Hacker News Reader

Comment by kelukelugames | Hacker News Reader

>One analysis of 11 rich countries estimates that the average mother spent 54 minutes a day caring for children in 1965 but 104 minutes in 2012. Men do less than women, but far more than men in the past: their child-caring time has jumped from 16 minutes a day to 59.

I spend 100+ minutes every day changing diapers. Actually that's not true, most of my time is spent trying to put the stupid newborn to go to sleep. I thought paternity leave was going to be chill and maybe I can learn a new hobby, master javascript, or travel to Europe. Nope, more stress than day job.

I think fatherhood is evolving too. My father's generation almost did nothing and that was acceptable. That is changing. One of the women in a dual income family says "Mom handles input, Dad handles output."

View on HN

I learnt from psychologist that there are ways to help newborn to get asleep.

Newborn is in a very uncomfortable conditions for him. He used to be in a liquid environment. It was very noisy environment: there was a lot of sounds made by mothers body, digesting and more importantly heartbeat. It was dark there. But now he is on the air, he need to breathe, he hears silence with interruptions by some sharp sounds (in the belly sounds are different, I think there are no high frequences), and there are lights. Moreover first year baby experiences difficultes with thermoregulation of his body. Probably there are more things that trouble him, I'm not pretending to give you a full list.

Give him "heartbeat", give him a smell of his mother, ensure he is experiencing comfortable temperature, and he, probably, would get quiet. Try it with real mother first, let her take him, lay his head near her heart. If it works, get mother's dirty T-shirt and place it near nose of a baby. You can also try find some audio track, which makes your baby happy by sounding similarly enough to a heartbeat. The psychologist told a story of mother, who liked to walk near railways: her crying baby stopped cry every passed train, because he experienced noise level he used to. Moreover that was rythmic noise, like heartbeat. I don't think it is good idea to reach such levels of noise indoors at night, but you got an idea: do not make silence in his room, let it be some constant rythmic noise.

Though it does not work every time. Sometimes baby just don't want to sleep and get bored. But not in first few weeks: the first few weeks for him is a constant suffering of adaptation to a completely alien environment.

Why do people write ‘baby’ or ‘newborn’ with no article like that? Surely it’s ‘a baby’ or ‘the baby’ or ‘your baby’ or maybe ‘babies’ if you mean in general. Just ‘baby’ sounds like broken English. You wouldn’t write ‘manager sent me an email’, you’d write ‘my manager’ or something like that with an article.

The whole comment is written with fewer articles than you'd expect for good English - my guess is that the commenter is not a native speaker, rather than trying to be cutesy.

Now that's the real difference between a native and a non-native speaker: As a non-native speaker, I'd probably put about the right amount of articles in there, but I can't even imagine why dropping them sounds 'cutesy'. Probably most of my sentences randomly project 'cutesy' or 'geeky' or 'obnoxious'. And it happens on a subconscious level even if you know that I'm not a native speaker.

Referring to "a baby" as "baby" is cutesy because it kind of treats "baby" as a name, or perhaps because it immitates the way young children talk. In normal circumstances dropping articles just makes you sound foreign.

> sounds like broken English

There are many languages (notably Slavic ones) that don't have articles. My guess is that the comment author is a native speaker of one of those languages and not English.

Lots of native English speakers write ‘baby’ without an article.

As a native speaker of a Slavic language I can confirm that articles are something that I often seem to be getting wrong when I am writing (and speaking) English.

They seem like an unneeded extra, from the perspective of Slavic languages, where the information that they give is most often easily inferred from the context or the construction of the sentence.

Indian languages also lack articles - my mother immigrated to USA over 30 years ago and I still have to add in articles sometimes when I proofread something she writes.

I'm really glad to get feedback from English native. I'm even more happy because your feedback confirms my expectations: articles are really hard for me, because my first language does not have them.

I'm a Spanish native speaker and I also have problems with articles, but it seems like I have the opposite problem, it seems like Spanish uses articles more often than English, so I usually add them when they are not required, maybe not grammatically incorrect but sometimes I could sound kinda weird.

To be fair, some English speakers will say baby to mean a particular unnamed infant. For example, a midwife or childcare adviser will talk about what to do "when baby gets home" or "If baby is hungry.." etc.

There's also the whole "Back To Sleep" anti-SIDS campaign, which is just murder on their sleep. Our kids just totally refused to cooperate so we gave up and let them sleep on their stomachs.

Could not reproduce.

