Ask HN: How life changes after being a dad?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9951672

by aforarnold • 11 years ago

16 22 11 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Hello All,

I got married last year and last week my wife confirmed me we are having a baby!

I am happy after listening it but when I started thinking, it seems my life will change dramatically. I am a software engineer working in Europe, has a good job with sufficient money. In my leisure I love to build, learn new technologies. But it seems this is going to change.

So can you guys share your experience, how your life changes after being a first time dad? Do you have any suggestions, tips for me?

Thanks!

gus_massa• 11 years ago

Congratulations!

Sleep now, because the next 18 years are difficult. :)

aforarnold3• 11 years ago

Yesterday I was reading something like "first to years as parents are hard coz you will have less sleep". For me which already started, as my spouse is going through morning sickness and so on. But 18 years would be too much!

velikos• 11 years ago

Meh, it's not that bad for me; I have the help of my wife's parents, though.

aforarnold3• 11 years ago

Unfortunately, thats not possible for us :(

jason_slack2• 11 years ago

congratulations! I have 3 children, now 11, 13, 17.

So older, but they still have activities and schedules. I tend to stay up a bit later than my wife to be able to spend time on coding. I also try and set aside 2-3 weekend days a month to dedicated, don't interrupt me coding. Then I fill in the gaps and spend time as I can.

Laptop and earbuds are helpful to me.

aforarnold3• 11 years ago

"2-3 weekend days a month", thats sounds reasonable!

jason_slack2• 11 years ago

I could do more if I wanted (and sometimes do) but I try and make sure my wife has her own days too. She is very understanding and gets that I need to code my own projects for part of my happiness. I get the same about her hobbies.

atsaloli• 11 years ago

I find I get more done now because I have less time to do it so I am more focused and intent. (Father of a seven year old.)

brudgers• 11 years ago

My friend Julie told me, "for the next year, you are number three, unless you have a dog, then you are number four." While that turned out to be true...except that I had two dogs at the time...the way I like to describe it is that the mother goes through a series of continuous changes, but for the father it's like standing on the tracks watching the freight train coming: I knew everything was going to change, but it all happened at once.

Congratulations. Being a dad is amazingly wonderful and only gets better over the years, and if you do everything right your child will move away and you'll miss their awesomeness deep down in your soul.

Good luck.

partisan• 11 years ago

Congratulations!

My wife and I have 2 year old twins. The next 2 years might be a little rough, depending on your relationship with your wife and the expectations you each have of each other. Because there were 2 babies each with different schedules and needs, we didn't get much sleep for the first 10 months. There was a lot emotional and physical challenges. That said, there are two of you so give each other a break every so often. Maintain your relationships and hobbies.

RollAHardSix• 11 years ago

My daughter is now 7, so what do I remember about the first two years of her life? Being more tired during that time than when I was running patrols while deployed.

Having a child requires super-human levels of endurance, especially when you are attempting to balance a career, school, and social obligations.

You're probably going to lose time on your hobby projects for a few years, it's easier to accept that than fight it. At the same time, you'll learn to work smarter with the time you do have.

Having a child, is the best feeling in the world. You wake up everyday full of fear, knowing this little person depends on you for food, shelter, and guidance. You'll see them grow up, want to become involved in their hobbies, learn that leaving at 5 and making the nightly family dinner is very important to you.

ghuntley• 11 years ago

Congratulations, come join us over at https://www.reddit.com/r/daddit :-)

chrisBob• 11 years ago

My daughter is no 8 months old, and is sleeping better than average. I still lose out on almost all of my project time which used to be weekend mornings before my wife woke up.

My first surprise came during paternity leave: I heard new-borns sleep about 20 hours a day. I should have plenty of time to work on projects, and work from home some. None of that worked out at all.

mcv• 11 years ago

Congratulations!

You are absolutely correct: your life will change dramatically. In short: your time is not yours anymore. You have responsibilities now. Other things are more important than your hobbies, and even more important than your work. As a parent, you live for your children.

It's still possible to make time for your hobbies, but it takes more planning, and it will never be as much as when you were simply on your own. But before you despair (which you will, often), keep in mind that kids are not just tons of work, they're also tons of fun. They're curious and inquisitive and love to learn new stuff. And you get to teach them that. Take their neverending "why?" questions seriously and try to answer them to the best of your ability. If you don't know, figure it out together. Build lego together, play with numbers together, read together, play Minecraft together, and program together.

gadders• 11 years ago

Your life becomes more awesome.

I think family life becomes a viewpoint that you use to prioritise the way you spend your time.

EG: I would like to learn Python. This will take me away from my family for x hours every night. Will it materially affect our happiness or financial position? Is it worth that trade off?

bemmu• 11 years ago

We had our first child 2 weeks ago. I'm a Finnish expat living in Japan.

I think it's a bit loaded topic, as people have pretty strong opinions about how to do parenting right. I know at 2 weeks, I have no idea what I'm doing yet.

So far it seems things haven't changed as radically as I would have expected. It's been continuous, not a sudden jump into an unknown world or anything like that. Based on stuff I read online, my expectation was that this 24/7 crying ball of torture would enter our house, with poop, pee and drool flying everywhere.

But in reality he's mostly quiet and sleeping. And he's really cute and it makes us happy to "play" with him when he's awake. He doesn't even drool.

