Parental Thread

[6793026]

Thank you for all this. I'm an iron man and consider being able to sleep anywhere but i don't wnat to put my but in my mouth and get owned.

i do not expect my wife to take part but just to feed. She's considering hiring those chinese post birth maids to cook.

I got no say and whatever makes her happy. don't want to be the dbag husband saying things are expensive.

[Mikoyan]

If you can, try to split the days/nights the first month. I took 4 and 5 mo parental for each of my kids from their birth. I tried to do all the night feeds/changes so one of us could sleep. During the days was easier as our moms would come help some.
One suggestion would be to make sure the kid gets used to a bottle feed as it can help later on. You won't know if your wife will have milk production issues or not, and it's easier to feed them if mom's not around. If she's got good milk production, pump and store some, use that for the night feed so she can get some sleep. We knew of a couple friends that had issues bottle feeding later on due to the baby preferring the boob.
Be there for your wife too. There's still a bit of a stigma for moms who can't breastfeed. The home nurse who visited made my wife feel like a failure not not being able to produce. Fed is best for the kid. Formula, breast, whatever. Locally, the breast is best push has been reduced somewhat since a local mom with post partum unalived herself, with breastfeeding as one of her triggering factors

[supafamous]

Originally Posted by 6793026

Thank you for all this. I'm an iron man and consider being able to sleep anywhere but i don't wnat to put my but in my mouth and get owned.

i do not expect my wife to take part but just to feed. She's considering hiring those chinese post birth maids to cook.

I got no say and whatever makes her happy. don't want to be the dbag husband saying things are expensive.

What's the going rate on one of those now? My wife was thinking seriously about it when we had our kid 6 years ago and, like you, I was kinda like "whatever works for you" but her mom insisted that she could do most of that (Narrator: She could not).

BTW: Send me your wife's number so I can send her this post partum retreat: https://www.almacare.ca/retreat - only $20k for 2 weeks in a 600sf luxury suite. Edit: Oh, the FULL Chinese experience is $39k for a month.

More: https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/hav...ight-1.7193232

Having a newborn can be tough. This business will help — for $850 a night

‘Postnatal retreat’ based on Chinese cultural tradition of resting a month postpartum

[Traum]

Originally Posted by Mikoyan

Be there for your wife too. There's still a bit of a stigma for moms who can't breastfeed. The home nurse who visited made my wife feel like a failure not not being able to produce. Fed is best for the kid. Formula, breast, whatever. Locally, the breast is best push has been reduced somewhat since a local mom with post partum unalived herself, with breastfeeding as one of her triggering factors

This is just so so so true. If there was ever one thing that I found the whole child-birthing experience to be negative, it was the medical community's overwhelming insistence on breast feeding. I get the whole thing that breast milk is better than formula, but the insistence, the amount of persuasion, and sheer pressure coming from the nurses to breast feed can be really overwhelming. We had some production + latching issue at first, and even though le wifey knew in her head that it would have been OK to bottle feed formula, the pressure from the maternity and home nurses were so overwhelming that she still felt like a failure when we couldn't produce enough, or fed our kid enough, and that our kid lost too much weight. Add in the postpartum changes and blues, and it was a really difficult time for le wifey. (And bcos it was difficult on le wifey, it also became difficult for me too.)

We got referred to a breast feeding specialist after that, and it was an absolute relief to hear from the specialist that it was OK to supplement breast feeding with formula, or even just straight up feed the newborn with formula. In some way, I felt like the nurses went overboard on the insistence to breast feed, to the point that they might as well be demonizing bottle feeding with formula.

[6793026]

Breast feeding is not easy. Despite it being free milk, we both know it's not 100% soemthing you can just do. Does take time for both to learn.

Going rate for maids are $7k (live with you, cook and clean, make feed the baby). HELL i don't have that kind of money.

She and mother in law wnated the easy way out and just wanted to call.
I told them, I don't give a F who you go with a) there are single dads and moms who has to deal with this despite having only one job. b) i'm going to be forever be the D bag when they say "____ had a hard time.. told you to hire a maid" I won't ever be able to live that down.

Reality does hit cause, say if your mortgage is 5k, you are out of income for 6 mths, and if you're lucky with TOP up, you still have to pay 5k extra for the maid for few months... where does that extra 5k come from......

Wifey needs to learn to use excel and figure out budgeting. LOL

[winson604]

Originally Posted by 6793026

Hey, did all of you get time off during the 1st month?
Wife is really wanting me to go off grid for 1st month. I do get a chance to work from home and I do like my job so I thought it might be ok to just periodically log on.

Happy wife happy life so I don't want to piss her off.

1st child I took the first few weeks off and then I took 1-2 months at the end splitting the 12 month leave with my wife.

2nd child I also took time off at the beginning but no need at the end because we were in the pandemic and I was just home all the time anyway.

I highly recommend all dads to take 1 -2 months of the 12-18 month leave that's available for parents. By the end of 12 or 18 months you can handle it without mom being there and having that 1 on 1 was truly amazing.