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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

#191

Post by rubidium »

agent008t wrote: post #132

So, reading this thread is making me really not want to have children. Seems like one would have to be completely insane to voluntarily sign up for that. People that have children. Do you think it was honestly a good idea in retrospect, and if so, why? If your wife had been on the fence about having children, would you have preferred to go child-free, in retrospect?

Yes it’s a great idea, and mine are still young (3, 2 and 2 months)!

You learn to value, care for, and depend on others more in a way that’s hard to do otherwise.

And kids are great fun. Seeing them discover new things is wonderful.

Having kids is big both my wife’s and my quality world so we don’t regret it. It is really hard a lot though too.

You learn to live a life of service which the world needs more of.

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

#192

Post by saganus »

koolba wrote: post #171
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…

> 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 the previous 4 months, felt like a full night's sleep but this is sleep deprivation territory, specially given the fact that it was 7 days a week. Assuming you have the space for it, I never understood couples that insist on both parents being woken up every night…

I'm not a parent so my knowledge here is pretty scarce, but what I've understood from friends that have kids, is that when a baby wakes up, both parents wake up due to instinct (i.e. is the baby ok?).

So I wonder if what you suggest would require some accomodation. E.g. have the 'on-call' parent sleep in the same room as the baby, and the other one can sleep in another room with the door closed.

Is this what you mean by saying that both parent need not be waken up? or are there some other methods that would help out with this?

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

#193

Post by ecoled_ame »

drewg123 wrote: post #149
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.

When my son was born, he didn't sleep well, so I didn't either. My wife has a career and I was an equal partner in his care. It didn't help that I was working 80+ hours a week on something that was key to the success of the small company I worked for. Add in stress eating, and cutting out exercise due to perceived lack of time, and I gained 10-15lbs a year until my son was 4 or 5. My son is 13 now, and its only in th…

Why did you make life so difficult for yourself? I can't imagine having a wife or kids on top of my job...

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

#194

Post by scruple »

agent008t wrote: post #136
roland35 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having two kids myself, it has been the best thing to happen to me by far. I never really thought about having kids until my late 20's, so I can understand why people may want to go child-free. Kids are a huge investment of time and effort after all! But personally I could not imagine it any other way. Also, it is nice to have a receptive audience to dad jokes.

So are the others in this thread exaggerating the negatives? Or is it more that those difficulties are fairly short-term, and in the longer run don't really matter / are forgotten? Say, like preparing for and sitting a difficult exam, or going to the dentist, etc.

Maybe, maybe not. Every situation is unique. My wife and I have 11 week old twins. We went from 0 to 2, so we have no baseline. But, it's been a joy. Challenging? Yes. Absolutely and without a doubt the most challenging thing that I have ever done in my life. That brings about a number of rewards on it's own, even aside from the children themselves.

It doesn't have to be chaos and it doesn't have to be torture. It's all fairly subjective and I don't want to type out a novel. But, I do want to give you a bit of a different perspective.

I am very busy tending to these babies, keeping our home maintained, working, tending to our dogs, etc... I handle 50% of our feedings entirely by myself (feeding for us is code for: change baby, feed baby, burp baby, soothe baby, get baby onto their next activity or put down for a nap or sleep, and this is times 2 for our situation). We're walking the twins in the morning and the evening. We're bathing a baby every night, so they get a bath every other day right now. We play with them during the day and we read to them at night before bed.

Yet, I slept for just under 7 hours straight last night. My wife slept for 4 hours, pumped, and then went back to sleep. She leaves me a note on the bathroom counter every night so that I know if I need to wake her up or not. I can hear that she is waking up now and so after this comment I am going to head upstairs and I'll be feeding both of the twins again by myself while she pumps and we get ready for that morning walk. I also worked out twice this week and since Sunday have gone for 2 hour-long runs. I have another run today, whenever I can find the spare hour. Another workout tomorrow. Saturday is a day off. We'll play with the twins as much as they'll have it. We don't really have any help in the house, it's overwhelmingly just my wife and I. We're making things work and things are working well. I've been told by people IRL not to say these sorts of things out loud. I've been told to "stop bragging" about how my infants sleep at night. So, personally, I've found that I don't really care to say much about it.

edit/ I'd do well to note that I work full-time remote and that makes a world of difference in our outcomes. If I had to commute to an office, no doubt that I'd be exercising much less and we'd not be eating very well right now.

