201–210 of 262 posts
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Where on this page is there support for your "reduce risk of SIDS by x36" claim? Or that a single session is enough?
Sorry for the confusion. The x36 I copied from a lecture given by a senior obstetrician. The link was to provide background info on SIDS.
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Your opinion may shift naturally. I’ve started noticing as I get older that, despite my career, social life, finances etc being better than some close friends with kids - they are much happier. Even the people who’ve struggled financially because of it. The joy of a child, the constant challenge of raising it, and the constant change as it grows, seem to provide much more happiness than I can get from doing the “new…
> The joy of a child This is such a cliche that it almost meaningless but the JOY of a child is just insane. To have some around who is almost always happy to see you (and super pissed when you go away), initially at least, is just wonderful to be around. To me at least parenting is one of the most complete human experiences. It's joyous and terrifying, exciting and mundane, just all of the things at once. It's not f…
Also, first kid was a breeze to take care of and we weren’t sleepy because we coslept. If you don’t drink or do drugs (which is what causes kids to get smothered) I highly recommend. Mom was amazed baby would sleep through the night and not fuss or ask for milk, and I said “honey she made noise several times you’d just roll over naturally and pop a boob in her mouth”. Our second one is physically disabled in some pretty profound ways (which I’ve talked about at length in other comments on HN so won’t go into here) so she’s way more of a pain, but I highly recommend cosleeping to anyone who will listen (which honestly isn’t most people).
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I’d like to add: it is ok to ask for help.
This. My wife went half crazy from sleep deprivation when our baby was about 1 month. One time both she and our daughter fell asleep after late night feeding. I went to make a sandwich, and when I came back my wife was crying in bed trying to wake the sleeping baby because she thoght she had been sleeping for 5 hours but in reality it was more like 20 minutes. She was desperate because the baby wouldn't wake up and e…
And there is also a lot of peer pressure. Other women put a funny face when someone discuss not 100% breast feeding.
Great if it works for you, but for those who are dealing with babies, I wouldn't beat myself up if this advice doesn't apply. The parenting advice world is chock full of people who found something that worked for them and who then made the unwarranted conclusion that it is universal truth. For example, their techniques that "always work" definitely do not always work. Maybe they always worked for their particular bab…
My only advice to new parents is to largely ignore other parents' advice. Except mine, and only in this one instance.
Great if it works for you, but for those who are dealing with babies, I wouldn't beat myself up if this advice doesn't apply. The parenting advice world is chock full of people who found something that worked for them and who then made the unwarranted conclusion that it is universal truth. For example, their techniques that "always work" definitely do not always work. Maybe they always worked for their particular bab…
> For example, their techniques that "always work" definitely do not always work. Among parenting social media influencers, this is a gamble for building rapport among an audience: Make some extreme claim that may or may not work for some portion of people who hear it. People who hear it, try it, and find that it works will vividly remember the influencer as being correct. People who try it with no results will quick…
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The author made it seem like breastfeeding had no impact, but rather they just cherry-picked the conditions to look for from the study, making no mention of things that were impacted.
The author did not make it seem like that, they explicitly pointed out otherwise, the 5th paragraph: > This is not to say that there aren’t some benefits to breastfeeding. In poor countries where water quality is very poor, these benefits may be very large since the alternative is to use formula made with contaminated water. In developed countries — the main focus of the discussion here — this isn’t an issue. Even in…
Of kids I've always thought "maybe one day". I can see how it'd be a tough, but extremely rewarding and meaningful endeavor. But reading this article made me think for the first time "actually, I think I don't want kids." So many "mental CPU cycles" spent learning about pregnancy, babies, why they cry, how to care for them. It just doesn't appeal to me at all - I think it'd resent it taking me away from spending time…
(Context: Am dad. Love kids. Find parenting super tough. No regrets.) How's this for a rule of thumb: if you can be happy without having kids, don't have kids. They're very hard work, expensive, and often bad for your mental health. But, if like a lot of people you know you will always be sad if you don't have kids, have as few as you need to scratch the itch.
I’m glad I took the time to find out what I wanted to be before that was just “a good dad”. I feel fortunate that I found that out, met my wife, and we were able to have healthy kids at the tail end of our 30s.
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> The joy of a child This is such a cliche that it almost meaningless but the JOY of a child is just insane. To have some around who is almost always happy to see you (and super pissed when you go away), initially at least, is just wonderful to be around. To me at least parenting is one of the most complete human experiences. It's joyous and terrifying, exciting and mundane, just all of the things at once. It's not f…
Just to follow up on this a little, I want to give an example: When my kid started trying to stand up, they were SO excited about it. I mean they would try and stand up, stand for about 2 secs, be wildly excited, fall over and go through the whole thing again. That sort of joy and happiness is just infectious and so much fun to be around.
I also had the most fun in a game of Sorry ever yesterday with my wife and two girls. Hearing your three year old make a smarmy “sorry” voice and laughing as she knocks her sister back to the start is comedy gold.
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> 3 weeks walking up in the middle of the night screaming for no reason Only 3 weeks is not so bad. I woke up every three hours for the first 14 months. And then he just started sleeping well. It’s very random.
Our 10 month old son is still waking up every 1-2 hours at night screaming at the top of his lungs, for absolutely no reason at all. Not hungry, no wet nappy, sometimes hugging and talking/singing helps, sometimes it doesn't. Me and my wife are just 100% exhausted and I can't wait for this to end - but at 6 month mark everyone was telling us "oh this will only last another few weeks, don't worry" - it's 4 months late…
Infant phase
The work is intense when they are young since they can’t do much on their own and need help very often. But this doesn’t last for too long. Most parents exaggerate this phase since it is very intense from their otherwise happy days without kids. I had enough nephews and nieces around that I helped with so my kids are not the first time I am doing something this intense.
Toddler phase
They are very manageable because of their size. Not those helpless poor little things any more. But they need to be entertained. Having others kids help a lot here. One more reason to have more than one kids. Only kids can match kids energy level.
Beyond infants
This is when things get interesting they start engaging with you a lot with words and actions.
Most of the problems with millennials for fear of having kids got to do with not having much experience before having their own. So they get overwhelmed, this is very specific to societies with lack of communities (western urban societies).
Once your friends have kids they are out of your circle since they cannot come out and do as much as they used to do.
With medical advancements and tools available to raise a child it is lot easier to raise kids than before. Over focusing on parenthood is also another issue. This is product of abundance of time and money. My mom of 3 children didn’t have tools and time to engage with us like our generation do. She did exceptionally well without over indulging in the name of parenthood.
Note: I am leaning game development and reading books while having full time job and having twins as my first children on my own at 40.
It’s totally doable. Try being around your friends with kids, that’s helpful for them as well as you.
Most rewarding thing and easily attainable for most of us is to raise children never forget the entertainment and stress buster aspect of having kids as well.
Once a wise women from the east said to us raised in the west: If you can have pets I don’t seem to understand your issues having kids. Kids are Pets+++