In Japan it's usual that grandparents help out at first. So we've had our mother-in-law living here for 2 weeks, which means that with all the attention on the baby, I have as much time as before for my work. This has somewhat eased the transition.

Today was the first day taking care of the baby by just the two of us. I cooked, bottlefed him formula, changed a diaper and did registration paperwork. If I hadn't been doing that, I'm not sure if I'd been working or just wasting time on something else.

One thing I hadn't completely realized was that being the breastless parent, you can't really do everything for the baby. There's formula you can feed of course, but it's apparently better to use breastmilk as much as possible. The baby also doesn't seem to be quite as satisfied with a plastic bottle of formula as the real thing.

I feel like I'm not really allowed to comment much on parenting, as 80% of the work is done by my wife, not me. And for the first 2 weeks, maybe 15% of the remaining work was done by my mother-in-law. Maybe after some more time passes I'll try to write a proper blog post about this.

Sleep schedule of a baby is such that every 2-3 hours he wakes up and starts making dissatisfied grunts. Feed, possibly change diaper and soon he gets sleepy again. I've spent just the normal (short) hours working on my stuff, even having time to read some tutorials, study Japanese and take trips to the beach for swimming. But this might be just a temporarily happy situation, will have to see.

Now cue the people about to comment "oh no you don't know how hard it will get soon!". Maybe. But this is what it's been like in the beginning for us so far. I just wanted to contribute a positive non-scary experience.

reedum• 11 years ago

I now have 3 daughters (7, 5, 15 months) and can tell you that, yes, your life will change. You will be tired all the time, you will struggle to find time for yourself (especially for the first few months) but it will get better. I would stay up a little later or get up a little earlier so I could work on code, and my wife was pretty awesome and would let me hide in the garage if I needed to. Now, I have a 7 year old that is better at python coding than me and wants to learn Java so she can make games for her tablet that she can play with her sisters. One more thing, enjoy the child, especially at the young age. There is nothing better than sitting on the couch with a baby on your lap sleeping while reading something on a laptop.

johnnycarcin• 11 years ago

One of my first blog posts was about this: http://esheavyindustries.com/b/2015/02/amazing-chaos-aka-par...

For me things did change dramatically and honestly, it was hard at first but looking back I think I was going into it being a fairly selfish person. Since I realized I was being a dumbass and really took in the whole situation it has been amazing, seriously. Of course I don't have anywhere close to the free time I used to have to play around with things but what has replaced that time is even better.

With that being said, the only suggestions or tips I think I could offer would be to try and get your mind right before the baby comes. If you are like me and have to go through the first month with a "my life is horrible, blah blah blah" feeling then things are going to be really bad. It's hard enough without having additional blockers bringing you down, try and get rid of those before the big day comes. Additionally, not everyone has this luxury, but if you do recruit family to help the first week or so. Having someone around to help with the day-to-day stuff that you are going to stop doing can be nice.

devillius• 11 years ago

We got married a little over a year ago and had a little girl about 3 months ago. I used to love working on random projects till late at night. Now, I'm up with the baby just playing with her / soothing her when she's up and getting some programming in when she's sleeping.

The first few weeks were rough, with her not sleeping at all and having to constantly be with her. It gets better. Enjoy your time with her.

Netflix and podcasts kept me sane during those long nights where I was up with her.

DanBC• 11 years ago

1) sleep is important. Learn to sleep; learn to cooperate with your partner on sleep.

2) you are going to want to buy toys like this: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B00009XNRU/

But the kid will be just as happy with this: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B009ZWSX9E/

Especially if you are spending time with the child.

AnimalMuppet• 11 years ago

This kid is going to cost you sleep. In fact, it's going to start three months before it's born. Your wife is going to find it much more awkward to roll over in the night. It's going to become a procedure, one you won't be able to sleep through.

This kid is going to cost you most (not all, but more than half) of your leisure time.

This kid is going to be worth all of that. Don't focus on how much leisure time you're losing (though you will, and it will be painful). I regret being so tied up in things I wanted to do, and not giving as much time and attention to my children as I should have. Don't do that.

I gained a shirt size, just from picking my daughter up over and over. My wife thought that suddenly the way she did the laundry was shrinking my shirts.

If you can, one of the most loving things you can do for your wife is hire someone to clean your house. She's got a lot more that she has to handle now; taking that load off of her can be a great help.

JSeymourATL• 11 years ago

Do yourself a favor-- read up on Polyphasic Sleep, the power naps as a new dad will save your life> http://www.4hourlife.com/2012/04/29/become-uberman-sleep-lik...

A hugely positive change; expect a new social world of other young parents will soon open-up to you. These new friends will have all the latest neighborhood news on best baby sitters, play dates, and pre-schools. They'll even be happy to pass along gently used clothes and outgrown toys. And you may find your yourself gladly going to bed earlier than an Amish Farmer.

As for your old leisure activities, a lot of those things get necessarily shelved. And you'll find you're completely OK with that. Instead of hanging out with friends, watching TV, gaming, reading-- you'll spend hours joyfully with your kid eating/sleeping/crawling/bathing/learning their way around.

Understand the girl you married is also going through a tremendously difficult period physically & mentally. (Duh!) But this requires you to be extra mindful of her state-- 10X more helpful and attentive. Her transformation into a Mom will blow you away.

All the best; Godspeed!

Ask HN: How life changes after being a dad?

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