Ask HN: First-time dad-to-be. What do you wish you'd known back then?

- Being a mom is HARD. 1000x harder than you expect and 1000x harder than any job. A good dad can fill in for mom on ANY task on ANY day. Start learning what moms do early and fill in for them every chance you get. My motto was always "When I'm at work, we're both at work. When I'm at home, we're both at work."

- By default the working parent, usually the dad, is going to be out of the loop. The working parent must spend a considerable amount of time trying to be present and in the loop. Kids will not naturally care as much about the working parent unless they are around (and even then they'll still be at a disadvantage).

- You never need to yell at your children. Typically this signals a failure of some kind. Imagine yelling at work, at your wife, at your parents, etc being the right solution to some problem. In the early years, the best way to prevent your children from doing something you don't want them to do is not to put them in the position to do it at all - i.e. Don't give them room to fail. In the later years positive reinforcement is 1000x more effective than negative reinforcement.

- In the early years you're going to worry a lot about whether your causing forever damage by doing X rather than Y. Basically nothing you do in the first 1-3 years matters, so you can relax.

- If you can afford it, have one parent stay at home. It is by far the most harmonious arrangement. Running a household (chores, food, child planning, etc) is a full time job and having two working parents split that job is difficult, expensive, and assumes child-care provides as good of care as you yourself would provide to your own children.

- The first 3 years are by far the hardest. They are grueling. If you are planning on having multiple kids, get them all done with as soon as you can. Once they get older than 3 it is 1000x easier to manage and really opens things up out of survival mode.

Along this line, learn how to swaddle, or firmly wrap, your newborn. Amazing calming effect on child when done well.

Breastfeeding is natural.

As the proud parent of a three year old: don't feel guilty about holidays¹ for two if your kid has a safe and pleasant place to stay. Staying with their grandparents (a common choice) or other trusted guardian helps them experience a different household, and if you start doing this young it is never a big deal.

1: Preferably with lots of intimacy. A good part of our luggage for getaways is sex toys.

  11. Your career will suffer

Point #11 is not necessarily a bad thing. Having a child is a forcing function, requiring you to really prioritize what's important (and not important) in your life. All of us only have 24 hours in the day. All of us have limits.

Also, be prepared that not all fathers (especially in the corporate world) will see eye-to-eye. My relationship with one of my mentors dissolved practically overnight when my priorities shifted from work to home; I only realized later on that when his 3rd child was born, he threw himself at work even more. Some men find work as a way to escape life at home. I now understand why.

NFI; they insisted it was standard and refused to listen to complaints about the reaction. postpartum hormones are already fucked up and this couldn't have helped. Among other things, it made her skin so sensitive she found it hard to wear clothing, and nursing was torture. She still had periods too; so it probably wasn't actually functioning as a fertility blocker.

This shit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medroxyprogesterone_acetate

She's one of those lucky people for whom no drug seems to work as advertised, all she gets are the side effects and usually much worse than the text of the drug warnings describes.