Don't drink.
Ask HN: I will become a father tomorrow, what advice could you share with me?
61–70 of 156 posts
Re: Ask HN: I will become a father tomorrow, what advice could you share with me?
#62Re: Ask HN: I will become a father tomorrow, what advice could you share with me?
#63Baby is currently 11 weeks.
Fed baby is a happy baby. You want the baby to always have food coma during the newborn phase. He was able to sleep better and wake up once at night. At the moment he’s hitting 7.5 hours at a time.
When he woke up in the middle of the night, I would change him then feed.
Babies make a lot of noise when they are sleeping, you can wait a few minutes after they start crying to pick them up. They could be “active” sleeping.
Re: Ask HN: I will become a father tomorrow, what advice could you share with me?
#64It’s okay to do less at work for a while. If your job has a lot travel, on-call, and overtime then it may be wise to change roles. Your kids and partner will need you more than your work and they absolutely deserve it.
When your kids start daycare/school they will be home with fevers and bad colds. It’s good if you can use sick days and share this with your partner. You will also be sick a lot. Ensure you have lots of time off and sick leave.
You will have a lot less time to hang with friends and do personal activities but it’s important to keep something going.
Other people have brought up most of my other points so I won’t repeat them here.
Re: Ask HN: I will become a father tomorrow, what advice could you share with me?
#65Two things for any parents:
a) Model the behaviour you want to see in your children.
Show them how you deal with anger by modelling the behaviour you'd want them to have when they're angry, by behaving that way when you're angry.
Show them what it is like celebrating joys.
Apologise to them when you screw up - because you will.
Your son will learn how he should treat women by they way you treat his mother. Your daughter will learn how she should be treated by the way you treat her mother. (And vice versa with how mum treats dad.)
When you get frustrated that they don't listen to anything you say, remember they are seeing everything you do.
b) Keep working on your relationship with your partner. For me, authenticity and communication are the two big things. If you don’t feel like you can be your real self with that person, if you are unable to share with each other your dreams, fantasies, desires, fears, faults and foibles, it’s hard to build a relationship that can last.
and congrats.
Re: Ask HN: I will become a father tomorrow, what advice could you share with me?
#66Some practical things I’ve learned after a year: 1. Pace yourself. You’re going to want to try to do as much as you can with your newborn/infant but sometimes they’re just not ready for it. If you try to be very extra with your child on day one, you’re going to burn yourself out. A corollary is to appreciate the free time you get. 2. Children all develop in their own way so don’t freak out if your experience somethin…
> Fear about SIDS is so incredibly overblown. I think the latest that we know about SIDS is that it’s a genetic thing.
Smoking is a huge risk factor so don’t! Don’t even smoke outside the house and drag in that stink on your clothes. It’s Best quit for your kids.
Re: Ask HN: I will become a father tomorrow, what advice could you share with me?
#67Much thanks to you for your comments :)
Re: Ask HN: I will become a father tomorrow, what advice could you share with me?
#68Don't circumcise (genital mutilate) your kid if he's a boy.
Notice that the single bit of medical advice in this thread - among the tens of medical decisions you'll have to make and literally thousands of decisions you hope to not need to make - relates to religious aspects. And I'm sure that the guy who posted it was well-meaning, without a hint of religious hate in his blood.
This is a terrific example of the "useful idiot" phenomenon. Those who hate any group - be it Jews or Catholics or Muslims or anybody else - will find something dear to those people and spread seemingly-unrelated advice that negates that group's core values. Then the useful idiots with no hate in mind spread these advice with fervour.
As a Jew, I am aware of the minuscule risks of circumcision. And of course I had my son circumcised because that has been a hallmark of my race (not religion) for literally millennia. And I do other far riskier activities with my son, such as fishing and riding a bicycle and letting him use a knife. But nobody is advising us not to fish or ride a bicycle with our children, despite literally orders of magnitude higher risk.
Re: Ask HN: I will become a father tomorrow, what advice could you share with me?
#69Don't circumcise (genital mutilate) your kid if he's a boy.
> Don't circumcise (genital mutilate) your kid if he's a boy.
Re: Ask HN: I will become a father tomorrow, what advice could you share with me?
#70Take all parenting advice with a large measure of salt. Nobody really knows how to "do it right", and every child has their own unique needs.