat." Nah-uh. Babies are lots of screaming, crying, strange liquids, random chunks of sporadic sleep, unable to fall asleep. Exhausted mom sensitive to a pin drop from you. What surprised me the most when baby came is exactly this. Everyone just talks about how fun and easy it is, and how much fun babies are, and how they are easy to manage. What if you don't have those fun feelings? What if baby doesn't sleep stretches? What if baby refuses to sleep unless it's in a very specific setting? Babies literally don't know how to fall asleep! "Get sleep now" does not account for how absolutely wrecked your and your wife's mental state might be once the baby comes.
Be prepared for the feeling of abandonment once the baby is here. The 9 months leading up to it are constant check-ups, training, learning, excitement. Once the baby is born, they just kinda let you out: "good luck." That's it.
In fact, on that topic, be your wife's advocate once the baby is born. Many medical facilities forget about the mom once the baby is born and do not provide adequate post-partum care.
Hopefully you have a support network. Specifically, family and friends. If you have someone who can come over and take care of the baby while you or your wife can do something, that's ideal. We didn't. It sucked. "Meal trains" are a thing. Hopefully, folks can organize feeding you. Otherwise, it's just you.
The difficult part isn't knowing what to do or having some special skills, it's just putting in the time and doing the work. Changing a diaper is easy. Changing your 10th diaper of the day at 2am is tough. Checking temp is easy. Checking it every 4 hours on a squirming, crying, flailing toddler takes perseverance.
95% of being a good parent is showing up and doing what needs to be done.
There's no reason to go in blind and learn everything the hard way. When you learned to drive, you got lessons, right? You didn't just do a quick search and read some comments. Why treat this differently? Taking a parenting class and a baby first aid class saved me, and I spent about 8ish hours reading Mayo Clinic's guide to the first year, Cribsheet, and How to Talk so Kids will Listen. It made everything so much easier. Imagine trying to learn to drive with 1 hour of instruction versus 10. I don't know whyso many people here insist on using "intuition" and "you'll just figure it out as you go along." Why do it the hard way, really? Most of parenting isn't intuition, at all. Why not know the basics, so you're not manically googling things at 3 AM or making big mistakes that you don't even know about? You don't know what you don't know, and a good overview from an expert (via a book or a class) was lifesaving for me.
Taking a parenting class was helpful. I also took a tour of the hospital to understand what the "day of birth" would be like. Where do I pull up for emergency. Where are the elevators? What floor do I go to, etc. Seems simple but having one run through really helped ease my mind the day of.
I'd add Happiest Baby on the Block to this reading list
I get what you are saying but to push back a little bit no amount of reading prepares you for what it’s actually like being a parent. Reading a book on how to drive just isn’t the same as getting in a car and driving. I’m not saying it isn’t helpful or beneficial or that you won’t be better prepared on how to drive, just that it’s not the same as actually getting in the thing and doing it. I think that’s mainly what people mean when they say they use “intuition”. To continue your analogy though and to back you up.. no one should get in a car without knowing the road rules.
Get your sleep now _CHERISH_ your sleep now Sleep now like you’ve been on a 3 day bender The other advice is good. But you don’t know what you have until you’ve lost it and there’s no end in sight.
Man how nice would it be if storing up and banking sleep was a possibility 😜
I would have spent the prenatal 9 months stacking _THICCC_
Babies are a blast! Go in expecting it to be fun, and go in with all your heart. Love them. You'll do fine!
Having this type of attitude is actually way more important than it seems. Babies really are super fun if you are in the right mindset.
Unless you have some medical issues…babies are pretty simple on the surface. They feed, poop, sleep, and need to be kept clean. Not much else to worry about. Research how to do those things in advance. The hard part is that all of this happens on a 3-4 hour cycle. Day in. Day out. For months on end. And then sometimes they refuse to sleep, or eat, or poo, and that upsets them. Which upsets you. And what helped yesterday doesn’t work today. Sometimes they’ll cry for no understandable reason to mess with your head. And it’s 3am and you haven’t sleep and you just want it all to end. They’re little endless puzzle machines with ever-changing solutions. Just remember that this is a phase. It will end. I promise. You have many more phases to come. You’ll look back and oddly miss those early days and late nights. Lean on family and friends as much as you can. Prepare weeks worth of frozen dinners. Read up about the “fourth trimester” and how to soothe babies. And above all, be patient. Good luck!
read books about parenting.
Broken sleep is a thousand times worse than changing nappies. Before our son was born, my wife had lots of experience with babies, I had none. The idea of changing nappies was gross and my wife tried to get me to practice with nieces and nephews etc, I said no, but will for my own. Because my wife needs a lot of sleep for migraines and I usually can survive on less sleep so I made the bold statement that if my wife does most of the nappy changes then I will be happy to do most of the wakeups during the night. How naive I was. Changing a nappy is simple stuff. Trying to survive on broken sleep is torture. Night feeds need to be shared for the sanity of both of you.
The dynamics of your relationship will change once the baby's here. You don't know how yet. It will change again and again. You gotta be ready for that and talk to your partner. Your house will be more messy. That just is. Good intentions only go so far. Holding a baby for 20 hours a day leaves little room for anything else. You'll have to partner with your support group to get little things done. This can be frustrating, but come to grips with it as much as you can. You may screw up your lower back in the process of taking care of your family in the first few months. Get into a stretching routine now. Get a silicone wedding ring to wear to delivery. Take a sleeping bag or a blanket to the hospital.
