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Ask HN: How does having a baby change your life?

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Re: Ask HN: How does having a baby change your life?

#41

Post by flybrand »

4 year old boy and 1 year old girl. Two things change;

Time. I'd worked in banking fresh out of school - have a problem? Throw hours at it. +100 hour weeks were no problem. Not so now - much more than 60 and the big one will ask me where I've been.

Responsibility. Kids connect you to the world; things that were once meaningless, now matter. I care what the two of them do all day, are they getting a good education, eating healthy, exercising, etc. Your role as Dad requires much more oversight than your role as spouse.

Re: Ask HN: How does having a baby change your life?

#42

Post by jeffmiller »

Having a baby completely reset my perspective on being alive.

The big news in my house today was that our 1.5-year old daughter said the word "yellow" for the first time. That may sound cliched if you don't have kids, but consider that not too long ago my daughter was an inanimate object--and not too long before that she didn't exist at all--and now she's pointing at yellow objects and saying "yellow". That's magical stuff.

Having a baby means you get to experience these small magical moments every day. Pre-baby, I was often getting caught up in minutiae which now seems so unimportant. I think the paths we all tend to naturally take--go to school, start a career (or a startup), climb the ladder, etc--conspire to make us slowly lose perspective. It sort of bleeds away over time. But having a baby smashes that all, and presses the reset button.

It's sort of like the syringe-full-of-adrenaline scene in Pulp Fiction, but in a good way.

Re: Ask HN: How does having a baby change your life?

#43

Post by trigger »

JunkDNA wrote: post #34

The time issue is the biggest adjustment for me. I'm in my 30's and have spent 2/3 of my life goofing around on my computer in my spare time (which I apparently had boatloads of, though now it is hard to remember what it was like). I now have a 5 month old girl. The hardest thing to adjust to was the time issue. I have a 40-min train commute to my job, and that gives me my biggest chunk of free time all week. While i…

Not having so much free time is certainly a problem. No more hacking away for the whole day/evening/night. Nowadays I'm lucky if I get a straight 2 hours. The one good thing about this (aside for my beautiful daughter of course) is that it's made me knuckle down and focus on goals. Knowing that I've only got one hour to get a particular task done is a great motivator.

Re: Ask HN: How does having a baby change your life?

#44

Post by mdoyle »

Having babies has brought more substance to our lives. We have 3 girls under the age of six and I am approaching 40. I wish we had them when we were younger if anything. Its difficult getting time to do everything.. full time job, spending time with family, hacking, starting up, etc. My girls are fantastic company and make me laugh constantly, and give me much love, They can take any stresses away in an instant. They can also add to my stresses when they are being 'challenging' young humans. They inspire me to do more for their benefit. I have been exhausted for the last six years and expect I will be until they leave home! There will be plenty of time to sleep when I retire.

Re: Ask HN: How does having a baby change your life?

#45

Post by zeraholladay »

arn wrote: post #2

Having a baby changes everything. And it's weird how you can't even imagine it ahead of time. To answer some of your questions: - Your ability to produce will go down drastically - Your priorities will change. - You will be more tired, and your time will be at a premium. I think the time issue is the main one. Especially for those reading this. I feel like a lot of hackers like sitting down for hours during your free…

I couldn't have said it better. Priorities do change. In my experience they become more focused out of necessity. Basically, I think you're forced to pick what's important. That's usually the baby and only one other thing: reading a book, programming, working, etc. I'm only talking about from the father's perspective. The child tends to engage the mother more for his/her needs. So women tend to have less flexibility since the child demands more from them. For example, after 1.5 years my wife is just starting to get enough free time to pick up her hobbies again.

Re: Ask HN: How does having a baby change your life?

#46

Post by redwoods »

1. It's the best thing ever. Do it when your ready but if your ready younger that's great. You need all the energy you can get. If I could have done it younger I would. 2. I only felt truly grown up when I became a dad at 43.there's something about putting your own sleeping child to bed, the privilege, joy and responsibility are amazing. It's not that your not grown up if u don't have kids but it made me feel more solid and that's a better platform for launching a business - for me anyway. 3. While you will be more risk averse with kids the benefit is assessing opportunities more clearly. 4. I have just started reading "Raising Babies" by Steve Biddulph a psychologist. Very enlightening on the issue of putting tiny kids into day care. Basically, avoid at all costs if possible according to the latest research. The best thing in the world is looking after your own kids and when they are tiny this is best for them too. As another post says : don't shoehorn them into your life, change your life to fit around them. 5. The first 12 months of a new baby are a blur of exhaustion. Don't fight it, accept it. You can't do 10 eighteen hour days in a row anymore... And that's a good thing too!

Re: Ask HN: How does having a baby change your life?

#48

Post by midnightmonster »

Slightly off topic parenting discovery: if you're the dad in the USA, you can count on general approval or at least tolerance for just about anything you do with your kids in public so long as you're not hitting them or screaming at them. It's kind of insulting that the standards are so low, but most people still seem to expect dads to be clueless, and/or they treat taking the kids out in public by yourself as an extra credit activity for fathers.

Re: Ask HN: How does having a baby change your life?

#49

Post by redwoods »

lordmatty wrote: post #30
RyanMcGreal wrote: post #28

There's a two- or three-week period, usually around the six month mark, when your baby can sit up unaided but can't yet crawl. During this time, you can put the baby down on an activity blanket (supervised, obviously) and enjoy maybe five or ten minute contiguous stretches of uninterrupted time to do stuff. Note: activities like preparing a meal and straightening up the place tend to take priority over developing a s…

* Seriously consider having the baby sleep in your bed with you, especially if you/your spouse are breastfeeding. In my experience this leads to drastically less sleep. You disturb your baby and your baby disturbs you. We put the baby in another room and invested in a baby alarm. * Seriously consider breastfeeding. Yes, but don't pressure yourself too much...the most important thing is that the baby eats properly. Bo…

Yes. If there is one universal truth in the land of parents with newborns, it's that you'll get a sore back. Especially when you have to spend hours leaning over as they hold your fingers learning to walk. I'm now friends with my physio!

Re: Ask HN: How does having a baby change your life?

#50

Post by redwoods »

KoZeN wrote: post #12
awt wrote: post #4

Completely changed my life. I have a 3 week old. You have to relearn how to do everything. You have figure out new ways to do things that used to be easy: Cooking/eating Going to the store Sleeping I'm not giving up on my side projects though. My strategy has been to think about my project while actively caring for the baby and to sneak in some coding sessions while she's napping.

Congrats! How are you coping with the sleep deprivation? I'm a father to a 6 month old boy and I got to a point where I was so tired I felt I could see through time.

Classic!
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