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How Men’s Bodies Change When They Become Fathers

parenting.nytimes.com

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Re: How Men’s Bodies Change When They Become Fathers

#71

Post by adreamingsoul »

sergers wrote: post #34
pricees wrote: post #20

I was hoping this would explain my weight gain but I suppose I have to accept that replacing daily workouts with 3 bowls of ice cream and magic shell may be the culprit.

Lack of sleep, eating what u can when u can, no time to spend on yourself/physical activities I gained 40 pounds through my wife's pregnancy and post. I am just starting to shed some weight now - 5 months old baby

My son is 10 months old. In the last month I've been able to start jogging, playing football (soccer), and I'm hoping in the next couple of weeks to restart Gymnastics and Olympic lifting training.

I don't know how much weight I've put on, but I certainly don't enjoy how I feel and look now.

Being able to exercise again has been a major milestone for me.

Re: How Men’s Bodies Change When They Become Fathers

#72

Post by test1235 »

muzani wrote: post #19
ademup wrote: post #2

"Certain areas within parts of the brain linked to attachment, nurturing, empathy and the ability to interpret and react appropriately to a baby’s behavior had more gray and white matter between 12 and 16 weeks than they did between two and four weeks." For you father-programmers out there: did you notice any changes in your programming/work abilities around the 12-16 week mark?

I always took off 3 months from work per baby. There's no point coding when you're always sleep deprived. Last year the company agreed to about half the salary, so I'd work from home on some things, or come in half the week or half a day as needed. Then again I did notice I was very good at understanding baby talk. Taking from some old notes of my 5 month old baby: "eh eh eh", but no crying at 6 AM = "I need a diaper…

This reminds me so much of the Simpsons episode with Homer's long lost brother, Herb (he invents a machine to translate baby talk).

I think, from my own experience, babies learn to communicate in a two way fashion - they try noises and responses with their caregivers, and when the caregivers respond in an agreeable fashion, the baby stores that bit of communication away to try again later (and possibly reinforce).

So I think some of their communication is learned (signals for positive/negative), and quite specific to the baby-parent pair, while some will be instinctual (e.g. I imagine the excited kicking to be related to an adrenal surge or something, and early-infant crying is definitely an instinctual distress signal)

Re: How Men’s Bodies Change When They Become Fathers

#73

Post by thisone »

knolan wrote: post #65
pricees wrote: post #20

I was hoping this would explain my weight gain but I suppose I have to accept that replacing daily workouts with 3 bowls of ice cream and magic shell may be the culprit.

I’ve piled on the weight since our second was born. I attribute it to the reasons mentioned here and also that I’ve not been cycling to work for the last several months. We bought a new home and don’t currently have a place to store my bike so it’s been languishing in my office. So I take the bus because owning two cars is prohibitively expensive here in Europe. The bus is slower than car and bike so I’m rushing out…

always interesting to see the differences in commute times per vehicle. Where I am now, it's just over 7 miles to work, cycling is generally faster than the bus, bus is much faster than car (bus lane for > 50% of the journey).

Re: How Men’s Bodies Change When They Become Fathers

#74

Post by rajlego »

pyriku wrote: post #66
person_of_color wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get Soylent.

Yeah. Perfect way to teach your kid about healthy foods and nutrition: drinking smoothies.

I think there are much worse diets to have that your kids would learn from than soylent.

Re: How Men’s Bodies Change When They Become Fathers

#75

Post by mffnbs »

jbverschoor wrote: post #58
reallydontask wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Annedoctally as a recent father of a 6 month old, I would likely self report a good sleep quality in a questionnaire. However, objectively I know I sleep about 5 hours 30min yesterday evening, which would be sufficient sleep 'deprivation' to impact T production. When our 9 month old started to sleep through the night (at around 4-5 months), we'd get between 5-6 hours of sleep, which after the interrupted sleep of t…

Thank oh for being honest. There’s actually a topic on a different forum that is exactly about the taboo’ed negative things about parenting. People refuse to see/acknowledge this, esp. women.

People would respect you more if you kept the sexist bullshit to yourself.

Or better yet, the reply that you will inevitably have to this comment? Don't post it and instead reflect on why one might view you as sexist, then attempt to change your behavior to reflect what you've learned.