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

#195

Post by jly »

koolba wrote: post #171
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…

> 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 the previous 4 months, felt like a full night's sleep but this is sleep deprivation territory, specially given the fact that it was 7 days a week. Assuming you have the space for it, I never understood couples that insist on both parents being woken up every night…

Logically this makes sense but it can be tricky to implement successfully for everyone. For breast-fed infants, it may be the case that mom has to be more frequently involved in the overnight care. It makes sense for dad to get as much sleep as possible in this case, but that can lead to resentment and other issues.

My wife and I traded off as you indicated but that was no picnic, either. We found it easier to split wake-ups during a night so that each of us could get a manageable amount of sleep, vs one person waking up every couple hours all night long. No matter how you slice the time up, nobody is going to 'well-rested' when there are only two people taking care of an infant.

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

#196

Post by PhantomFF »

agent008t wrote: post #136
roland35 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having two kids myself, it has been the best thing to happen to me by far. I never really thought about having kids until my late 20's, so I can understand why people may want to go child-free. Kids are a huge investment of time and effort after all! But personally I could not imagine it any other way. Also, it is nice to have a receptive audience to dad jokes.

So are the others in this thread exaggerating the negatives? Or is it more that those difficulties are fairly short-term, and in the longer run don't really matter / are forgotten? Say, like preparing for and sitting a difficult exam, or going to the dentist, etc.

I cant speak to having much experience with this myself as my first kid just hit 6 months.

I feel like the stress is much higher than it would be without kids, but the rewards are higher as well. Managed well it can be more than worth it, but doing it when you aren't prepared makes it hurt that much more.

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

#197

Post by wil421 »

reallydontask wrote: post #50
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…

> 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…

>I think this is one of the biggest taboos in Western society: Anything about a newborn/small child must be 100% positive This is absolute bullshit

I’m about to have a child in the next 2 weeks and that’s not my experience. Pretty much all my friends and family with kids have been telling me about the “fun” and “positive” sleeping experience I’m about to have. They keep saying how the Nth child was terrible or didn’t sleep etc.

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

#198

Post by phalangion »

saganus wrote: post #192
koolba wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 the previous 4 months, felt like a full night's sleep but this is sleep deprivation territory, specially given the fact that it was 7 days a week. Assuming you have the space for it, I never understood couples that insist on both parents being woken up every night…

I'm not a parent so my knowledge here is pretty scarce, but what I've understood from friends that have kids, is that when a baby wakes up, both parents wake up due to instinct (i.e. is the baby ok?). So I wonder if what you suggest would require some accomodation. E.g. have the 'on-call' parent sleep in the same room as the baby, and the other one can sleep in another room with the door closed. Is this what you mean…

I think early on with a new baby, both parents wake up more due to novelty than instinct. When you're used to not having a crying child in the middle of the night, suddenly having one takes some adjustment.

Since my wife nursed the kids, our arrangement was that she would be up with babies at night almost every time, and I would be up with them in the morning when they decided that 5am was time to be up for the day. Over time, I stopped waking up to baby cries at night, but I am now hyper-attuned to child noises from 5-7am.

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

#199

Post by specialist »

agent008t wrote: post #132

So, reading this thread is making me really not want to have children. Seems like one would have to be completely insane to voluntarily sign up for that. People that have children. Do you think it was honestly a good idea in retrospect, and if so, why? If your wife had been on the fence about having children, would you have preferred to go child-free, in retrospect?

If you do decide to have kids, I strongly encourage you to live near relatives.

Also, join something like https://www.peps.org, a parenting organization.

Having a deep bench of helpers and pre qualified play mates is crucial. It can't just be the parents vs their kids 24/7.

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

#200

Post by jly »

agent008t wrote: post #136
roland35 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having two kids myself, it has been the best thing to happen to me by far. I never really thought about having kids until my late 20's, so I can understand why people may want to go child-free. Kids are a huge investment of time and effort after all! But personally I could not imagine it any other way. Also, it is nice to have a receptive audience to dad jokes.

So are the others in this thread exaggerating the negatives? Or is it more that those difficulties are fairly short-term, and in the longer run don't really matter / are forgotten? Say, like preparing for and sitting a difficult exam, or going to the dentist, etc.

> So are the others in this thread exaggerating the negatives?

The negatives are real but they are outweighed by overwhelming positives. In my experience, there was a new level of satisfaction achieved after becoming a father that made it worth every sacrifice.

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