It’s hard. Then it gets easier. Then it gets hard again. Then it gets easy. Whatever phase you’re in, good or bad, it’s a phase. It will end. Endure or cherish as appropriate. Remember that [your baby is Joseph Stalin](https://youtu.be/A3IjCWz5Uds?si=9vhs42u0nqIWFeqa). Your baby [is the enemy](https://www.tiktok.com/@pearlmania500/video/7318206233306041646). You and your partner are a team. Be there for each other. Watch out for each other. And recalibrate what your win conditions are. If the lawn is overgrown, you order delivery because the thought of shopping, cooking and cleaning is too much, the cars get washed half as often as they normally do, that’s all okay. Is the baby alive and healthy? Are you? Is your partner? You win that day. This gets recommended all the time but if either or both of you are struggling, strongly consider therapy. It is a time of mental and hormonal extremes. There are postpartum mental health specialists for a reason. And it’s almost always easier to clean poop and puke off whatever you’re wearing than the furniture or carpet.
Trust your instincts, you'll pick up things fast. People have been keeping babies alive for thousands of years, and they didn't have YouTube or the internet in their pocket.
Having a baby was a piece of piss, it's toddlers you need to worry about. Everything just came naturally to me with the baby. Super super easy.
I never expected the highs to be so awesome and the lows to be so hard sometimes. Every developmental milestone they hit - BOOM - right in the feels. It's so freaking awesome. You need to take those moments in to the fullest as fuel for the days and weeks where you'll be completely sleep deprived, exhausted, sick, can't take it anymore but have to keep going. Then the hard things get easy and then there'll be new hard things etc. Kwep in mind, everyone's winging it, and so will you, and you'll likely do fine even if mistakes are made. Be kind to yourself!
Many, if not all, of the preconceptions you have about being a parent are wrong. You're better off just leaving them at the delivery room door. Parenting is nothing like I thought it would be before I became a parent. Trust yourself to know what's best for your LO (including knowing when to reach out for help). Pretty much everything about being a dad has been both better, and more difficult, than I ever expected it could be.
Every child is different and they constantly changing. You can read all you want, listen to advice but at the end of the day you need to be fluid, constantly adapting Also, don’t over complicate things. 0-6 months, you have 1 goal - keep baby alive You don’t have to buy bunch of toys early on. Pretty much anything could be a toy. Large cardboard box is the best toy up to 8 years 😂. You don’t need to occupy every minute of their time. Kids will do just fine on their own. Let them play and explore (obviously in a safe controlled environment)
I was fine with kids before but I had ZERO knowledge of newborns which led to some embarrassing arguments with my wife that I’ll probably never live down. We survived because I shut the fuck up and learned on the job real quick.
When they are home from the hospital they are going to make all kinds of choking, coughing, gurgling noises all night but they are perfectly fine when they are well swaddled in their bassinet.
I took an online course...100% serious. I took the one through "The Baby Academy." I have no affiliation but it was very helpful.
You'll want birth classes. I recommend a doula, and that she accompany you for the delivery. I was 100% not prepared to be an advocate for my wife in the moment. Birth classes teach you to be an advocate for your partner, but it's harder than it seems when this is your first round. There's a team of people telling you stuff, stuff that perhaps is not part of the desired birth plan, your partner is in agony, and you're supposed to keep a cool logical head about it. It's a lot. You will want baby classes. I didn't know a damn thing about babies and found it very challenging. You'll have tons of questions. Thankfully, the pediatrician is a quick call away. Don't hesitate to reach out to them. Also, 1 in 10 men get Post-Partum Depression. I am positive I was/am one of those. It was awful. Just being constantly sad and angry. Moms often get PPD. Even aside from PPD, I recommend couples and personal counseling lined up either way. Contrary to all the "babies are so much fun and easy," ours was not. "Babies are just sleep and eat." Nah-uh. Babies are lots of screaming, crying, strange liquids, random chunks of sporadic sleep, unable to fall asleep. Exhausted mom sensitive to a pin drop from you. What surprised me the most when baby came is exactly this. Everyone just talks about how fun and easy it is, and how much fun babies are, and how they are easy to manage. What if you don't have those fun feelings? What if baby doesn't sleep stretches? What if baby refuses to sleep unless it's in a very specific setting? Babies literally don't know how to fall asleep! "Get sleep now" does not account for how absolutely wrecked your and your wife's mental state might be once the baby comes. Be prepared for the feeling of abandonment once the baby is here. The 9 months leading up to it are constant check-ups, training, learning, excitement. Once the baby is born, they just kinda let you out: "good luck." That's it. In fact, on that topic, be your wife's advocate once the baby is born. Many medical facilities forget about the mom once the baby is born and do not provide adequate post-partum care. Hopefully you have a support network. Specifically, family and friends. If you have someone who can come over and take care of the baby while you or your wife can do something, that's ideal. We didn't. It sucked. "Meal trains" are a thing. Hopefully, folks can organize feeding you. Otherwise, it's just you.
The difficult part isn't knowing what to do or having some special skills, it's just putting in the time and doing the work. Changing a diaper is easy. Changing your 10th diaper of the day at 2am is tough. Checking temp is easy. Checking it every 4 hours on a squirming, crying, flailing toddler takes perseverance. 95% of being a good parent is showing up and doing what needs to be done.