I generally agree with you (I have a six and a two year old), but the sleep deprivation when the kids are babies is extremely debilitating. At least that part definitely gets better.
Good point. That initial period is hellish (and amazing) and it does taper off somewhat but settles on a new baseline of permanently elevated difficulty.
It's not bad if they wake up right next to a breast. Before long, they can feed without waking the parents. The sleep deprivation will be terrible if you have to stand up (get heart going), flip on the lights, walk to the kitchen, fumble around to mix and microwave, walk to the baby, sit with the baby, walk back to the kitchen to clean up, and then head back to bed.
Nope, but my siblings had their first and I witnessed how life altering of an experience it was for them where they had to put their careers on hold and nothing else mattered other than this new born (justifiably so), pregnancy was also rough for the wives so the husbands has double duty, taking care of newborn at all hours and recovering wives from c-section and complications. Not looking forward to the first year.
Just know there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Your children are so helpless and require constant attention and mine woke up hungry basically every 2 hours for almost the first year. You get through it. It helped that my wife took a year off. My kiddo started sleeping through the night at 11 months and that made everything much better. A lot of newborns will do much better and maybe only wake up once per night after a few months. The hard part is also that they can't communicate with you outside crying for like at least 18 months. Once they hit 3 though you should be able to communicate very easily about anything troubling them and that makes life so much more rewarding. My advice is to read to them a LOT and talk to them even more. Do so like they're an actual person and not a child. If you're kid is falling behind in milestones, look and see about early childhood speech therapy. My kid was a good bit behind, but someone working with them helped (probably would've been fine regardless) and they never stop talking now. My in-laws are always confused that I stop and spend time explaining stuff to my kid as they always treat children as things that should obey them without question. It is a little surreal, but parenting method norms have changed a lot in the last 30 years. Reading to them, talking to them, singing to them every night, and doing counting and other activities helps them learn and bond with you.
Know exactly how to get to the hospital when you need to and which have a pediatrician on staff for emergencies.
Start saving for college. Don't worry about fancy clothes as they grow out of everything immediately and nobody cares. Always have spare diapers and sippy cups.
My tip is get as much help as possible. Extended family and friends. Help can be babysitting or preparing food or helping with diy.
And have cash to pay for convinence.
Don’t buy anything (clothing,
Furniture) new except of course toiletries and diapers - that’ll save you 3k or so that you can invest in eating take out. I’m serious ;-)
Uber eats is your go to baby gift to ask for!
Cruise at work as much as possible - avoid getting promoted. Avoid trying to improve things or caring too much. Just do your job well based on what they expect.
Take it in turns to get a good night sleep. The couch will be the 5 star hotel!
Finally it’s hard to do but relax. Don’t read too many baby books you’ll probably learn enough from prenatal classes. Just know the medical stuff, when to go to the doctor etc.
And find time to go out and have fun. Once a month for a couple of drinks should be possible.
If you don’t have much money all this is going to be really hard and I am not sure what to advice there. Get as much help from friends as possible. You might want to move to where they mostly are.
C sections are horrible. Some OBs love em though. So get multiple opinions and decide yourself. Sometimes unavoidable of course but question a planned one. Don’t believe the 6 week recovery driving again bull shit. Be prepared for 6 months of pain.
Finally my pay has increased at the highest rate since having kids. Part of that is software eating the world, mixed with the lack of the luxury to accept low paying but interesting jobs. I’m not coding Haskell, but hey Typescript is still pretty nice!
Did you ever hire a nanny? Can that even be done with a newborn? I feel like just a couple nights reprieve to recover the sleep deprivation would be huge.
Appreciate the pause from your career (you‘ll probably get a new outlook on things), maybe view it as a personal development sabbatical. Schedule less work if you can, so you can sleep a bit during the day. DON‘T hesitate to ask people for help, even if you don’t want to be a burden and all - People know that life is hard for new parents, and most want to be useful in some way - it makes them feel good about themselves.