Re: How Men’s Bodies Change When They Become Fathers

#76

Post by test1235 »

nostrademons wrote: post #17
ademup wrote: post #2

"Certain areas within parts of the brain linked to attachment, nurturing, empathy and the ability to interpret and react appropriately to a baby’s behavior had more gray and white matter between 12 and 16 weeks than they did between two and four weeks." For you father-programmers out there: did you notice any changes in your programming/work abilities around the 12-16 week mark?

I was basically useless as a programmer at 12-16 weeks. I was also basically useless at 2-4 weeks, but that was largely because of the sleep deprivation and constant need to run around doing chores. (What they don't tell new parents: newborns spend 6-7 hours/day attached to the boob and do so in shifts of about 15 minutes on + 45 minutes off, so mommy basically has a full-time job breastfeeding and daddy has a full-t…

Books and help manuals like to tell you newborns sleep for however many hours a day, to try and make it sound easy, but like you said - newborns only sleep for small periods at a time, including at night.

I spent an insane number of hours in the middle of the night bouncing on a swiss exercise ball, holding the baby, in nothing but my pants, in the dark, with the tv on (but muted), to coax the baby back to sleep. Honestly ... this sorta stuff needs to mentioned more to let prospective parents know what they're in for.

Since having a child, I've nothing but total admiration for any single parent - how they manage without a fulltime partner would be beyond my ability.

Re: How Men’s Bodies Change When They Become Fathers

#78

Post by tasty_freeze »

isacikgoz wrote: post #36
theboywho wrote: post #21

Has there been any studies on adopting a baby? Does it yield the same results on men? If yes, then it might as well be a matter of social construct, where a new vulnerable addition to the group needs protection for example. Another curious question, it would be interesting to see the impact of adopting a cat or a dog on men’s testosterone levels.

> Another curious question, it would be interesting to see the impact of adopting a cat or a dog on men’s testosterone levels. Very interesting idea though. But all of this fathering thing is related with continue one's bloodline I guess. Humans are very motivated to maintain their lineage. Adopting pets may be related with another topic.

> But all of this fathering thing is related with continue one's bloodline I guess.

Can I safely assume you haven't adopted any children? I'm a parent of two adopted kids (now mostly grown). If you think what motivates me is any different than what motivates other fathers, you would be terribly mistaken.

And here is my turn to speak without knowing: I imagine that if a father is too attached to the idea of the continuation of his genetic legacy, it may pressure the children to fulfill the father's idea of a legacy rather than find their own path.

Re: How Men’s Bodies Change When They Become Fathers

#79

Post by Katzenjammer »

It is interesting that things I've noticed anecdotally have some, possible, grounds in science. It is also nice to have this to show new dads that they will adjust automatically (biologically that is) without needed to worry. Yes they need to work at bonding but their body will help them out. I also find the drop in testosterone and increase in brain matter really easy to accept. My husband changed after our first was born. Something automatic happened that changed the way he acted towards our baby than he had to other babies and it wasn't just the fact it almost killed me. Lastly, because I'm overly verbose tonight, sorry, I love that the "fun" dad stereotype actually might be the biologic usual setting. It doesnt mean dad cant be the nurturing one and mom the fun one but it does mean it should come a little more naturally for men, therefore, it is likely to happen in any father, so both roles are covered biologically. I lied. One more thought, I wonder how this would work in a same sex couple. If one woman gives birth does the other automatically take on the father role biologically? What if they take turns giving birth? Do they get to play noth roles then? What about in men? Does one take on the mom role hormonally? Would this being found to be true remove some of the objections to same sex couples parenting or does science mean nothing to the objectors?

Re: How Men’s Bodies Change When They Become Fathers

#80

Post by dmurray »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #42

Looking into the T drop in fatherhood, the original study seems to account for self reports of 'sleep quality' but I wonder if sleep deprivation is not still a confounder in this finding. Annedoctally as a recent father of a 6 month old, I would likely self report a good sleep quality in a questionnaire. However, objectively I know I sleep about 5 hours 30min yesterday evening, which would be sufficient sleep 'depriv…

The results still seem valid even if the primary mechanism for decreasing testosterone production is a lack of sleep.
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