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

Congratulations and a bit of advice.

The worst, in terms of tiredness and exhaustion comes around 6 - 8 weeks. Right now you've probably still got enough adrenalin in your system from the excitement to help you through but that will wear off over the next few weeks. My wife (who had previously worked 100 hours a week plus as a junior doctor) commented around week 6 that she was so tired she thought she might die.

But it does bounce and start to get better after this. Not sure whether babies just start to improve around then, whether parents start to get the hang of it around then or whether the tiredness leads people to take control of things more than they had before.

My recommendation would be rest all you can now, don't try and cram other things in for now - there will be (a small amount of) time later. I think it was somewhere around 4 or 5 months when things started to feel a little bit back to normal and you can start looking at personal projects and hobbies.

Too bad that the comment you replied to was deleted, although the choice of language wasn't the better it was the only one dissenting view on the entire page.

I have a 3.5 year old and another on the way. Some observations:

* It was about 8 weeks before I could have an hour to myself in the evenings to watch TV. Before that I was in a constant state of rushing to get everything done. Fortunately I rode the train to work so that gave me 30mins to chill.

* It made me way more efficient with my time, I can't believe how much time I used to waste. I'm now ruthless with time management - having 30 minutes to myself is a luxury and will quickly be allocated to fixing bugs or catch up on reading.

* The financial pressure focuses you on what's really important. I've learned to live on a lot less personally - shame I now have higher costs overall.

* The way you plan things changes, you have to allocate at least 30mins to "getting ready to go out".

* It'll make you a better communicator, depending on how your career's gone so far, having a child may be your first exposure to really asserting yourself with someone, simplifying technical concepts on a regular basis (the other day I had "Why can't I see my eyes?") and "hacking people" (I'm thinking of things like using distraction or turning going to bed into a race).

* I think it makes you more pragmatic and less idealistic. You know that the way the school admissions system works is supposed to be fair but you will shamelessly game the system when it comes to your kids.

ALERT: "so at some point, I can spend my time with him and the rest of my family"

They need you now dude. I know you probably didn't mean it the way it came out, but that's not the right approach.

We didn't have early or late pain. Our older son was an epic sleeper, our younger son not so much; but each of them decided in turn that they wanted to move into their own room, which we happily obliged.