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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?

#161
post #11

is anyone commenting here female? or have anecdotes with respect to how women are effected? i'm particularly curious because of the physical and hormonal changes that a woman goes through with respect to child birth and breast feeding, etc. how are the time, side-project, changes curves effected in this particular case?

I'm 38 weeks pregnant so can't comment on having a child yet, but the physical impact of pregnancy took me rather by surprise. In particular, I just haven't been able to sit at a computer for that many hours of a day for the last two or three months. Getting an iPad has certainly helped somewhat with that, but haven't found any way to actually do programming comfortably for long stretches. I feel like my brain is sti…

When I was pregnant with my twins, I worked full time, mostly from home. The key was a sweet recliner, good laptop, and laptop stand. I got plenty done.

After they were born, I spent so much time nursing them for the first 2 months, that I had plenty of hack-y time (alternating with episodes of Buffy). You need a good nursing pillow and a comfortable seat, but you need those even if you're just watching Buffy. My beloved cooked all the meals, did most of the errands, and was generally as awesome and supportive as a man can be. It helps that he was working from home at the time.

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

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh. Also: everyone will have advice: you will learn to ignore most of it. Particularly advice by your parents. They had babies in a time when there were different priorities. So you'll have to learn to find your own way, trust your instincts, talk to other parents you like/admire. You can safely ignore most advice by most people :) (ps: my tip: you can't spoil a baby, not until they're, say, 1 year old (then discipl…

If you knew somebody who killed their baby by rolling over in their sleep on her, somehow I doubt "meh" would be your response.

Yes, the reality is terrible, but as with anything else, it's risk/reward. I would rather enjoy the reward of going outside, even though there's a chance I will be struck by a car.

In my opinion, the reward to the parents and the baby from co-sleeping outweighs the risks. You should of course take precautions to mitigate the risk.

Definitely avoid those sleeping positioners.

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

#164

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.

It might be worth pointing out that your 'baby' will in all likelihood still be sleeping with you in 6 years.

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

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Seriously consider having the baby sleep in your bed with you, especially if you/your spouse are breastfeeding. No. Everybody gets less sleep and for small babies there's a serious risk of death.

We put our daughter's crib in our room, which I think helped tremendously in getting her to sleep through the night. When she started climbing out of her crib we put a foam mattress on the floor and let her sleep on that (which we moved to her bedroom). This also helped with comforting her at night when she woke up, as we would lie down next to her. Gradually she stopped waking up at night, and if she did, she would…

That's pretty much what we did and it worked out very well. For the first 6 months we had the baby in his crib in our room and we'd comfort him when needed. Apparently before 6 months they don't know they can use crying as a power so you cannot 'spoil' them. After then we moved him to his room and we would tend to him less.

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

#166
Mine is 9 months today. The first six months, he slept a lot and I actually got a lot of side projects worked on (I'm the dad). But, now he sleeps less and is much more active, so when I'm watching him it is all hands on deck. But, it is really awesome ditching the computer and just hanging out and playing with him. I have a whole life to hack on projects, but the time with him now is priceless.

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

#167
Yes, it changes absolutely everything. I'll also say it generally makes life better, you can talk about work/life balance before a child but it takes on a completely different meaning. It's not more time at the gym or more xbox or more time outside that you're balancing work against, it's more time with your child. There simply isn't a comparison. Something else, I think I was a great deal more selfish before hand, I didn't think it at the time and I never intended or wanted to be selfish and I don't think I'd have described my self as such.

As for work and work related things, it provides an incredible filter. I've always had too many ideas and had to somehow filter through the bad ones but try to honor every idea to see if it's bad, you simply have less time to screw around and you either become more efficient and effective or you become more mediocre. You either embrace that or you fight it. Where as before, I could spend 6 hours on a Saturday morning just screwing around, maybe learning a new tool or language or something, now I've got maybe 1 hour on that Saturday and I have to make that time count more. I was maybe more oriented towards just trying stuff and seeing what happened, now I have to be a bit more thoughtful and it's not an entirely bad thing, when you just experiment and try you kind of don't excercise some parts of your mind the same way. Some of the screwing around some how seems more satisfying now when you can actually do that.