I would also suggest finding a quiet, dark place near your house where you can go on a walk with your infant. As I walked around the neighborhood, she went from refershed by the air, to a bit annoyed that she wasn't able to move around much - I'm sure some neighbors heard protest crying - to dazed and then resigned to close the eyes. I got upwards of 10,000 steps every night just walking around with her, and learned a lot about myself from trying to get her to fall asleep -- pre-bedtime quiet activities, orange/dim lighting, 62-68 degrees and keeping a very dark bedroom. Also, having someone nearby can also help, possibly singing quietly or giving a gentle massage, which can lower cortisol levels. Breastfeeding has also helped us a lot, something as a father you can't do, but a warm bottle can help. Bouncing on yoga balls also worked for us (I went to a hotel's gym just for the ball once). It gets much better though, brave it out for the first year if you can! My 13-month old daughter now goes into the bed on her own when she gets tired and sleeps for long stretches on her own.

These are great suggestions, but I am going to add my own, as an experienced mother of three. Whenever the getting-to-sleep process starts, once you've gotten comfortable, baby in arms or in the stroller, you have to let your mind wander, even if you're rocking or singing a little sleepy song. Babies can tell when you're sitting there thinking "is he asleep yet? how about now? what if we're up all night?" As long as your attention is in the room, the baby will be alert. Cast your mind outside of the house, think about the yard and the street, then just let your thoughts wander, almost as if you yourself were drifting off. You'll be boring, and the baby will fall asleep.

I agree with this. For our kids, I've been the one that's most successful with quick sleep times, and my wife and I believe it's largely driven with our different mental energies during that time.

I'm a night owl, so don't feel pressure to rush it, and just settle in for the long haul and relax and daydream myself, planning to finish my day once the kids are good and settled. My wife gets tired at night and spends the time tallying her remaining chores and work that needs finished before she can get to bed herself, and the kids then tend to not settle down.

It's harder now with our 3 year old, who uses mama's hair as her bedtime lovie.

you will be much happier if you accept that being a father is, at least, a 12-hour/day job and not try to rush things. Your kid can pick up on your anxiety and will not react well to being rushed.

Feeling the weight of your little baby in your arms is fleeting so try to really experience it.

After he falls asleep in your lap you can put on some headphones and look at your phone.

From now on getting off the clock at your dayjob is just hour #1 of your night job.

I remember the first time I noticed my son reacting to my mood, that was game-changing for me :( I felt really terrible, and have been more careful about revealing distress to him.

Obviously you can't just hide all your feelings, but I now try not to be as frustrated about things that I can't help.

Accepting that my needs come second and just generally trying to make things smooth for my son has made our relationship so much better.

I used to think that I would be able to get an hour or two of work done when he was asleep,but the result was never good. I was stressed out after my third month of paternity leave. For the remaining months (we get 195 days to use as we please at 80% pay in Sweden) I just called down and learned to be happy with my day if we managed to

1. Walk the dog for at least one 1-2hr walk

2. Have some kind of social inreraction with grown-ups.

I now just sleep/relax whenever he's sleeping. Good days he sleeps a good 3hr mid day, and those days I try to get things done, but depending on how the night was sometimes I just do 3hr of relaxing and doing things that I know are good for me.

I got 15 days and thought it was generous.

I was offered the 12 weeks of unpaid leave mandated by the government. I ended up using 10 of my PTO days.

Northern Europe social democracy has it's perks.

We get 195 days/parent at 80% pay (my union has however negotiated an extra 10% if I take most of those days consecutive during the first two years after the child was born).

Then we get an extra 45 days/parent with something like 100-150 SEK/day.

Until this year there was an extra bonus when the parental leave was shared equally between parents, so we got an extra 15k SEK (~$2k).

> I thought paternity leave was going to be chill

I've heard this from a few people, and I don't understand it. The whole idea of paternity leave is to allow you to care for a newborn -- it's not supposed to be a vacation!

I think a lot of fathers-to-be imagine their newborns spending most of the time sleeping, leaving lots of time for work/learning/whatever. In reality, it's rather unlikely you'll be getting more than a few hours sleep yourself!

Dude, newborn stage is when you can get the MOST done. Especially if you hit the sleep training hard and early (warning: depending on your kid's temperament this may mean listening to them cry a ton at night for as much as a week—with ours it was more like 3 nights. Early means 8-12 weeks, later and it'll be harder) and keep them on a sleep/feed schedule (strongly, strongly recommended—if you don't they will switch their days/nights around and make your life a living hell. This means waking them from naps to feed when it's feeding time, which I know may seem crazy but trust me). Even if you totally screw up the whole sleep thing, they're still only awake like 20-25% of the day. I hate be the bearer of bad news but ages 2-4 are oh so much worse.

