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Our boy just turned 3 months old. People keep telling us we got really lucky, but the impact on sleep and personal time has not been that huge. During my wife's pregnancy, I had a big development project eating up 90%-95% of my free time: I wanted to get it done before he arrived, anticipating the huge time suck everyone warned me about. (I ended hitting the finish line, and deployed over the two-week paternity leave, and let him push the launch button when he was 8 days old.) In my experience -- and again, YMMV, etc. -- if you can regiment your time carefully, it's absolutely not that big a deal. Yes, our days are substantially different now, but we work together really well to relieve each other; I get plenty of development time, she gets plenty of roller derby time, and after completing the post-deploy piece of my last project, I've already picked up another major project and am getting things done. I've always been a pretty light sleeper, and it's not uncommon for me to be woken up at 4 and just not go back to sleep, so perhaps I already could deal with mild sleep deprivation well, but I really have no complaints about the amount of sleep we're getting. Generally I'll take the last feeding of the night, since I probably won't go back to sleep after, and there were a couple days in there where I dragged a bit, but really, the impact has been negligible. (The impact of him coming home sick from daycare is an entirely different story. It's like he's a breeder reactor for bugs. I haven't been that sick in years.) The best way I found to take care of my wife is to get her what she wants, when she wants it -- i.e., literally stand up before she's finished her request and go take care of it, stat. She's in a ton of discomfort (both before and after pregnancy, especially if you're doing a natural birth) and will appreciate the hell out of you going the extra mile. Post-birth, being instantly ready to locate/retrieve/position whatever baby paraphernalia or etc. has been a big help to her. Before we gravitated to a nice he-eats-then-we-eat schedule, I used to feed her and myself both as she fed the baby. Felt silly the first time but it worked out great logistically. Some random bits in no particular order... Interesting baby hack: one time the boy was crying, and just holding him wasn't doing the trick, so I figured his diaper needed changing. As a rule, his crying increases dramatically when first laid down for the diaper change, then he perks up and stops crying after he's cleaned up. So I laid him down, took off his diaper, and found that it was actually clean. When I re-diapered him and picked him up, he stopped crying... even though he didn't need the diaper change in the first place. I think if we could find out what was going on in their little brains, we'd be pretty surprised. Totally invest in the mechanical swing kerben mentions. When nothing else works, a warm bath has proven to be an awesome baby-fixer for us. You will learn many new ways to care about poop. |
I've heard the horror stories about poop getting smeared on walls, etc. (when they're a little bit older)... :D