In some ways, it redefines "success." I've had mentors and peers that have sort of fallen in to two camps. 1 camp says entrepreneurship is a young man's game, it's countless really long weeks, doing every job you have to to get the company to work, you might just have to grind, at some point you either want to have a life or burn out and then you're done. You might have to choose between a marriage and your buisness. The other camp insists that it's better to have your support structure in place, how can you possibly start and run a really good company if you don't have support at home? That support is a loving family. A child almost forces you to be in the second camp or give it all up.

Now, personally, what's interesting is that when I was 23 or 24ish it seemed like there was this spectrum of success that went from Bill Gates style billionaire down to being some hired contractor that did coding jobs to pay the bills. Ultimate success would have been to grind out a decent company, sell it for a billion dollars, take some time off to do stuff that "mattered" (even though I was probably too selfish to really do it) and then try to do it again. Now, building something sustainable that I love is the goal, something that allows some balance, something that would be really hard to just walk away from for a pay day. Something that allows my co-workers and employees to live satisfying lives, start families, and have some balance too. Oddly, that goal seems much better to me and I think it is radically easier to achieve.

That is of course after that first rough year to 2 years.... Even if you sleep, it's just a lot to digest having a little human that completely loves you and depends on you for everything.

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

#168
I'll strike a somewhat contrarian view: having children doesn't really have to change who you are. You can still enjoy most of the things you enjoy, except you get to bring your children into it, and enjoy it on a new, cool level. We enjoy art & opera, so we take our kids to museums and concerts (we started taking our oldest at 3, our youngest is not ready for opera yet, but can do small concerts). We love linguistics, history, science, so we love sharing these things with our children (etymology is a particular hit with our 5-yr-old). Bonus point: if you're interested in cognitive psychology, you'll get the greatest kick out of observing your children's attempts at modeling the world & language. You like travel? Take your kids with you. Love to read? Share your favorites with kids. I remember how my father always used to re-tell us his favorite books (sci-fi stuff, jules verne, etc). We watch Daily Show each night with our kids (when we go to vote with them, they know stuff, it's wicked cool :) I still spend all my free time doing startups (yes, yes, there's lots less of it, but still). The first year+ was a bit hard (early years fall disproportionately hard on the women as milk-producing & comfort-giving machines, hah), and I must take lots of forced vacations (daycare closed, school closed, child is sick), but... What I'm trying to say, take it easy, and don't worry too much about it. For one, you can't really predict what'll happen anyway, you've got to live through it. As an old Arabic saying goes, "What can the horse tell you about the road he hasn't traveled?" :)

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

#169
post #91

Oh, where to start? Having a baby entirely eliminates your life and replaces it with a different one. And you can't undo it. You cannot spend all your time on a project now - you have to change your priorities. This is not an option, and unfortunately it's not something that happens magically by itself, either. Like maintaining a marriage, it's something you choose to do because not to do so is unthinkable. The payof…

>>The payoff will come a decade from now - or two, and it will consist of knowing

For me, the payoff was immediate. It is hard to match the experience of holding your newborn baby or young infant in your hands and just looking at the baby or talking to him or her.

I also agree with the (message in the) quote above that good parenting will have its own rewards in the future.

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

#170
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone we know who used "attachment" techniques around bedtime had long-term issues with their childrens' sleeping habits. We let both our girls (now 1 & 3) "cry it out." It was quite hard for a couple of weeks, but they both now have very good sleeping schedules. And, as far as I can tell, no psychological damage! Sleep with your baby if you find it emotionally gratifying, but I'm skeptical that there's any signif…

I have the exact opposite experience; everyone who didn't use attachment has screaming wrecks at ~2 years and we're getting sleeping through the night. Sample size roughly five children, utterly unrandomly chosen. Hooray anecdotes!

I agree - evidence is awesome.

Here's a pretty good assessment of it:

http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/774928.html

One thing I don't think is in dispute: "Cry it out" works quickly and involves less exhaustion for parents and children.

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