If the kid's starting to eagerly take bottles then pulling away screaming it could be reflux. If they're also screaming as if in great pain when placed in certain positions (say, in their crib instead of upright in your arms) it's really bad reflux, and/or it's been going on a while. All three of ours and like 1/2 the other kids in my circle of friends had issues with it. If it's bad and untreated it'll fuck up their esophagus (fixable, but it'll hurt 'em for a while) and make sleep training and feeding both horrible. Happened to our first, didn't know the signs and doctors at first were like "LOL it's fine first time parent, you're just an idiot", cleared up fast (better in like 48 hours, way better inside a week, even better with later ones where they didn't have esophageal damage) once we got meds. Get that shit fixed and feeding/sleep issues will be way easier to manage (they're impossible if you don't).

Newborn stage is way worse for women unless you use formula, of course. They're never more than like an hour from another feeding or pumping, seems like. Even at night.

On the bright side, be aware that to someone with three kids, temporarily only having to care for only one kid for some reason (others with wife, others with parents, whatever) basically feels like having no kids. So freakin' easy. So if you aren't having a good time now... god, don't have more, they're a multiplier on the difficulty. Going from one to two is rough. Two to three's not better. I hear it levels off after that but don't know first hand.

So know that I envy how laughably easy you have it. That should make you feel better, right? :-)

Seriously, the first one's a bit of a shock to the system, which I well remember, and I don't envy you. Good luck! 6m-18m is pretty damn cool provided you get the sleep stuff sorted out before then. So you have that to look forward to. Before they turn into horrible little entropy demons :-(

I remember that. A newborn who didn't want to sleep, no matter the hour, and parents so far into sleep deprivation that the only thing that mattered was sleep. I'm not sure how a baby that's supposed to sleep 18 hours a day can be awake all night, but... it certainly seems that way. Looking back, trying to make a baby sleep is like pushing a rope. It only works when they want to.

If you can, tag team. For at least a while, let the baby's sleep schedule be what it is, and just hand off every few hours so someone can sleep. If that's in the dark hours, great. If not, you'll be tired enough anyway that it doesn't matter.

Also, sleep when they sleep. If you think you can do chores in the first weeks think again.

Or months with twins.

I'd recommend a Swingomatic...but they don't make them any more. This is about the same thing: https://www.amazon.com/Graco-Slim-Spaces-Compact-Swing/dp/B0...

Hate to tell you, but time requirements only go up from newborn stage.

Personally, I'm glad fatherhood is evolving. I love spending time with my son. I just tell myself to try and enjoy what I can, because at somepoint, it'll be different, and I will miss it.

Congrats on being a dad, btw.

My kid would fall asleep 100% in the car. Heck there were times when I would take her for a drive precisely for this purpose. After five minutes driving she would fall asleep.

I then used to take out the car seat with her so not to wake her up.

There are kids books that at least might trigger a smile (very much more for the parents): https://amzn.com/1617750255

Hang in there!

Tip: use orange spectrum lighting exclusively after sunset in the house. Huge benefit.

Who am I to judge, but it's paternity leave for a reason - and not so your "stupid newborn" can get in the way of learning a new hobby.

EDIT it was a lot less like a joke originally. Apologies for the offense caused by missing that.

I'm making a joke. :)

Thanks for the feedback. I made the list more outrageous so it's more obvious.

A lot of male comedians transition to family jokes after having children. This could be the catalyst for my stand up career!

From personal experience, you will soon transition to making dad jokes.

I do it daily. I'm hilarious (to no one but myself).

> A lot of male comedians transition to family jokes after having children.

"dadmedians" Your kids will love hearing that about their dad, until they are older anyway and start to roll their eyes :)

Haha I mean professional comedians.

Also, I took pictures of baby peeing on himself to show to his future dates. Can't wait!

Even if you lose the pictures, DAD can still tell the story. It has the same effect ;)

Before you do that, remember that they choose your retirement home.

My father deliberately didn't take those sort of photos for exactly this reason: he knew my mother would use them to humiliate my brother and I as we got older.

Ah, well it does now look a lot more like a joke :-)

I have bad news for you. Getting a newborn to sleep is child's play. Try getting two 5ish year olds off to school in the morning. It's basically impossible!

Every morning, our 3-year-old wakes up and says, "I don't want to go to school!" Then when mom goes to pick him up from school, she can't get him to leave. Good times.

That sounds pretty judge-y. ;-)

I imagine that faced with your first newborn, one might logically assume that there would be periods where the child slept leaving some time for other activities. In reality, the only "hobby" the new parent will want to engage under those conditions is getting some sleep.

In my experience newborns sleep a lot. For a breastfeeding mother it's pretty exhausting and requires a lot more sleep. And the nights can be pretty broken, not as broken as they will be over the next few years in general though!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com